There is a HUGE number of schools with a lower percentage of students receiving pell grants than the top 5 you mentioned, so the ranking doesn’t correspond with wealth. There are more than 2,000 private colleges in the country. Also, many students at top schools are receiving outside scholarships as well and therefore don’t need a pell grant (keep that in mind). At lehigh, 15% receive pell grants, for example, or 14% at Babson (these are just the first two private random colleges I looked up). Are they at the top of the list? No. Top schools and schools with wealthy student bodies are two different lists.
Hamilton graduates (followed by those from Williams and Amherst) report the highest early career salaries from among the 10 NESCAC LACs. If you connect earnings with opportunity, this might be something to consider.
https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/hamilton-college-2728
The number of students that would qualify for a Pell Grant but decline it because they have outside scholarships to cover the full COA at a top school can likely be counted on one hand.
Schools should be ranked in groups, unless ranked by specific majors or by placement in a specific industry.
OP: Consider placing your list alongside of a list ranked by endowments.
Schoools Ranked By Endowment FY 2019:
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Harvard
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Yale
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Stanford
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Princeton
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MIT
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UPenn
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Michigan
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Notre Dame
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Northwestern
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Columbia
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Duke
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UChicago
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WashUStL
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Emory
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Cornell
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Virginia
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Rice
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Johns Hopkins (JHU)
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Vanderbilt
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USC
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Dartmouth College
Univ. of Texas System. Texas A&M System, & Univ. of California System not included in this ranking of individual schools.
Ranking of EPS (endowment by student) is also helpful.
LACs should be ranked separately, in my opinion.
^ if you rank by endowment per student, I see no reason for LACs to be ranked separately.
i’m working on a blog to answer this question. you can find me on twitter (same username).
The ultimate YAWN!
So your list is pretty much a bunch of expensive private schools and some , hard to get in state schools, yet IIRC most CEO’s come from a state school, also not sure how you decide earnings , do you take grad school into account. You have to be wealthy or very poor to go to most of the schools on your list, the exception is your instate public’s on your list so hopefully you live in those states I guess. You seem to leave out the middle class mostly. It makes life easier if you leave school w no debt. How do you decide what is success? Just a high paying but perhaps a soul crushing job? You ranked roughly 40 schools and there are about 4,000 schools in the US ( I assume your list is just the US) so about 1%. , you said you used USNW for instance and most of those lists help sell magazines and I think most agree are not super useful, a school like Reed does not make the list where it may bc they do not like to play the games needed to game the system, a school like Cooper Union for example is not ranked very high but gives kids a great education and tons of opportunities. I would argue that the CUNY system in NYC may do a better job giving opportunity than your top 40 list, will those kids every be as wealthy as the kids on your list, nope but consider where they started it may have abetter life. I guess it is how you measure success.
@NJdad07090 I very much agree with your assessment! A best life measurement–for the students and their parents–involves a bit more critical thinking beyond looking at rankings and lists! Cheers!
This article analyzes where Reed might place in U.S. News rankings under a fair evaluation:
https://www.reed.edu/reed-magazine/articles/2019/usnews-discrepancy.html
@merc81 - I am not saying Reed is not good school , but the OP stated his used sources like USNWR and decided to cutoff around 25 IIRC, I kinda of like that Reed does not seem to care about playing the games. But even at 38 I doubt it would have met his threshold.
As a general comment on Reed, by archival information, in particular, it has appeared as one of the most academically rarefied colleges in the country: