Times 2026 Best Colleges for future Leaders

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I had Chat Gpt control for population size

So we will create a “Leadership Density Index (LDI)” where:

75% weight = TIME Future Leaders rank

25% weight = inverse enrollment size
(smaller student body = higher score)

I normalized enrollment into tiers so this stays intuitive and not math-heavy.

🧠 Leadership Density Index – Top Schools
🥇 Tier 1: Elite Leadership Factories (High Leaders / Low Population)
LDI Rank School
1 Harvard
2 Stanford
3 Yale
4 Princeton
5 MIT
6 Dartmouth
7 Brown
8 Columbia
9 UPenn
10 Duke
11 UChicago
12 Northwestern
13 Georgetown
14 Cornell
15 Notre Dame
These schools dominate because they combine:

Top-15 TIME rank

Relatively small enrollment

Extremely high leadership placement per capita

🥈 Tier 2: Hidden Powerhouses (Smaller but Massive Output)
LDI Rank School
16 Emory
17 Vanderbilt
18 Tufts
19 Rice
20 WashU (St. Louis)
21 William & Mary
22 Caltech
23 Amherst
24 Middlebury
25 Smith College
26 Wake Forest
27 Pepperdine
28 Villanova
29 Trinity University
30 Mount Holyoke
These schools produce outsized leadership results relative to their size.

🥉 Tier 3: Big Schools That Still Punch Above Their Weight
LDI Rank School
31 UVA
32 USC
33 UCLA
34 NYU
35 Boston College
36 GW
37 Syracuse
38 Miami (FL)
39 Tulane
40 Lehigh
41 Georgia Tech
42 UC Berkeley
43 Michigan
44 UNC Chapel Hill
45 Indiana University

Not sure whether it’s you or ChatGPT who is stupid. How come Princeton jumps ahead of MIT after the “size” adjustment when they have a larger student body?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I had Chat Gpt control for population size

So we will create a “Leadership Density Index (LDI)” where:

75% weight = TIME Future Leaders rank

25% weight = inverse enrollment size
(smaller student body = higher score)

I normalized enrollment into tiers so this stays intuitive and not math-heavy.

🧠 Leadership Density Index – Top Schools
🥇 Tier 1: Elite Leadership Factories (High Leaders / Low Population)
LDI Rank School
1 Harvard
2 Stanford
3 Yale
4 Princeton
5 MIT
6 Dartmouth
7 Brown
8 Columbia
9 UPenn
10 Duke
11 UChicago
12 Northwestern
13 Georgetown
14 Cornell
15 Notre Dame
These schools dominate because they combine:

Top-15 TIME rank

Relatively small enrollment

Extremely high leadership placement per capita

🥈 Tier 2: Hidden Powerhouses (Smaller but Massive Output)
LDI Rank School
16 Emory
17 Vanderbilt
18 Tufts
19 Rice
20 WashU (St. Louis)
21 William & Mary
22 Caltech
23 Amherst
24 Middlebury
25 Smith College
26 Wake Forest
27 Pepperdine
28 Villanova
29 Trinity University
30 Mount Holyoke
These schools produce outsized leadership results relative to their size.

🥉 Tier 3: Big Schools That Still Punch Above Their Weight
LDI Rank School
31 UVA
32 USC
33 UCLA
34 NYU
35 Boston College
36 GW
37 Syracuse
38 Miami (FL)
39 Tulane
40 Lehigh
41 Georgia Tech
42 UC Berkeley
43 Michigan
44 UNC Chapel Hill
45 Indiana University

Not sure whether it’s you or ChatGPT who is stupid. How come Princeton jumps ahead of MIT after the “size” adjustment when they have a larger student body?

What are you talking about? Princeton has 9k students, MIT has 12k.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Bowdoin's Mamdani changes my whole view about liberal arts colleges.

Fight for the common goods.

Not quant firms.

He could be the future president.

Not unless they change the constitution.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I had Chat Gpt control for population size

So we will create a “Leadership Density Index (LDI)” where:

75% weight = TIME Future Leaders rank

25% weight = inverse enrollment size
(smaller student body = higher score)

I normalized enrollment into tiers so this stays intuitive and not math-heavy.

🧠 Leadership Density Index – Top Schools
🥇 Tier 1: Elite Leadership Factories (High Leaders / Low Population)
LDI Rank School
1 Harvard
2 Stanford
3 Yale
4 Princeton
5 MIT
6 Dartmouth
7 Brown
8 Columbia
9 UPenn
10 Duke
11 UChicago
12 Northwestern
13 Georgetown
14 Cornell
15 Notre Dame
These schools dominate because they combine:

Top-15 TIME rank

Relatively small enrollment

Extremely high leadership placement per capita

🥈 Tier 2: Hidden Powerhouses (Smaller but Massive Output)
LDI Rank School
16 Emory
17 Vanderbilt
18 Tufts
19 Rice
20 WashU (St. Louis)
21 William & Mary
22 Caltech
23 Amherst
24 Middlebury
25 Smith College
26 Wake Forest
27 Pepperdine
28 Villanova
29 Trinity University
30 Mount Holyoke
These schools produce outsized leadership results relative to their size.

🥉 Tier 3: Big Schools That Still Punch Above Their Weight
LDI Rank School
31 UVA
32 USC
33 UCLA
34 NYU
35 Boston College
36 GW
37 Syracuse
38 Miami (FL)
39 Tulane
40 Lehigh
41 Georgia Tech
42 UC Berkeley
43 Michigan
44 UNC Chapel Hill
45 Indiana University

Common DCUM knowledge says Yale is lesser than HPSM, UChicago is second tier, and Emory is third tier but of course the real world says otherwise.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I had Chat Gpt control for population size

So we will create a “Leadership Density Index (LDI)” where:

75% weight = TIME Future Leaders rank

25% weight = inverse enrollment size
(smaller student body = higher score)

I normalized enrollment into tiers so this stays intuitive and not math-heavy.

🧠 Leadership Density Index – Top Schools
🥇 Tier 1: Elite Leadership Factories (High Leaders / Low Population)
LDI Rank School
1 Harvard
2 Stanford
3 Yale
4 Princeton
5 MIT
6 Dartmouth
7 Brown
8 Columbia
9 UPenn
10 Duke
11 UChicago
12 Northwestern
13 Georgetown
14 Cornell
15 Notre Dame
These schools dominate because they combine:

Top-15 TIME rank

Relatively small enrollment

Extremely high leadership placement per capita

🥈 Tier 2: Hidden Powerhouses (Smaller but Massive Output)
LDI Rank School
16 Emory
17 Vanderbilt
18 Tufts
19 Rice
20 WashU (St. Louis)
21 William & Mary
22 Caltech
23 Amherst
24 Middlebury
25 Smith College
26 Wake Forest
27 Pepperdine
28 Villanova
29 Trinity University
30 Mount Holyoke
These schools produce outsized leadership results relative to their size.

🥉 Tier 3: Big Schools That Still Punch Above Their Weight
LDI Rank School
31 UVA
32 USC
33 UCLA
34 NYU
35 Boston College
36 GW
37 Syracuse
38 Miami (FL)
39 Tulane
40 Lehigh
41 Georgia Tech
42 UC Berkeley
43 Michigan
44 UNC Chapel Hill
45 Indiana University

Not sure whether it’s you or ChatGPT who is stupid. How come Princeton jumps ahead of MIT after the “size” adjustment when they have a larger student body?

What are you talking about? Princeton has 9k students, MIT has 12k.

The Time ranking included graduate schools, so that makes sense.

[Anonymous]

You need to divide the index score (if it represents the number of leaders) by student population. Doing a weighted average is the wrong math.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You need to divide the index score (if it represents the number of leaders) by student population. Doing a weighted average is the wrong math.

I am not sure what that would give you. Harvard's score is 100. The next highest is Stanford at 84.47, which is 15.53 points lower than Harvard. The difference between Stanford at #2 and JMU at #125 is only 10.26 points. So it is extremely compressed. I don't know what they are doing mathematically.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I had Chat Gpt control for population size

So we will create a “Leadership Density Index (LDI)” where:

75% weight = TIME Future Leaders rank

25% weight = inverse enrollment size
(smaller student body = higher score)

I normalized enrollment into tiers so this stays intuitive and not math-heavy.

🧠 Leadership Density Index – Top Schools
🥇 Tier 1: Elite Leadership Factories (High Leaders / Low Population)
LDI Rank School
1 Harvard
2 Stanford
3 Yale
4 Princeton
5 MIT
6 Dartmouth
7 Brown
8 Columbia
9 UPenn
10 Duke
11 UChicago
12 Northwestern
13 Georgetown
14 Cornell
15 Notre Dame
These schools dominate because they combine:

Top-15 TIME rank

Relatively small enrollment

Extremely high leadership placement per capita

🥈 Tier 2: Hidden Powerhouses (Smaller but Massive Output)
LDI Rank School
16 Emory
17 Vanderbilt
18 Tufts
19 Rice
20 WashU (St. Louis)
21 William & Mary
22 Caltech
23 Amherst
24 Middlebury
25 Smith College
26 Wake Forest
27 Pepperdine
28 Villanova
29 Trinity University
30 Mount Holyoke
These schools produce outsized leadership results relative to their size.

🥉 Tier 3: Big Schools That Still Punch Above Their Weight
LDI Rank School
31 UVA
32 USC
33 UCLA
34 NYU
35 Boston College
36 GW
37 Syracuse
38 Miami (FL)
39 Tulane
40 Lehigh
41 Georgia Tech
42 UC Berkeley
43 Michigan
44 UNC Chapel Hill
45 Indiana University

Anything to rank UVA higher than UM and definitely #1 as far as flagship publics. LOL.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I had Chat Gpt control for population size

So we will create a “Leadership Density Index (LDI)” where:

75% weight = TIME Future Leaders rank

25% weight = inverse enrollment size
(smaller student body = higher score)

I normalized enrollment into tiers so this stays intuitive and not math-heavy.

🧠 Leadership Density Index – Top Schools
🥇 Tier 1: Elite Leadership Factories (High Leaders / Low Population)
LDI Rank School
1 Harvard
2 Stanford
3 Yale
4 Princeton
5 MIT
6 Dartmouth
7 Brown
8 Columbia
9 UPenn
10 Duke
11 UChicago
12 Northwestern
13 Georgetown
14 Cornell
15 Notre Dame
These schools dominate because they combine:

Top-15 TIME rank

Relatively small enrollment

Extremely high leadership placement per capita

🥈 Tier 2: Hidden Powerhouses (Smaller but Massive Output)
LDI Rank School
16 Emory
17 Vanderbilt
18 Tufts
19 Rice
20 WashU (St. Louis)
21 William & Mary
22 Caltech
23 Amherst
24 Middlebury
25 Smith College
26 Wake Forest
27 Pepperdine
28 Villanova
29 Trinity University
30 Mount Holyoke
These schools produce outsized leadership results relative to their size.

🥉 Tier 3: Big Schools That Still Punch Above Their Weight
LDI Rank School
31 UVA
32 USC
33 UCLA
34 NYU
35 Boston College
36 GW
37 Syracuse
38 Miami (FL)
39 Tulane
40 Lehigh
41 Georgia Tech
42 UC Berkeley
43 Michigan
44 UNC Chapel Hill
45 Indiana University

Anything to rank UVA higher than UM and definitely #1 as far as flagship publics. LOL.

Uva is smaller

[Anonymous]

Times change. Does anyone think a Harvard or Stanford grad is a good hire today?

It seems to me that real talent is elsewhere in 2026.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Times change. Does anyone think a Harvard or Stanford grad is a good hire today?

It seems to me that real talent is elsewhere in 2026.

Investment banks, consulting firms, biotech, FAANG, startups. . .

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Times change. Does anyone think a Harvard or Stanford grad is a good hire today?

It seems to me that real talent is elsewhere in 2026.

Investment banks, consulting firms, biotech, FAANG, startups. . .

It includes graduate schools as well, so BigLaw, Fortune 500, etc.

[Anonymous]

I'd think Penn State would be higher given it has the second highest # of CEOs (only behind Stanford).

[Anonymous]

The population size person cracks me up.

[Anonymous]

Time? They still exist? I mean it’s cool that someone would make a list and think about this but it seems like it’d have no impact.