If the Ivy label never existed, what are the true top 10 best U.S. colleges in your mind?

[Anonymous]

I'd put Swarthmore in the top 10 list. It's the WASP with an academic intensity that rivals MIT or Caltech, the most extensive distribution requirements, a rigorous Honors program, the only WASP to offer Engineering, adding to it's strong STEM focus, and outstanding graduate outcomes. Gorgeous campus and facilities. Easy access to Philly. All-in-all an outstanding undergrad education for a kid prepared to work hard.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Harvard
Yale
Princeton
Stanford
MIT
Northwestern
Pomona/CMC/Mudd (3Cs)
Williams
Amherst
Georgetown

Love this list! Scripps and Pitzer are sadly a drag on the Claremont colleges.

swap Amherst with Hopkins

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Stanford
MIT
Harvard
Yale
U Chicago
Duke
Princeton
Berkeley

Beyond that, its a toss up of many institutions that could all “top 10” but together add up to more than 10

Definitely swap U of Chicago with Northwestern.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:MIT
Princeton
Stanford
Rice
Berkeley
Michigan
Cornell
UCLA
Penn
Texas

Schools that aren't outstanding in engineering should not be on any list in 2025.

1) MIT
2) Princeton
3) Stanford
4) Harvard
5) Yale

6) Northwestern, Duke, & U Penn

9) UC-Berkeley

10) Cornell & CMU

We have a winner.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'd put Swarthmore in the top 10 list. It's the WASP with an academic intensity that rivals MIT or Caltech, the most extensive distribution requirements, a rigorous Honors program, the only WASP to offer Engineering, adding to it's strong STEM focus, and outstanding graduate outcomes. Gorgeous campus and facilities. Easy access to Philly. All-in-all an outstanding undergrad education for a kid prepared to work hard.

None of the lacs deserve to be on this list.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'd put Swarthmore in the top 10 list. It's the WASP with an academic intensity that rivals MIT or Caltech, the most extensive distribution requirements, a rigorous Honors program, the only WASP to offer Engineering, adding to it's strong STEM focus, and outstanding graduate outcomes. Gorgeous campus and facilities. Easy access to Philly. All-in-all an outstanding undergrad education for a kid prepared to work hard.

None of the lacs deserve to be on this list.

Swarthmore engineering is a joke. All these LACs need to be removed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Williams
Amherst
Princeton
Dartmouth
Carleton
Pomona
Middlebury
Davidson
Rice
Wake Forest

I like this list too. Wake Forest is a question mark tho ...

I’d swap out Bowdoin for Middlebury

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'd put Swarthmore in the top 10 list. It's the WASP with an academic intensity that rivals MIT or Caltech, the most extensive distribution requirements, a rigorous Honors program, the only WASP to offer Engineering, adding to it's strong STEM focus, and outstanding graduate outcomes. Gorgeous campus and facilities. Easy access to Philly. All-in-all an outstanding undergrad education for a kid prepared to work hard.

None of the lacs deserve to be on this list.

Swarthmore engineering is a joke. All these LACs need to be removed.

Seriously it's heavily dependent on visiting instructors and faculty and doesn't offer many quality resources. If you really need an LAC for engineering, go to Harvey Mudd or Olin, but Swarthmore is not a good option for a serious engineering education.

[Anonymous]

Such a dumb idea to try to rank universities.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'd put Swarthmore in the top 10 list. It's the WASP with an academic intensity that rivals MIT or Caltech, the most extensive distribution requirements, a rigorous Honors program, the only WASP to offer Engineering, adding to it's strong STEM focus, and outstanding graduate outcomes. Gorgeous campus and facilities. Easy access to Philly. All-in-all an outstanding undergrad education for a kid prepared to work hard.

SWAT does not have extensive distribution requirements. Purely in STEM terms, which is all you care about, Harvey Mudd is better. I agree SWAT is top 15 though. (Harvey Mudd is not - maybe top 20 though.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:In the real world, Ivy prestige does matter whether you like it or not.

Even Cornell?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Harvard
Yale
Princeton
Stanford
MIT
Northwestern
Pomona/CMC/Mudd (3Cs)
Williams
Amherst
Georgetown

Love this list! Scripps and Pitzer are sadly a drag on the Claremont colleges.

swap Amherst with Hopkins

Many kids do: after Amherst rejects them in ED, they can try Hopkins as a back up in ED2!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'd put Swarthmore in the top 10 list. It's the WASP with an academic intensity that rivals MIT or Caltech, the most extensive distribution requirements, a rigorous Honors program, the only WASP to offer Engineering, adding to it's strong STEM focus, and outstanding graduate outcomes. Gorgeous campus and facilities. Easy access to Philly. All-in-all an outstanding undergrad education for a kid prepared to work hard.

SWAT does not have extensive distribution requirements. Purely in STEM terms, which is all you care about, Harvey Mudd is better. I agree SWAT is top 15 though. (Harvey Mudd is not - maybe top 20 though.)

In terms of STEM, Mudd is much better than Swarthmore. Are you high?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The top tier is HYPSM. After that, it's more program specific. For example, Penn for business is obviously excellent.

And then there is the second tier which is also very good - rest of the Ivies, Duke, Hopkins, Chicago.

Also, it depends on the type of school kids are seeking and whether undergrad or grad. For undergrad, I'd add the top LACs too, such as Williams, Swarthmore, Amherst.

You can’t rank grad schools meaningfully; it depends on the department and what you are studying. You can rank grad schools by subject and that’s about it. And any subject will have lots of surprises if you do not know the field, i.e., Pitt and Rutgers for Philosophy, UMass for Linguistics etc.

In other words, all meaningful rankings (other than subject rankings, and even that depends on subspecialty) are undergrad. Of course WASP is somewhere in the bottom half of the top 10 and probably above all of the lower ivies (including Penn; this is not an undergrad business school ranking).

Which is why Ph.D. feeder rank for history, per capita, is 15/20 SLACs. Here’s the cite:

https://www.collegetransitions.com/dataverse/top-feeders-phd-programs/#history

This is wrong, though with a decent premise. You can rank both undergrad and grad by department, and the departments in which your kids are interest should determine what you consider best.

For example, I don't think anybody looking at History as a likely major would view any small liberal arts college in the top 20 or 30; they simply do not have the scale to offer a meaningful array of courses and professors that would compete with very large departments at excellent universities that may be less selective at the undergraduate level. Why on earth would I go to Amherst or Bowdoin instead of Berkeley or Chapel Hill for History, aside from different campusl environments? The same is true for Psych, Econ, English, Poli Sci and any other number of non-STEM majors.

Aggregate undergraduate rankings at any level are completely irrelevant unless your kids don't have any idea about what they want to study, and even then, are more subjective than objective. And graduate and professional schools know it, as do their students.

For one thing, you don't have to sti through giant history lectures where your classmates are engineering majors who would rather not be there. For another the higher level of professor contact and higher academic expectations can better prepare one for grad school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The top tier is HYPSM. After that, it's more program specific. For example, Penn for business is obviously excellent.

And then there is the second tier which is also very good - rest of the Ivies, Duke, Hopkins, Chicago.

Also, it depends on the type of school kids are seeking and whether undergrad or grad. For undergrad, I'd add the top LACs too, such as Williams, Swarthmore, Amherst.

You can’t rank grad schools meaningfully; it depends on the department and what you are studying. You can rank grad schools by subject and that’s about it. And any subject will have lots of surprises if you do not know the field, i.e., Pitt and Rutgers for Philosophy, UMass for Linguistics etc.

In other words, all meaningful rankings (other than subject rankings, and even that depends on subspecialty) are undergrad. Of course WASP is somewhere in the bottom half of the top 10 and probably above all of the lower ivies (including Penn; this is not an undergrad business school ranking).

Which is why Ph.D. feeder rank for history, per capita, is 15/20 SLACs. Here’s the cite:

https://www.collegetransitions.com/dataverse/top-feeders-phd-programs/#history

This is wrong, though with a decent premise. You can rank both undergrad and grad by department, and the departments in which your kids are interest should determine what you consider best.

For example, I don't think anybody looking at History as a likely major would view any small liberal arts college in the top 20 or 30; they simply do not have the scale to offer a meaningful array of courses and professors that would compete with very large departments at excellent universities that may be less selective at the undergraduate level. Why on earth would I go to Amherst or Bowdoin instead of Berkeley or Chapel Hill for History, aside from different campusl environments? The same is true for Psych, Econ, English, Poli Sci and any other number of non-STEM majors.

Aggregate undergraduate rankings at any level are completely irrelevant unless your kids don't have any idea about what they want to study, and even then, are more subjective than objective. And graduate and professional schools know it, as do their students.

For one thing, you don't have to sti through giant history lectures where your classmates are engineering majors who would rather not be there. For another the higher level of professor contact and higher academic expectations can better prepare one for grad school.

Which is why Ph.D. feeder rank for history, per capita, is 15/20 SLACs. Here’s the cite:

https://www.collegetransitions.com/dataverse/...hd-programs/#history