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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I did my own ranking of colleges using criteria that make more sense to me than those that USNWR uses: class sizes, total number of classes offered, happiness of students with their faculty and the school in general, and the diversity of the student body and the faculty. I included all schools on the National Universities list and the National Liberal Arts list that have a median SAT score in the 95th percentile (1360) or above.
Macalester came in 13th place on this list (Carleton is #8), and the only National University that's ahead of it is Vanderbilt at #9 (Northwestern is #14). If you look at Princeton Review, which is where I got the happiness numbers, students at Macalester are very happy.
Also, anecdotally, I had a student of mine who was close to the top of her class and won our school's award for best all-around student who went to Macalester and loved it. The cold is an issue, but other than that it sounds pretty awesome.[/quote]

OP here--this is awesome!  Would love to see the whole list!  These are great inputs into a ranking![/quote]

1) Pomona
2) Scripps
3) Pitzer
4) Mt. Holyoke
5) Bryn Mawr
6) Williams
7) Wellesley
8) Carleton
9) Vanderbilt
10) Vassar
11) U Richmond
12) Occidental
13) Macalester
14) Northwestern
15) Smith
16) Claremont McKenna
17) Barnard
18) Emory
19) Yale
20) Penn
21) Brown
22) Stanford
23) Trinity U (Texas)
24) Reed
25) Rice
26) Colorado College
27) Haverford
28) Washington U in St. Louis
29) Amherst
30) Princeton
31) Northwestern
32) Tufts
33) Boston U
34) Swarthmore
35) NYU
36) William and Mary
37) U Miami
38) Duke
39) Wesleyan
40) UC Santa Barbara
41) Bowdoin
42) Cornell
43) Santa Clara U
44) Harvey Mudd
45) Middlebury
46) USC
47) Hamilton
48) Carnegie Mellon
49) Dartmouth
50) MIT

Obviously, the criteria I used favored small schools (smaller classes and happier students). Others who seemed to fare well were those in warmer climates (more diverse and happier students), and women's colleges (smaller classes, happier students and more diverse).

FYI, some colleges were not considered because they don't make their data public. Notably, this includes Columbia and U Chicago.

Interesting, too, is that Harvard doesn't make the cut. According to Princeton Review, their students are not very happy with the quality of the professors or the overall university. I have a feeling this is at least partly due to higher expectations their students enter college with than their peers at other schools. "I worked my butt off to get into the school everyone talks about, and it sounds like lots of my friends have it at least as good as I do?"

It's fascinating to me that the first three are all part of a 5-college consortium in one location (the other two are numbers 16 and 43). I guess small classes, a diverse student body and faculty, and a warm climate close to mountains, the beach and a major city make for a great combination.

Also notable is that the spread in overall scores on my scale was 6 points between #1 and #50, while it's more like 18 points if you were to combine the two lists on USNWR. The criteria and weights they make use the colleges seem artificially farther apart in quality than they really are.

Take a look at the criteria and weights USNWR uses and I think you'll agree they're they're not what you'd choose if creating your own ranking from scratch. There's loads of data out there and this is a big decision. It's worth taking the time to make your own list, which will not unlikely be pretty different from mine, especially if you insist on a higher median SAT score. I just don't think there's all that much difference between the 99th percentile and the 95th.

Good luck to all![/quote]

OP here- this is awesome- thanks so much.  You should publish this![/quote]

I'm glad you found it interesting![/quote]

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