Atlantic Monthly Ranking

1. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Motto Mens et Manus ("mind and hand") Established 1861 School type Private President Charles Vest (successor Susan Hockfield to take office in December 2004) Location Cambridge, Mass. USA Enrollment 4,112 undergraduate, 6,228 graduate Faculty 974 Campus U

2. Princeton University. Princeton University located in Princeton, New Jersey, is one of the eight Ivy League universities. Widely considered one of the world's most prestigious universities, it was founded as the "College of New Jersey" in 1746.

3. California Institute of Technology. California Institute of Technology MottoThe truth shall make you free Established 1891 School type Private President David Baltimore Location Pasadena, CA, USA

4. Yale UniversityYale University is a private university in New Haven, Connecticut. Founded in 1701, Yale is the third oldest American collegiate institution (or fourth, if St. John's College, Annapolis is included) and one of the most prestigious in the world.

5. Harvard UniversityHarvard University is a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA and a member of the Ivy League. It was founded on September 8, 1636 by a vote of the Great and General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, making it the oldest post-secondary school.

6. Stanford UniversityFor other meanings of Stanford see Stanford (disambiguation). Stanford University is a privately funded university in Stanford, California. It is located approximately 35 miles southeast of San Francisco, in an unincorporated part of Santa Clara County.

(7 - 25)

7. Columbia University

8. University of Pennsylvania

9. Brown University

10. Swarthmore College

11. Washington University

12. Amherst College

13. University of California, Berkeley

14. Duke University

15. Dartmouth College

16. Pomona College

17. University of California, Los Angeles

18. Rice University

19. Williams College

20. Georgetown University

21. Cornell University

22. Claremont McKenna College

23. Harvey Mudd College

24. College of William and Mary

25. Middlebury College

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=696405&forum_id=1#8726852)

No Northwestern?

Give me a fucking break.

William and Mary? LOL!

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=696405&forum_id=1#8766272)

The College Prowler academic rankings have always placed MIT on the same academic (highest) tier along with Princeton and Stanford. One full notch or tier above harvard and yale.

http://www.collegeprowler.com/find/guides-by-ranking.aspx?section=Academics

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=696405&forum_id=1#8727383)

Even the student editors of yale's Annual College Guide put Princeton ahead of Yale (give them credit for at least being consistent with all the other national educational experts).

Heck, harvard also agrees. A quote from the Crimson:

"A more accurate indicator of educational quality, as suggested by The Atlantic, may be the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE), distributed to first-years and seniors across the country. It questions students directly about their academic satisfaction, extracurricular involvement and engagement in campus life. These questions specifically address issues such as study abroad, interaction with professors and campus diversity."

Perhaps the above is why NOT ONE NATIONAL UNDERGRADUATE RANKING PUBLICATION OR NATIONAL COLLEGE GUIDE (including Yale's) PUTS YALE AHEAD OF PRINCETON. NOT A SINGLE ONE !!!!

But yet numerous such publications have openly declared PRINCETON AS THE NATION'S BEST.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=696405&forum_id=1#8728959)

http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2005/03/29/student_life_at_harvard_lags_peer_schools_poll_finds/

Bottom Line - The most accurate measure of a school's quality is what the current students think. Like this ranking, College Prowler puts Princeton and MIT in a first tier category. Yale is in a solid second tier grouping.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=696405&forum_id=1#8771936)

Very credible rankings.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=696405&forum_id=1#8727797)

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=696405&forum_id=1#8764037)

My Brown Essay!

Scratched that, I wrote all of that subconciously. Surprisingly, my friend at Brown did write about it;s architecture, and I'm sure it went a lil something like that.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=696405&forum_id=1#8766283)

(excerpt from the Crimson)

"A more accurate indicator of educational quality, as suggested by The Atlantic, may be the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE), distributed to first-years and seniors across the country. It questions students directly about their academic satisfaction, extracurricular involvement and engagement in campus life. These questions specifically address issues such as study abroad, interaction with professors and campus diversity."

http://www.xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=696669&mc=4&forum_id=1

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=696405&forum_id=1#8774523)

College rankings will always be subjective, and there is no reason why someone can;t conisder what the Atlantic has to say on this subject vs US News or any other magazine.

I think people who read the Atlantic are far "bigger" than looking at lists of the best hospitals or best colleges, etc.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=696405&forum_id=1#8774807)

You're probably thinking of Financial Times (also based in London), which puts out an international ranking of "global" MBA programs every year:

http://www.ft.com/businesseducation/mba

FWIW, they've ranked Wharton #1 in the world every year since the ranking began years ago.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=696405&forum_id=1#8778643)

They actually rank Wharton #21, although that seems ridiculous; however, it's difficult to tell why they rank so low. Any MBA ranking that doesn't at least have some order of Stanford, Harvard, Wharton in the top 5 and some order of Kellogg, Tuck, UChicago, MIT, Columbia in the top 10 doesn't really seem credible enough to me.

I wasn't arguing that USNWR is worse than other rankings, just that it's surprising that more reputable publications who have the ability to be better have not participated in the game.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=696405&forum_id=1#8779520)

http://which-mba.com/site_info.asp?info_name=wmba_rank_method

Wharton generally has a policy of not involving its students and alums in those kinds of things, which probably explains its relatively poor showing in this ranking.

In terms of US News versus other "more reputable" publications, I think it's just a matter of devoting resources to an intricate annual ranking. US News carved out a niche for itself over 20 years ago, and correctly concluded that it could somewhat compensate for its 3rd place standing among national news magazines by offering this unique annual service. It's developed rather complex--albeit controversial--mechanisms for its annual rankings (of colleges, grad/professional schools, hospitals, etc.) that would be very expensive for other publications to duplicate on an annual basis. As a national news magazine brand, US News has basically cornered the market on these rankings, and any other publication would basically be the challenger at this point. The recent rankings by Newsweek, Atlantic Monthly, and Washington Monthly are examples of rather weak attempts to get in on some of US News' action. I just don't see any other mainstream publication devoting the significant resources to develop a rankings brand to compete with US News at this point.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=696405&forum_id=1#8780293)

The foreign rankings are geared towards rewarding size because of their reliance on a school's "number of publications produced" as a prime criteria. This places schools with large graduate programs at a huge advantage even though it says nothing of their quality at the undergrad level. That is why you see schools like the University of San Francisco (without an undergrad program) in the world's top 10. It is also a reason why you see schools like Williams, Swarthmore, Dartmouth and Brown not making the top 50. And schools like UMass with an average SAT of about 530 making the top 25 (in the world).

US News has numerous criteria designed to measure schools at the undergrad level. You can argue with the weighting of the criteria but it is difficult to argue with the criteria itself. In my view, US News is superior to the Atlantic simply because it offers far more criteria.

Having said this, I am also inclined to agree with the Harvard Crimson (see below) which argued that perhaps the best measure of a school is what the actual students think. And here, one is directed to the CollegeProwler.com academic rankings. It's academic ranking does exactly that.

From the Harvard Crimson:

"A more accurate indicator of educational quality, as suggested by The Atlantic, may be the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE), distributed to first-years and seniors across the country. It questions students directly about their academic satisfaction, extracurricular involvement and engagement in campus life. These questions specifically address issues such as study abroad, interaction with professors and campus diversity."

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=696405&forum_id=1#8778850)

"Calm Down!" the deans and counselors say. Herewith an exploration of the American college-admissions system

.....

Here is the problem with the college-admissions system. It is a vast and intricate bureaucracy designed to do one thing, and it does that very well; but it is under intense social and economic pressure to do something different—something more or less directly at odds with its supposed goal. The resulting tensions affect everyone involved: The high school guidance counselors who try to steer students toward the right school. The college admissions officers who sort through ever mounting piles of applications to choose an entering class. The college administrators who wonder how many of those accepted will enroll—and how many of them will need financial aid. The parents who contemplate what will be (after housing) the second largest financial outlay of their lives. And, of course, the students themselves.

What the admissions system is really designed for is the subtle, subjective work of matching millions of students with thousands of schools. Romantic images are often used to describe this process—finding a date, choosing a spouse—and the comparisons do apply. In higher education, as in dating or marriage, individual tastes and needs differ. There are widely agreed-upon ideas of more and less attractive partners, but there is no single "best" or "right" choice. If one matchup doesn't work, many others are available.

There are plenty of fish in the sea. American colleges are unbelievably varied. There are thousands of institutions of post-high school instruction in the United States: more than 2,300 four-year colleges, more than 1,800 two-year colleges, and an unknown but large number of trade schools, technical institutes, art or music centers, and other specialized schools. There are night schools for people with jobs; online or written correspondence courses for people in remote locations; universities in big cities and on secluded campuses in Oregon and Maine. There are technical institutes—for music, nursing, forestry, aviation—and colleges that emphasize the classics. The American higher-education establishment includes the Air Force Academy and Juilliard, Bob Jones University and Caltech.

The people who make the educational matchmaking system go—the high school counselors and college admissions officers —are surprisingly idealistic about trying to find in this dizzying range the right school for each student. They are modestly paid; they complain frequently about pressure from anxious parents; they compete fiercely in the admissions derby. But they believe in what they are doing. When they talk about serving a student's best interests, they sound less jaded than politicians do when talking about serving the public interest—or lawyers do about serving justice, or journalists do about serving the truth.

Then we have the reality that none of these counselors and officers like but all of them recognize: admissions is a battlefield in a brutal competition for prestige. Everyone in America's college-aspirant class understands how this works. "Going Ivy" is a win. Being stuck at a safety school is a loss. The real admissions system is creative in finding room for everyone. The trophy admissions system is a you-versus-me competition for a limited number of spaces at a handful of schools. The real system emphasizes how many places a student might be happy. The trophy system emphasizes how few. The real system puts its greatest stress on what a student will do after he or she starts college. The trophy system cares only where he or she gets in.

Status competition is natural to people, and exclusive affiliations have always been valued for their sheer exclusivity. Otherwise there would be no such concept as the A-list. The mystery in college admissions is how one factor in choosing a desirable college—the appeal of selective schools simply because they are hard to get into—became the factor for an influential minority of ambitious Americans.

The purpose of this special section, which will be an annual fall feature, is to examine the admissions system as it is meant to work—and to explore the realities of its current operation and their implications for students, parents, and the colleges themselves. Our goal is to give high school students and their families a practical sense of what to expect from the process, to help them find the best match of student and college. As part of that continuing process we will canvass high schools and colleges for advance signs of changes in admissions.

For the inauguration of this special feature Atlantic reporters interviewed many dozens of admissions directors and high school counselors, asking which trends they thought would most affect students in the coming year. One result of that reporting is "The New College Chaos" (below), by James Fallows, which describes what students should know about the new level of unpredictability and commercialism in the admissions system, and how counselors believe students can cope with it.

This issue also addresses a basic question in admissions: how parents and students should think about "desirable" schools, and whether current systems of ranking and rating schools identify the right traits. In "What Makes a College Good?," Nicholas Confessore discusses a new assessment system designed (imagine!) to measure how well students learn to read, write, and think once they are in college. To demonstrate the strengths and limitations of rating systems The Atlantic conceived a rating system of its own (see "The Selectivity Illusion," by Don Peck).

In "The Bias Question," Jay Mathews reports on charges of ethnic bias in the SAT by a former ETS employee.

Finally, in "The Late-Decision Program," V. V. Ganeshananthan reveals a little-known but important safety net in the admissions process whereby thousands of students get a second chance at finding the right school.

Writing about the stresses and uncertainties in the admissions process carries a risk. The counselors and admissions officers we interviewed said time and again that their collective message to America's parents is "Calm down!" A realistic portrayal of the admissions system might not have that effect initially. But the more clearly students and their parents understand how many choices they have, and how hard the real system will try to find the right match for them, the more confident they should be. In that spirit we offer our first College-Admissions Survey.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=696405&forum_id=1#9217192)