U.S. News and World Report has released this year’s ranking of the top colleges and universities in the country. Harvard and Princeton tie for the top spot among national universities.
Here are the top twenty choices:
Costs 2008 Total enrollment Fall 2008 Acceptance rate
RANK 1: Harvard University Cambridge, MA
2009-2010 Tuition and Fees: $37,012 19,230 7.9 %RANK 1: Princeton University Princeton, NJ
2009-2010 Tuition and Fees: $35,340 7,497 9.9 %RANK 3: Yale University New Haven, CT
2009-2010 Tuition and Fees: $36,500 11,446 8.6 %RANK 4: California Institute of Technology Pasadena, CA
2009-2010 Tuition and Fees: $34,584 2,126 17.4 %RANK 4: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Cambridge, MA
2009-2010 Tuition and Fees: $37,782 10,299 11.9 %RANK 4: Stanford University Stanford, CA
2009-2010 Tuition and Fees: $37,881 17,833 9.5 %RANK 4: University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, PA
2009-2010 Tuition and Fees: $38,970 19,018 16.9 %RANK 8: Columbia University New York, NY
2009-2010 Tuition and Fees: $41,316 23,196 10.0 %RANK 8: University of Chicago Chicago, IL
2009-2010 Tuition and Fees: $39,381 12,386 27.9 %RANK 10: Duke University Durham, NC
2009-2010 Tuition and Fees: $38,975 14,060 22.4 %RANK 11: Dartmouth College Hanover, NH
2009-2010 Tuition and Fees: $38,679 5,848 13.5 %RANK 12: Northwestern University Evanston, IL
2009-2010 Tuition and Fees: $38,461 18,431 26.2 %RANK 12: Washington University in St. Louis St. Louis, MO
2009-2010 Tuition and Fees: $38,864 13,338 21.7 %RANK 14: Johns Hopkins University Baltimore, MD
2009-2010 Tuition and Fees: $39,150 19,858 25.4 %RANK 15: Cornell University Ithaca, NY
2009-2010 Tuition and Fees: $37,954 20,273 20.7 %RANK 16: Brown University Providence, RI
2009-2010 Tuition and Fees: $38,848 8,318 13.7 %RANK 17: Emory University Atlanta, GA
2009-2010 Tuition and Fees: $38,036 12,755 26.6 %RANK 17: Rice University Houston, TX
2009-2010 Tuition and Fees: $31,248 5,456 23.0 %RANK 17: Vanderbilt University Nashville, TN
2009-2010 Tuition and Fees: $38,579 12,093 25.3 %RANK 20: University of Notre Dame Notre Dame, IN
2009-2010 Tuition and Fees: $38,477 11,731 26.7 %
Brown’s placement behind Washington University and just before Emory is a bit surprising. My alma mater, University of Chicago, ties for eighth. George Washington University comes in at 53rd. Last year, Princeton was number two. Here is the 2009 rankings:
1 Harvard University
2 Princeton University
3 Yale University
4 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
4 Stanford University
6 California Institute of Technology
6 University of Pennsylvania
8 Columbia University
8 Duke University
8 University of Chicago
For Liberal Arts Colleges, the top ten were:
RANK 1: Williams College Williamstown, MA
2009-2010 Tuition and Fees: $39,490 2,045 17.0 %RANK 2: Amherst College Amherst, MA
2009-2010 Tuition and Fees: $38,928 1,697 14.8 %RANK 3: Swarthmore College Swarthmore, PA
2009-2010 Tuition and Fees: $37,860 1,490 15.7 %RANK 4: Middlebury College Middlebury, VT
2009-2010 Comprehensive Fee: $50,780 2,455 16.8 %RANK 4: Wellesley College Wellesley, MA
2009-2010 Tuition and Fees: $38,062 2,344 36.0 %RANK 6: Bowdoin College Brunswick, ME
2009-2010 Tuition and Fees: $40,020 1,723 18.6 %RANK 6: Pomona College Claremont, CA
2009-2010 Tuition and Fees: $37,017 1,532 15.6 %RANK 8: Carleton College Northfield, MN
2009-2010 Tuition and Fees: $39,777 2,000 27.5 %RANK 8: Davidson College Davidson, NC
2009-2010 Tuition and Fees: $35,124 1,668 25.7 %RANK 10: Haverford College Haverford, PA
2009-2010 Tuition and Fees: $39,085 1,169 27.0 %
Here is the 2009 rankings, showing little change:
1 Amherst College
1 Williams College
3 Swarthmore College
4 Wellesley College
5 Middlebury College
6 Bowdoin College
6 Pomona College
8 Carleton College
9 Davidson College
10 Haverford College
Here is a neat Inflation Calendar
http://www.westegg.com/inflation/
It starts at year 1800 so it is still good for Mikes A & S’ inflation calculations (I am younger).
I bought a brand new 1972 Chevy 4×4 pickup truck when I was in the Army (and I still have it). The cost was $3400.00. It would cost me 4.9 times that today and we all know 1972 vehicles were much better built than today’s vehicles.
From the calculator:
What cost $3400 in 1972 would cost $16677.91 in 2007.
Also, if you were to buy exactly the same products in 2007 and 1972,they would cost you $3400 and $689.78 respectively
College! A collage of high school photos is costly enough.
Mike A.; neat junior varsity Junior College fight song.
foo, why cloud the discussion with a little thang called inflation…I trust that you are going into financial/bankruptcy law.
foo, good point. Thanks for the correction. I’d still wind up in junior college. Bulldog, bulldog, bow wow wow.
Here are …
Mike, your inflation adjusted tuition is $12,155. Thus, tuition has increased 3 fold since you went to Harvard, not more than 10 fold. Whether that is reasonable or not is another issue.
P.S. Harvard sucks.
P.P.S. One guess where I went to school.
Jadzia, is that the U of C “where fun goes to die”?
No matter your alma mater, please take some time to volunteer at the poorest school in your city.
Brown doesn’t submit info to USNews. Perhaps this is a bit of retribution / incentive on USNews’ part?
In any event, I think we can all agree that these rankings are silly. Echoing them on your blog only serves to give them legitimacy, which they do not deserve.
My undergraduate years at the University of Chicago were the WORST of my life. That is all.
the year to year changes in rank are of trivial importance. the methodology, though, is flawed which is wahy a second rate school like Emory does so well. They hit a number of superficially impressive bars–Nobel laureates, a lot of books in the library, etc., despite having a lot of faculty deadwood and very uneven departments outside of the medical school.
Hey hold on here a freaking New York Minute. There is some mistake. THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS was not mentioned nor the University of Michigan. What is the problem with this?
I entered Harvard in the fall of 1965. Tuition: $1,750.00. Room and board: $1,100.00. Total fees, costs and miscellaneous expenses for year: approximately $3,500.00. That means that the cost of a private college education has increased more than tenfold in the past 40 years. I had a full tuition scholarship then. Were I starting college this fall, even a full tuition scholarship might well be insufficient to enable me to go anywhere other than to a junior college.
The tuition and fees don’t include the cost of room and board. You can tack another $12000 to $15000 on to the costs they list.