Not surprisingly, Harvard, Princeton, and Yale grabbed the U.S. New top three spots in the national university rankings followed by Columbia, Stanford, Penn, Caltech and MIT.  Williams, Amherst, Swarthmore, Middlebury and Wellesley took top honors for liberal arts schools.   U.S. News also rated the colleges and universities by value and numerous other categories.

Pundits argue that a major flaw with the  U.S. News & World Report ranking is that it rewards schools with strong reputations (popularity contest) that enroll highly qualified (often affluent) students, regardless of how much those students actually learn while on campus.

Forbes’ annual ranking of America’s Best Colleges for 2010 awarded top honors to Williams College, Princeton, Amherst College, United States Military Academy, MIT and Stanford University.  Forbes’ methodology puts weight on numerous factors such as success following graduation, student debt levels, four-year graduate rates and student enjoyment.

Behind each ranking is the fine print.  Review the methodology and the data sets used to compile each of the rankings before deciding how to interpret and utilize them.

Links to the Big Two:

• U.S. News & World Report – http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges
• Forbes -
  • http://www.forbes.com/2010/08/11/best-colleges-universities-rating-ranking-opinions-best-colleges-10_land.html
  • http://bestcollegerankings.org/popular-rankings/forbes-college-rankings

Check out the impressive community service achievements of some of the 2010 AXA Achievement Scholarship Winners.

AXA, in association with U.S. News & World Report, awarded winning students, known as AXA Achievers, $670,000 in college scholarships.

Their projects and profiles are inspiring and motivating.  Read more.

The Harvard Crimson reported that “this change, along with Georgetown’s decision to ‘strongly recommend’ rather than require the submission of three Subject Test scores, marks the end of a three-Subject Test requirement at any university in the nation, according to a National Association for College Admission Counseling report.”

According to the Crimson, “Dean of Admission and Financial Aid William R. Fitzsimmons ’67 said that the decision—which was made in March by a faculty committee and will affect students vying for spots in the Class of 2015—was arrived at based on a review of the validity of the writing portion of the standard SAT in predicting students’ grades at Harvard.”

Type the name of a college or university in the search bar and you’ll find general information about enrollment, tuition, degrees, etc.   You will also find a map showing the location of the school with one-click access to satellite images from Google.

The well-designed interface with Google Earth and Google Maps makes for an easy and interesting campus tour.

While you are there, check out some of the other amazing features of Wolfram|Alpha at http://www.wolframalpha.com

The Stanford Daily reported this information ahead of Shawn Abbott’s departure for New York University.   Abbott wrote in an email to the Daily, “It looks as though our yield this year will be our strongest ever.”

Stanford University Director of Admission Shawn Abbott resigned effective May 14, 2010 to begin a new job at New York University.

Abbott’s four-year tenure at Stanford has seen record numbers of applicants to the university. Stanford set another record this spring by admitting only 7.2%of more than 32,000 applicants to the Class of 2014.

Before coming to Stanford, Abbott was senior associate director of admissions at Columbia University. Prior to that, he worked in admissions at Boston University.

Around 64% of students accepted their offers of admission to join the MIT Class of 2014,  about the same percentage as last year, according to admissions director Stuart Schmill ‘86.   The enrolled class of 2014 will have around 1,070 students and a demographic makeup similar to the class of 2013, he wrote in e-mail. The admissions office is working to select “a small number” of students to admit off its waitlist over the next week and a half, wrote Schmill.

Previously The Tech, reported Senior Associate Dean for Residential Life Karen Nilsson as saying the class of 2014 “might” have around 1,300 students, over 200 more than the class of 2013.  That information was incorrect.

MIT’s overall acceptance rate for this year’s admissions cycle was 9.7%.   A total of 16,632 students applied, and 1,611 were admitted to the Class of 2014.

The admission rate fell a full percentage point from 10.7% for the Class of 2013.

If you are a rising freshman or transfer students looking for a college to attend for Fall 2010, the National Association for College Admission Counseling released its May 2010 list of colleges still accepting applications.   The list includes more than 200 colleges and universities throughout nation.

Many of the schools have openings for both incoming freshmen and transfer students. Most have financial aid available, as well as campus housing.

The list, provided by the National Association for College Admission Counseling, can be downloaded to excel, and sorted by state and various other attributes.  Click here to access the Vacancy List.

Many students skimp on college research because they consider it time-consuming or they don’t know where to start.  Checking out graduation rates by institution is easy.  You just need to know where to look.

College Results Online (http://www.collegeresults.org) provides interactive tools to query graduation rates at four-year colleges and universities. In addition to providing college-specific graduation rates and other data (e.g. cost, financial aid), the comparison tool provides analogous information for similar colleges.

Check out  InLikeMe’ s Fifteen A+ Resources for Researching Colleges and Universities for a quick tutorial designed to help  students and parents can quickly get up to speed about individual colleges, affordability and admissions policies.

While advanced math isn’t for everybody, many colleges view those who passed Calculus AB or BC as students with the ability to successfully take on rigorous colleges courses, especially those involving math and science.

For those deciding on their high school, curriculum, keep in mind that many college admissions people have a favorable impression of students who succeed in challenging math classes.

Those interested in learning more about Brown University will find a wealth of insight and information in the recent five-part series “Branding Brown” that appeared in The Brown Daily Herald.

Part 1 – Shedding Light on the Surge in Applications – focuses on student responses to the application question, “Why does Brown appeal to you?”

Part 2 – Honesty is Tour Guides’ Policy – focuses on Brown’s image, and how it promotes that image to prospective applicants.

Part 3 – On TV and the Web, Sifting Through Images of Brown – The University’s visibility has skyrocketed.

Part 4 – Is Brown’s Popularity a Passing Trend or here to stay? John F. Kennedy, Jr. ’83 was one of the first in what some say has become a trend of celebrity students attending Brown.

Part 5 – The ‘University-College’ on the Hill

Read Branding Brown (the five-part series) at The Brown Daily Herald.