The best public and private colleges and universities,from the student's point of view.
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| America's Best Colleges |
The best college in America isn't in Cambridge or Princeton, West Point or Annapolis. It's nestled in the Berkshire Mountains. Williams College, a 217-year-old private liberal arts school, tops our third annual ranking of America's Best Colleges. Our list of more than 600 undergraduate institutions is based on the quality of the education they provide, the experiences of the students and how much they achieve.Williams rose to the top spot on our rankings, which are compiled with research from the Center for College Affordability & Productivity, after placing fourth last year and fifth in 2008. It's a small school (just over 2,000 undergrads) with a 7-to-1 student-to-faculty ratio, affording students the chance to really get to know their teachers and have a unique college experience.
"One of the things that we really embrace is that we are tiny and very aware of where we are in the world. This fosters an incredible sense of community," says Amanda Esteves-Kraus, a double-major in art history and biology in the class of 2012. "It takes a very specific type of student to go to Williams, and there is a quirkiness here that you can't find anywhere else. This all makes the fact that we are in the middle of nowhere totally irrelevant because you don't actually want to be anywhere else."
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| 1 | Williams College | MA | 49,530 | 2,072 |
| 2 | Princeton University | NJ | 49,830 | 7,330 |
| 3 | Amherst College | MA | 50,230 | 1,697 |
| 4 | United States Military Academy | NY | 0 | 4,553 |
| 5 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | MA | 50,100 | 10,299 |
| 6 | Stanford University | CA | 51,760 | 17,833 |
| 7 | Swarthmore College | PA | 50,381 | 1,490 |
| 8 | Harvard University | MA | 50,250 | 26,496 |
| 9 | Claremont McKenna College | CA | 50,990 | 1,212 |
| 10 | Yale University | CT | 51,400 | 10,192 |
| 11 | United States Air Force Academy | CO | 0 | 4,537 |
| 12 | Wellesley College | MA | 50,026 | 2,498 |
| 13 | Columbia University | NY | 51,406 | 23,196 |
| 14 | Haverford College | PA | 51,637 | 1,169 |
| 15 | Wesleyan University | CT | 51,935 | 3,149 |
| 16 | Whitman College | WA | 46,212 | 1,458 |
| 17 | Pomona College | CA | 49,745 | 1,532 |
| 18 | Northwestern University | IL | 52,120 | 19,291 |
| 19 | California Institute of Technology | CA | 48,990 | 2,126 |
| 20 | University of Chicago | IL | 53,310 | 14,788 |
| 21 | Carleton College | MN | 50,000 | 1,983 |
| 22 | Harvey Mudd College | CA | 50,073 | 738 |
| 23 | Vassar College | NY | 51,370 | 2,389 |
| 24 | Centre College | KY | 39,200 | 1,197 |
| 25 | Rice University | TX | 43,586 | 5,357 |
