When it comes to describing different colleges, there are a lot of less-than-helpful distinctions and categories out there that don't tell the whole story. For me, the best example of this is the Ivy League distinction. What is it, exactly, that makes an education from one of these eight schools (Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Penn, Princeton, and Yale) so much better or greater or more special than an education anywhere else? I don't want to make the case that these schools are not exceptional places to get an education; I'm a proud graduate of one of them, and I know they're extraordinary educational communities.
My point is that no one label or ranking gives you the whole story about what your life as a student would be like at any college. Instead, it's important to look closely at the schools you research to get a strong sense of what's really out there. For example, the undergraduate experience at Harvard is very different from the experience at Brown--the former school has a required core curriculum while the other does not, for example. Cornell is very large and has exceptional programs in engineering and architecture; Dartmouth has an emerging program in cognitive and linguistic sciences that's gaining a strong international reputation. These schools are all outstanding, but there's much more to the story than that.
One thing that distinguishes the Ivies from one another is their size. You might be surprised to know just how much they differ in this point. Sometimes, a university's size can be a much bigger factor in your college decision: it affects how "homey" or intimate the campus feels; it affects the amount of personal attention you'll receive from professors and support staff. It affects just how at home you'll feel after you leave the small school where you finished high school.
| School | # Undergraduates | # Total Students |
| Brown University | 5,874 | 8,020 |
| Columbia University | 6,923 | 24,820 |
| Cornell University | 13,510 | 19,800 |
| Dartmouth College | 4,147 | 5,848 |
| Harvard University | 6,714 | 19,140 |
| Princeton University | 4,918 | 7,334 |
| University of Pennsylvania | 10,153 | 19,816 |
| Yale University | 5,316 | 11,398 |
If you've got your sights set on an Ivy, admissions officers I've talked to at Cornell, Columbia, Dartmouth, Harvard, and Brown have all insisted that it's important to make a very specific case for why you want to attend their school, not just any prestigious school. So it's vital that you dig deeper at the places you already know to be exceptional so you can find out which exceptional schools would really fit you best. And you might dig even deeper to find that there are other exceptional places out there--maybe a little newer, maybe a little less in the news--that would fit you well too. No group of schools has a monopoly on excellence.
I challenge you to look beyond this one label to more nuanced information on colleges. There are other great lists out there that might be worth perusing too; they're helpful ways to reform the question of what makes an exceptional undergraduate education in the United States.
Colleges That Change Lives: A great book with an accompanying website: http://www.ctcl.org
The "Hidden Ivies": An earlier book that listed some of the "other" best universities and colleges in the US. Note how many are currently attended by STES grads: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hidden_IviesContinue Reading...
As you know, there are more than 60 colleges and universities in the Boston area, and few make as good a use of--and as great a contribution to--the city as BU does. BU occupies a narrow strip of land south of the Charles River and just west of downtown Boston, and its heart is Commonwealth Avenue--Comm Ave--where the Green Line T rattles by and shuttles people in and out of the city. BU is all about movement: there's the T, there's the river, there's Comm Ave, there's the risk of fly balls soaring over the walls at Fenway Park during a Red Sox game (the Citgo sign in the photo is a hallmark of Fenway Park). Even BU's most interesting student organizations seem to be about getting out and about in innovative ways: the school has a Quidditch Team, a People Watching Society, and a Medieval Reenactor Society. The BU life is a deeply urban lifestyle: students live and work in historic brownstone-style buildings; what might constitute a residential neighborhood elsewhere in Boston is a series of professors' offices, sorority and fraternity houses, and department headquarters in the streets of BU.
One thing that was a little weird was that the BU info session did have a lot of references to the "other Boston schools" and "the other schools you're looking at". This seemed unnecessary, because BU has a lot to distinguish itself without such comparisons. BU has always admitted both women and men of all races (a little dig at that Ivy-covered school across the river, perhaps?), and the university has long been a leader in the arts, humanities, and the sciences. The most pointed dig was about undergraduate education in the Boston area was the following: "Like other Boston schools, we have big-name professors. But here, you'll actually see them in class." Two of the biggest names here are historian Howard Zinn and Holocaust survivor and author Elie Wiesel, and both teach undergraduates every year. BU is part of a consortium of local universities that allows students to take courses on other campuses; the admissions officer didn't mention the schools involved, but I know from experience that the schools central to this partnership are BU, Tufts, Harvard, and MIT. The admissions officer noted that "Other schools' students tend to take more advantage of this option than BU students do, simply because BU has so many resources on its own." I'm not sure about the truth in that remark, but BU really does have a lot going for it on its own campus: strong engineering programs, a conservatory-style fine arts program, exceptional communication programs, strong humanities programs, a great ed school, and close partnerships with the Longwood Medical Area just south of the campus, one of Boston's two medical centers. BU even has its own beach on the Charles River (see picture). In a lot of ways, BU felt like a big state university: it has tons of resources because of its size and status.
BU is very proud of one of its most famous alums: Dr Martin Luther King, Jr. The photo at left honors him on campus: it's a sculpture of fifty doves (representing the fifty US states) the form a single larger dove, and it represents the triumph of peace in the American civil rights movement. I think the centrality of this monument on campus speaks to what I like best about BU. This is a place that is all about the drive to get out and do things. With Boston on its doorstep, BU students run an NPR-afilliate radio station. They teach in local schools. They intern in law firms and non-profits. They volunteer in underserved communities. There are some schools out there that are more concerned with saving the world than saving their own neighborhood, and BU is emphatically not that school. BU students see themselves as citizens of Boston, not guests removed from its problems and challenges, and they do what they can to give back.
The cornerstone of the Northeastern experience is its signature "experiential learning" program, a required component of the undergraduate degree. The experiential learning component can be fulfilled through any one of four areas: cooperative education, student research, service learning, and global experience (AKA study abroad). Most students choose the cooperative education--or "co-op"--option, which involves spending entire semesters and summers working in industry. The co-op opportunities are remarkable: Northeastern has a long-standing partnership with NASA in addition to tons of connections to publishing, the financial industry, marketing firms, and non-profits here and abroad. Since experiential learning is a core requirement here, there are unlimited possibilities for how you can fulfill this requirement. I was really impressed by the anecdote my tour guide told me about a fellow student working on her second six-month co-op experience. She is a current junior working a six-month stint with a major marketing firm in Boston, and because of the on-the-job experience and classroom-based education she's received at Northeastern, she is a managerial position. As a college junior, two of the people who report directly to her are '08 graduates of Boston University. This program is really remarkable, and I highly encourage you to visit the experiential learning website here: 
Even though Dartmouth is small, it's a leader in engineering, medicine, and business. The Tuck School of Business and the Thayer School of Engineering are world-renowned, and the medical school is top-notch as well. One of the most exciting programs right now at Dartmouth is its emerging program in Linguistics and Cognitive Science that is becoming world-renowned. This program has close partnerships with Harvard and MIT and allows its students to do impressive independent research in these areas. At Dartmouth, programs like this are the rule rather than the exception: this is a place all about a highly personalized undergraduate education with the "intellectual character" of a university experience.
I think the most interesting insight our rep offered me was his profile of a successful Dartmouth applicant. Every Dartmouth applicant is assessed based on four points--two tangible points balanced by two intangible points. Each student's grades and test scores (tangible) are balanced by an assessment of their intellectual quality (intangible); each applicant's extracurricular achievements (tangible) are balanced by an assessment of their character (intangible). Dartmouth is one of few institutions that requires a peer recommendation. The admissions staff here is really invested in finding students who will be as bright and engaging in person as they are on paper. They want people who not only have the academic chops to perform well here; they also want people who will contribute to life on campus and who won't have peaked academically or socially in high school.
I once advised a student who was academically very strong and who was interested in a career in the arts. She initially looked at a lot of arts-specific schools but was surprised that some of the places she researched were less than academically rigorous. "I don't want to go somewhere where I won't read books," she said. "I'm a good student-- I want to go somewhere that cares about that."
When you step onto the RISD campus, the first thing you notice is the art. Public art is everywhere: you walk around and over and through artwork. When you enter a building, there are galleries to the left and right, and a constantly rotating collection of student and faculty artwork graces the walls of each campus building. When I walked up the long creaky stairway to the admissions office, I was struck by the sheer number of pieces of art I encountered along the way; I saw bronze sculptures, human figures, impressionistic oil paintings, and mixed-media canvases. The back wall of the office's reception area was especially striking: from floor to ceiling, there were about 60 insects constructed from gold wire. These, the receptionist explained, were created by students from their work in RISD's nature lab 
Speaking of resources, this place has some remarkable things on campus. There's an electronic jacquard loom on campus. RISD has the largest collection of wood block letters in US, and it has a printmaking shop that allows printmaking students to add to their digital printmaking expertise the experience of working closely with papermaking and old-school printing techniques. They have their own foundry. They have a 30-acre farm campus on Narragansett Bay. They have over 80,000 works of art in the on-campus art museum. They have the Fleet Library, one of the oldest art college libraries in the world. The faculty is about half professors and half working artists, giving students a foot in theory and a foot in practice. There are lots of opportunities for on-campus collaboration and participation in others' works; 
When I go to Boston, I often fly in through Providence's airport, a mere twenty minutes from my aunt and uncle's place south of Boston. It's smaller, less busy, and you can get there on Southwest, for you fans of Hobby Airport.
I had a brief but informative talk with the representative for Texas, who emphasized a lot of the same points I've mentioned about admission to highly selective schools: great grades are key, and the essays should be all about what, in particular, you're all about. As you might expect, she placed a special emphasis on the self-awareness aspect of the application. If your plan is to come here and choose your own adventure, the admissions office wants to make sure that such an adventure is really the right fit for you. They're obviously looking for bright, high-achieving students, but they're also looking for people who are willing to participate in their continuing adventure in collaborative education.
ograms that speak to this sense that no one here is limited to just one thing. True, the core of MIT is the celebration and exploration of math and science, but the university is committed to enriching those pursuits with strong programs in literature, history, foreign languages, and public policy. One of the strongest and most popular programs at MIT is the program in Science, Technology, and Society, an interdisciplinary area of study that combines cutting-edge lab research in technology with coursework that contextualizes that work. MIT students don't just study how their work will impact their discipline; they study why their work is important and what it means in the greater context of the history of science and the culture where their work will be used. There's an exciting attention to intention here--MIT students are known for following their why's as far as they possibly can.
MIT's undergraduate admissions office has long been a leader in how to do things right: their admission website has remarkable tips for every applicant, no matter where you apply, and I highly recommend that you check it out: 
I have seen few schools that so embody what a fine liberal arts education is supposed to be--that is, an opportunity to delve deeply into all subjects, from the experimental sciences to the fine arts. In fact, Middlebury students are highly successful applicants to medical schools and graduate programs in the sciences because of the rigor of their training. Middlebury recently built a new science facility so that the entire math, biology, chemistry, and physics faculties could share a collaborative space. This building project was not without controversy; the building is eight stories high, dwarfing most of the charming historic buildings on campus and in the adjacent town, and it is the largest public building in the state of Vermont. The building really represents the College's priorities: its goal is to foster collaborative, interdisciplinary education on the cutting edge of current research and technology. 
When I was at UT, one of my lines in the Plan II info session was that there are more professors in the UT English department than there are at some small colleges. Now I know that one of those small colleges is charming little Bennington: located in the beautiful Green Mountains of southern Vermont. 
The hallmark of a Bennington education is the Bennington Plan, the four-year process by which students construct their course of study on campus. My tour guide Emily described this process as an ongoing conversation between her and her adviser, who she was matched with at the beginning of her freshman year. This adviser helped Emily refine her initial interest in painting and creative writing into a program of study that focuses on sculpture and cultures of communication. As Emily described this process--a four year "conversation" that demanded tons of writing, self-examination, and hard work--she emphasized that the Bennington experience is not for the faint of heart. "We work really, really hard here," she said. "We're always being told to ask why, why, why." An education at Bennington may be one of the most thoughtful and intentional around: every student has to take on the responsibility to construct--and then justify--their own education choices and come out with a coherent final product that pulls it all together. It sounds like hard work--but it also sounds like a ton of fun. Strikingly, Sarah McAbee noted that though a majority of Bennington students continue on to graduate work (e.g. law school, medical school, etc.), most don't take that plunge right away. Instead, most Bennington alums will wait a year or two to apply, giving themselves the chance to make a thoughtful decision about what they want to study and exactly why they want to choose that path.
What impressed me most about Bennington was the level of personal attention you can get at a place like this. When I walked into the admissions office, my tour guide Emily and two other students were stuffing big envelopes with green and white baseball tee shirts--Bennington in script on the front, the number 13 on the back--to send to all students in the incoming class. As we walked around campus, Emily greeted every person we met by first name, and each smiled back. When I asked her to identify these people, it turned out they were the provost of the university, the university president, an English professor, a Biology professor, the head librarian, and a member of the admissions staff. I was bowled over by the arts facilities: a 120,000-square-foot facility including two black box theatres, studio spaces for all students, a sculpture workshop, drawing workshops, dance studios, and digital media labs fully equipped with computers and sound equipment. If you're interested in getting a serious undergraduate degree while working with some of the best fine arts facilities available, Bennington could be the place for you. 
Bennington is pretty isolated: it's a three-and-a-half hour drive from Boston, and it's a long way to the nearest airport. It's a peaceful, quiet place; tellingly, my tour guide apologized for how "crazy" it was on campus the day I visited as we walked by a lone groundskeeper on a riding mower. Again, this is a place you choose because of its location, not in spite of it, but Bennington does a lot to connect students to the world beyond its bucolic environs. Bennington has a close relationship with Williams College, just a short drive across the border in Massachusetts, and students from both institutions can take classes at the other. Each spring, Bennington students participate in the Field Work Term, a seven-week period during the winter when students go off-site to work as interns, study abroad, or volunteer. Many of the internships are abroad and more still are available in New York City; indeed, my tour guide has spent two summers working as an intern in Manhattan museums. You can read about the Field Work term 
In any case, it is beautiful, hilly, and offers a magnificent view of the Boston skyline a few miles away. Like at Boston College, these few miles make Tufts a world away from Boston. The campus is a self-contained world enriched by student performances, speaker series, and student sporting events. Davis Square is a fun and funky neighborhood with restaurants that rival those in Cambridge's Inman and Central Squares. Again, like BC, Tufts is a little quieter than its neighbors closer to the river, and its learning community is just as rich and vibrant.
Also, hilariously, the Tufts mascot is Jumbo the elephant, of Barnum and Bailey circus fame. P. T. Barnum was one of the first major benefactors of the university, so there is a large statue of Jumbo himself in one of the university's central quads. Pretty amusing.
Eventually, I arrived at BC, and I'm really glad that I made the trip. As you may know, Boston College is one of the top Catholic universities in the United States, founded in 1863 with one of the largest Jesuit communities in the world. The Jesuit order was founded by Saint Ignatius of Loyola and are committed to scholarship, social justice, and cultural studies, and BC is one of the finest examples of that influence. This campus has it all: TONS of brand-new freshmen dorms (not there last time I visited), beautiful gothic architecture, state-of-the-art athletic facilities, new science buildings, and beautiful steep hills (they don't call this place "the Heights" for nothing). What stood out most on my visit was the way the school's motto seems to permeate its every effort. "Ever to excel"--a phrase from early in Homer's Iliad--means that BC students channel their every effort toward excellence. This place is about working hard in class, working hard as student volunteers, working hard as agents of change for social justice. I've seen a lot of schools where the students were all about being smart or all about doing the right thing. BC is notable because its students constantly strive to do both at the same time.
A great way to get the students' view of the Harvard experience is to take the Hahvahd tour, an irreverent tour led by current and former students that covers the more fun lore of the university. You'll learn about the Harry Elkins Widener, a 1907 alum who died on the Titanic and whose mother donated books and funds to found the university's main library. The bequest supposedly included the caveat that all future Harvard students would have to pass a swimming test before graduation (because that would have helped on the Titanic?). This story turns out not to be true, but it's certainly fun and certainly funny. The Hahvahd tour is also great because it covers some of the more mundane features of the Harvard undergraduate life: details about the food in the dining hall that looks like the Great Hall from the Harry Potter books, tidbits about the personalities of the undergraduate houses where students live for the three years following their first year in the freshmen dorms, and traditions like the Head of the Charles rowing race and the Harvard-Yale game. These anecdotes are a helpful reminder that, in some ways, Harvard College is just another college--it's a place where 18- to 22-year-olds work hard and play hard in pursuit of their bachelor's degrees.
One of the most impressive things about Harvard is that it's not stuck in, say, 1636. This is a place remarkably receptive to change. While I was a student, one of my classmates started a campaign for all Harvard dining halls to only use cage-free eggs. By the end of that school year, cage-free eggs became a university policy. Students called for a more green campus; every bathroom I encountered on campus (okay, I looked around after I discovered the first one) has low-flow toilets. The Holyoke Center, pictured at left, is one of the tallest buildings on campus and the home to major administrative offices. It now has a series of wind turbines on top of it. To me, Harvard is great because it lets great students be themselves here. It lets the students shape the character of the academic life.
