Top Ranked National and
Selected Regional
Liberal Arts Colleges

Introduction

Many, probably most, of America's liberal arts colleges have an established internet presence. Finding a particular college is usually fairly easy, but it has been difficult to find an edited list consisting of only the best American liberal arts colleges. These are the colleges that other colleges and educators are watching and the ones that the most talented college-bound national and international students are going to attend.

Below is a table of links to the home pages of the very best American liberal arts colleges. All the URLs in that table are correct as of October 3, 1998. Each school appears once in each of the three columns of the table.

Important Information for Applicants

In the past I've chosen not to provide any ranking information about these schools. This year, rather than provide some overall ranking, I've chosen to offer selected information from the "1999 Guide to America's Best Colleges" ("1999 Guide") published in the August 31, 1998 issue of U.S. News and World Report ("USNWR" or "U.S. News"). The basic information is theirs; only my slight reworking of some of the numbers and the presentation are mine.

Any ranking system has limited usefulness when it is applied to the needs of one particular student at one particular school. This rehash of USNWR information may be useful to you if you agree with me that the quality of the school and the quality of the students attending are two very important factors in deciding where to apply. These strength ratings are among the most difficult for any applicant to locate and they are one of the best reasons to buy the annual Guides from USNWR. Other information in that report can also be useful as long as you don't get carried away trying to over-analyze it.

Important Information for Admittees

In deciding where to attend, however, other criteria should start to play an even more significant role. What ought to count most to you, if you're thinking of attending any of these schools, is; How well does it fit my needs? I contend that no fill-in-the-blank score card, especially one where the contestants fill out the forms with the weighting criteria in mind, is going to resolve the inevitable questions. What you need to do is compare a list of what you want from a school against a list of what each school offers. To that end, I believe that visits with alumni, a visit to the school and talks with anyone with an informed opinion about the school are more helpful than anything else you might try.
For aspiring attendees the choice of a college always comes down to a matter of personal judgment. As examples, the list of Personal Favorites below reflects my own personal judgment. These are not all in the top category of the 1999 Guide. Nevertheless, everyone of them offered a very satisfying educational experience to someone I know personally. That carries a lot of weight with me.

Ranking Criteria

Academically, there are no bad choices among the colleges in the table offered here. Therefore, the first column in the table offers a simple alphabetical listing. This is the quick access route if you know the name of the school. Columns two and three are ordered by academic reputation of the school and by academic strength of the students, respectively.

When applying to colleges you need to carefully evaluate both the academic and non-academic settings on each campus. A good environmental fit is as important as a good academic fit for anyone planning to stay in one place for four years.

"Student Life" Criteria

There is no point in applying, for example, to a college that does not offer you a student lifestyle and educational opportunities that are important to you. The following list is only a sample of the factors that you should consider in evaluating the personality of a particular college in light of your personal interests, needs and expectations.
• Majors offered,
• Curriculum flexibility (e.g., interdisciplinary majors),
• Writing workload (including writing labs),
• Foreign language workload (including language labs),
• Laboratory workload/opportunities in sciences,
• Reading requirements in disciplines of interest,
• SAT scores of your peer group (too high or too low?),
• On campus living options for all four years,
• Access to off campus entertainment and recreation sites,
• Required religious observances or instruction,
• Campus support for fraternities and sororities,
• Campus setting (urban vs rural, northern vs southern climate, etc.),
• Access to financial aid and loans,
• Record of graduates in graduate school admissions and job hunting,
• On/off campus job opportunities,
• Internship opportunities throughout the year,
• Educational style (lectures, tutorials, discussion groups, etc.),
• Academic reputation of the faculty and faculty ratio,
• ROTC opportunities on campus,
• Sports (intramural, coed, and varsity) on campus,
• etc., etc., etc.

Each school has a personality and every applicant needs to get comfortable with the personality of the school before accepting any offer of admission. Create your own extended list and start checking items that fit your criteria at each school (be thorough). The internet can help. This in one place to start.

About My Personal Favorites

My Personal Favorites are highlighted in one of the sections below. My favorable opinion about those particular institutions is no doubt colored by my respect and admiration for known alumni, faculty, or staff. Personal knowledge is one way, maybe the only good way, to distinguish among schools of this high caliber. That is why on-campus visits and meetings with Alumni Representatives are so often recommended or required.

These schools constitute a national treasure well worth appreciating and supporting. Attendance at such schools places one in the long standing and well respected tradition of liberal arts education in America. While these schools are not for everyone they do offer special and unique learning opportunities for those fortunate enough to gain admission.

About the Tabulated Listings

The table of home page addresses consists of three columns. The first column is strictly alphabetical. This implies nothing about the relative merits of a particular institution for a particular student. This is the quick route when you want to investigate a few schools of known interest. I've included codes in this column for the single sex colleges, and for religious affiliation (though that is seldom significant in the educational scheme of things on most campuses these days) just to make searching a little bit easier and more productive.

I have occasionally been asked to provide some sort of ranking information as well. Until this year I've resisted that request and deferred to the annual guides. While the annual guides from USNWR are widely available, I cannot endorse their ranking weights. My feeling is that they put too much emphasis on irrelevant factors and little or no weight on some very relevant academic and student life issues.

For those who must have some help ranking institutions, I've added two new columns this year. They cover the two most important issues covered by the survey; Academic Reputation and Academic Strength. Student Life issues can only be adequately assessed by visiting the school in person and talking to everyone who knows anything about what it is like to be a student there.

The second column lists colleges in order of academic reputation as judged by other academics. The third column lists colleges in order of academic strength as estimated by the standardized test scores of their entering freshmen. This information can be gleaned from the 1999 Guide by USNWR, but it is not easy to do. Since these represent the important quantitative gauges in my opinion, I've reorganized that data here for others to reconsider from a slightly different perspective.

Other Resources

Most of these also appear in the main listing table below. In addition to making my point that a wide variety of schools offer wonderful opportunities to an even wider variety of students, this list of my favorites provides you with some idea of the minimum amount of information you must acquire about every school to which you apply. As a serious applicant, you should plan to write an essay, at least as good as any of these, about every school you consider attending. This is a big job, but unless you are willing to take the time to understand the school's personal quirks your chances of selecting one that does anything better than a merely adequate job for you are substantially diminished.

For every school listed in this section I know one or more graduates of each school, one or more faculty members of the school, or have personal knowledge about the school's academic programs. These selections are not based on rankings by any other agency or entity. For certain students each one is the best possible school. Not one of them is the best choice for everyone I know. These choices are entirely personal. Every applicant will eventually have to make the same personal choice when their acceptance deadline approaches. I hope that the resources available at or through this site will help prepare the serious applicant for that day when that personal decision must finally be made.