US News And World Report College RankingsTop Three US News College Rankings As usual, there are few major moves up or down among colleges this year, but the rankings remain a hot topic of debate among educators. While few openly embrace the idea of numerically ranking colleges (US News College Rankings), some call the rankings a helpful consumer tool. Williams heads the list of liberal arts colleges while Dartmouth wins a new category ranking commitment to undergraduate teaching. News is the most closely watched ranking of undergraduate programs, but it has a growing number of imitators — with very different ideas about what makes a top college.
The latest edition of the contentious but closely followed “America’s Best Colleges” appears online and in print Thursday. Perennial contenders Harvard and Princeton share the top spot in the latest edition of the influential U.S. Clemson’s president acknowledged he ranked his own school higher than any other university when he responded to the magazine’s peer review questionnaire — a survey that accounts for 25 percent of a school’s score. That debate was reignited earlier this year when a former Clemson University administrator described the school’s coordinated efforts to move up the list.
Liberal arts colleges - defined as schools that emphasize undergraduate education and award at least half of their degrees in traditional liberal arts fields - get their own rankings in U.S. News & World Report's annual "Best Colleges" list. Smaller in student population but no less rigorous than the nation's large universities, students flock to these schools in search of smaller class sizes and more personal attention from top faculty. Here are the top 10 schools on U.S. News' list for 2010.
