Students rank small liberal arts schools higher than Ivy League and UCs

Posted onJuly 30, 2020
byElise Rust

Williams and Bowdoin rank especially high on several student-generated rankings. Every year, the Princeton Review’s college rankings survey 140,000 students across 385 schools to generate 62 different lists of top 20 schools in eight categories. Below we include our picks from the results of five Academic surveys (1).

(1) 2019 Ranking: schools with the attached link (blue) overlap with the Fahey Associates curated college list.

Rank ↓	Best Classroom Experience ⤻	Students Study the Most ⤻	Professors Get High Marks ⤻	Most Accessible Professors ⤻	Best Science Lab Facilities ⤻
1	Reed College	California Institute of Technology	Sarah Lawrence College	United States Military Academy	Lehigh University
2	Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering	Williams College	Reed College	Williams College	United States Military Academy
3	United States Military Academy	Reed College	Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering	Wabash College	St. Olaf College
4	Sarah Lawrence College	Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering	Mt. Holyoke College	College of Wooster	California Institute of Technology
5	St. John’s College (MD)	College of Wooster	St. John’s College (MD)	Webb Institute	United States Naval Academy
6	Grinnell College	Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology	Grinnell College	Whitman College	Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology
7	University of Richmond	College of the Atlantic	Thomas Aquinas College	Colby College	University of Scranton
8	Williams College	Harvey Mudd College	Bennington College	Harvey Mudd College	William and Mary
9	St. Olaf College	Webb Institute	Vanderbilt University	Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology	Stanford University
10	Marlboro College	United States Military Academy	Wabash College	St. John’s College (MD)	Harvey Mudd College
11	Bucknell University	Brown University	Marlboro College	Thomas Aquinas College	Johns Hopkins University
12	Mt. Holyoke College	St. John’s College (NM)	Hillsdale College	Furman University	Bucknell University
13	Wabash College	Lehigh University	Hobart and William Smith College	Hillsdale College	Loyola Marymount University
14	College of Wooster	Gettysburg College	Dickinson College	Wake Forest University	United States Air Force Academy
15	Earlham College	Wellesley College	Bowdoin College	St. John’s College (NM)	Grinnell College
16	Bennington College	Grinnell College	Emory University	Carleton College	St. Lawrence University
17	Thomas Aquinas College	St. John’s College (MD)	Wheaton College (IL)	Grinnell College	Trinity University
18	Gettysburg College	The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art	Williams College	Randolph College	Georgia Institute of Technology
19	Bard College	Hillsdale College	University of Richmond	University of Richmond	Emory University
20	Hamilton College	Bowdoin College	Hamilton College	Wheaton College

Note: See the Princeton Review article for the complete set of 62 college rankings

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Students rank small liberal arts schools higher than Ivy League and UCs

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