The Best 10 Colleges in the US
Choosing the right college for any high school student is both stressful and difficult. I remember when I was on my college search, my parents and I would schedule time with each school, drive miles and miles to get to it, and only to find out that it was not located in the best part of town, or it was located in the middle of a big city, both of which I didn’t want. There are many factors that go into choosing the best school and not all of them have to do with how “prestigious it is” or its “name”. Most of the things I was looking for were the location, atmosphere, and the overall college life and experience that it brought. So with that said, below are some great colleges, arguably the top 10 colleges in the US, but make sure you do your research so that when you are accepted you can make the best choice for “you”.
1. Harvard University
Where is it located? Cambridge, MA
What is the 2009-2010 Tuition and Fees for Harvard? $37,012
Harvard University is a private university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts in the Greater Boston area and a member of the Ivy League. Established in 1636 by the colonial Massachusetts legislature, Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and currently comprises ten separate academic units. It was also the first corporation chartered in the United States.
President: Catherine Drew Gilpin Faust
Faculty: about 2,107
Staff: 2,497 non-medical, 10,674 medical
Students: 21,115
2. Princeton University
Where is it located? Princeton, NJ
What is the 2009-2010 Tuition and Fees for Princeton? $35,340
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution. Princeton provides undergraduate and graduate instruction in the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, and engineering. Princeton does not offer professional schooling generally, but it does offer professional master’s degrees and doctoral programs.
President: Shirley M. Tilghman
Faculty: 1,172
Staff: 1,103
Students: 7,567
3. Yale University
Where is it located? New Haven, CT
What is the 2009-2010 Tuition and Fees for Yale? $36,500
Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut, and a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States. Yale has produced many notable alumni, including five U.S. presidents, seventeen U.S. Supreme Court Justices, and several foreign heads of state.
President: Richard C. Levin
Faculty: 3,619
Students: 11,593
4. California Institute of Technology
Where is it located? Pasadena, CA
What is the 2009-2010 Tuition and Fees for CIT? $34,584
The California Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Pasadena, California, United States. The Institute maintains a strong emphasis on the natural sciences and engineering, and operates and manages NASA’s neighboring Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Caltech is a small school, with only about 2100 students but it is ranked number 2 in the world according to Global University Ranking and in the top ten universities worldwide by metrics such as Science Watch, Nobel Prizes, and general university rankings.
President: Jean-Lou Chameau
Faculty: 294 professorial faculty, 1054 other faculty
Students: 2130
5. Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Where is it located? Cambridge, MA
What is the 2009-2010 Tuition and Fees for MIT? $37,782
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological research. MIT is one of two private land-grant universities and is also a sea-grant and space-grant university.
President: Susan Hockfield
Provost: L. Rafael Reif
Faculty: 1,009
Students: 10,384
6. Stanford University
Where is it located? Stanford, CA
What is the 2009-2010 Tuition and Fees for Stanford? $37,881
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university located in Stanford, California, United States, in Silicon Valley. The university was founded in 1891 by Leland Stanford. Its alumni have founded the companies Hewlett-Packard, Electronic Arts, Sun Microsystems, Nvidia, Yahoo!, Cisco Systems, Silicon Graphics, and Google.
President: John L. Hennessy
Provost: John Etchemendy
Faculty: 1,878
Students: 15,319
7. University of Pennsylvania
Where is it located? Philadelphia, PA
What is the 2009-2010 Tuition and Fees for University of Pennsylvania? $38,970
The University of Pennsylvania is a private research university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, and is one of several institutions that claims to have been the first university in America. Penn is a member of the Ivy League and is one of the Colonial Colleges.
President: Dr. Amy Gutmann
Staff: 4,049 (Faculty), 2,278 (Staff)
Students: 20,643
8. Columbia University
Where is it located? New York, NY
What is the 2009-2010 Tuition and Fees for Columbia? $41,316
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private university in the United States and a member of the Ivy League. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, and is the 5th oldest in the United States making it one of the country’s nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution. Columbia’s main campus lies in the Morningside Heights neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1754 as King’s College by royal charter of George II of Great Britain, and is one of only two United States universities to have been founded under such authority. After the American Revolutionary War, Columbia was briefly chartered as a state entity from 1784–1787. The university now operates under a 1787 charter that places the institution under a private board of trustees.
President: Lee C. Bollinger
Faculty: 3,566
Students: 26,399
9. University of Chicago
Where is it located? Chicago, IL
What is the 2009-2010 Tuition and Fees for University of Chicago? $39,381
The University of Chicago is a private, coeducational research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890; William Rainey Harper became its first president in 1891 and the first classes were held in 1892.
President: Robert Zimmer
Faculty: 2,168
Staff: 14,772
Undergraduates: 5,000
Postgraduates: 10,000
10. Duke University
Where is it located? Durham, NC
What is the 2009-2010 Tuition and Fees for Duke? $38,975
Duke University is a private research university located in Durham, North Carolina, United States. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day town of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco industrialist James Buchanan Duke established The Duke Endowment, prompting the institution to change its name in honor of his deceased father, Washington Duke. The University is organized into two undergraduate and ten graduate schools. In its 2010 edition, U.S. News & World Report ranked the university’s undergraduate program 10th among national universities, while ranking the medical, law, and business schools among the top 12 in the United States. Duke University ranked 14th in the 2009 THES – QS World University Rankings.
President: Richard H. Brodhead
Faculty: 2,877
Students: 13,457