Harvard Tops U.S News 2011 College

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Williams College, in Williamstown, Massachusetts, was named the top liberal arts college. Harvard, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Princeton, in Princeton, New Jersey, have held the top two spots since the 2001 rankings. Yale University, in New Haven, Connecticut, was ranked third and Columbia University, in New York, rose to fourth place, according to the magazine, which announced the lists today.

U.S. News’s ratings, begun in 1983, are based on criteria such as student test scores, selectivity and peer evaluations. This year, the methodology was tweaked to add evaluations from high school counselors and to give more weight to graduation and retention rates, said Robert Morse, director of data research. As a result, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in Cambridge, and the California Institute of Technology, in Pasadena, fell to seventh place after being tied for fourth last year, Morse said. The change in how graduation rates are counted hurt the rankings of Cal Tech
and MIT, where more students struggle to graduate, Morse said. by bloomberg

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