Five criteria were taken into account:

• The cost: Financial pressure is a huge stress-inducer. Tuition plus room and board, weighted at 35 percent. With 2009-2010 data from the National Center on Education Statistics.

• Competitiveness: How academically rigorous is the school? Weighted at 35 percent, with 2010 data from US News & World Report.

• Acceptance rate: More competitive schools generally produce a more competitive student body. Weighted at 10 percent, with 2010 data from US News & World Report.

• Engineering: Is the school known for its particularly rigorous graduate engineering program? Weighted at 10 percent, with 2010 data from US News & World Report.

• Crime on campus: Adapted from The Daily Beast’s analysis of college crime, weighted at 10 percent and ranked relative to this particular group of colleges. With data from the US Department of Education.

Top five:

#1, Stanford University

Total cost: $50,139
Acceptance rate: 9.5%
Competitive academics: 4
Engineering rank: 2
Crime rank: 5

#2, Columbia University

Total cost: $51,544
Acceptance rate: 10%
Competitive academics: 8
Engineering rank: 18
Crime rank:12

#3, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Total cost: $49,142
Acceptance rate: 11.9%
Competitive academics: 4
Engineering rank: 1
Crime rank: 3

#4, University of Pennsylvania

Total cost: $49,986
Acceptance rate: 16.9%
Competitive academics: 4
Engineering rank: 23
Crime rank: 6

#5, Harvard University

Total cost: $48,868
Acceptance rate: 7.9%
Competitive academics: 1
Engineering rank: 15
Crime rank: 2

Are your grades as good as they can be? If you are counting on senior grades to enhance your profile, you should wait, especially if you are thinking early decision.

Are you down with testing? Yes, you can still take the October SAT and even the November potentially, but those scores are unknown. With November you do not even get to see your score before you release it. Duke’s attitude is typical of many selective colleges:

We strongly recommend that Early Decision candidates take either of these sets of standardized tests no later than October of their senior year. We cannot guarantee receipt of November testing for Early Decision candidates, although past experience suggests that November scores typically arrive in time. You do not need to rush-report your scores to us.

Can you get your application done in time? Actually that is what this series is about, helping you stay on track.

Do you have two teachers from grade 11 who know you well and are willing to write you a letter of recommendation? If not, you may want to wait until your senior year teachers know you about. Collegeboard has a good article to share with your your students on getting powerful letters of recommendation. Other great sources:

• Getting great recs from NACAC Step’s to college
• Getting to know your counselor from NACAC Step’s to college
• Princton Review on letters of recommendation.

ed

Early Decision is like a marriage: It is binding. You have made a promise to go if admitted.

Early Action is like dating: You have not declared yourself exclusive. You will have until May 1 to make your final decision. Collegeboard offers this hand chart.

• Can I apply to more than 1 ED school?

No. Well you could apply ED 1, and if you did not get in, apply ED 2.

• Can I apply to more than one EA school?

Yes. Unless they are Restrictive Early Action like Stanford or Yale.

• Can I apply early action and early decision?

Yes–except if it is REA. Remember you will need to withdraw your applications if you are admitted to your early decision school.

• Does apply early help my chances of getting in?

Perhaps. Williams admitted 37 percent when they applied early, but only 17 percent overall. Virginia Tech on the other hand is actually harder to get into applying early (54%) than regular (65%)

Early Action (From 2009)

Early decision (From 2009)

Want more current information? Check out a school’s common data set.

Social Mobility (recruiting and graduating low-income students), Research(producing cutting-edge scholarship and PhDs), and Service (encouraging students to give something back to their country). For an explanation of each category, click here.

For items 101-258, click here »

I have written extensively about the subject and gathered some of the best links on the web to help you–just click here.

Clearing is a service that operates between mid-July and September. You can take part in Clearing if you have already applied through UCAS and you are in one of the following categories.

• You have not received any offers.
• You have declined all your offers or not responded by the due date.
• Your offers have not been confirmed because you have not met the conditions (eg you have not achieved the required grades).
• You have declined a changed course, a changed date of entry and/or changed point of entry offer.
• You applied for one course which has been declined/unsuccessful and you have paid the full £19 fee.
• We receive your application after 30 June 2010. If we receive your application after this date, we will not send it to any universities and colleges.

If you only made a single choice on your original application, you can pay a further £10 and apply to other universities and colleges through Clearing.

You can still complete an application until 20 September 2010. If you apply after 30 June you will automatically be entered into Clearing so you should not fill in any choices on your application.

Course vacancies in Clearing are published on this site from mid-August until late-September.

As we traveled around the country researching our book, we, in fact, found some colleges that we thought were doing their job well:

The University of Mississippi. In 1962 the Supreme Court ordered Ole Miss to admit James Meredith, a black Air Force veteran. In the riots that greeted his admission, two died and dozens were injured. President John F. Kennedy had to send in federal troops.

Today Ole Miss is a university where reconciliation and civility are at the heart of the educational mission. Much of the transformation has been the work of Robert Khayat, who retired from the chancellorship in 2009. In his 14 years there, he raised academic standards, tripled African-American enrollment, and banned Confederate flags from athletic events. Under his leadership the university reached into its past for different pieces of the state’s history. Think Eudora Welty, William Faulkner, and Tennessee Williams. Ole Miss has a Center for the Study of Southern Culture that focuses on the art, literature, music, and food of the region, black and white. Indeed, of all the flagship colleges we have visited, we have found Ole Miss the most appealing. The campus has the feel of a liberal-arts college. Its Sally McDonnell Barksdale Honors College offers as fine an education as one might find at Carleton or Kenyon Colleges.

Raritan Valley Community College. A two-year college in New Jersey where all students commute and 40 percent study part time, Raritan provides a better introduction to college work than many four-year institutions. It has no megalectures. Its classes don’t exceed 40 students, and many are seminar size. Team teaching is encouraged, with both professors present throughout the term. Like most two-year colleges, Raritan’s classes are taught mainly by adjuncts. Many have been with Raritan for a while, are good in their fields, and can work closely with students because classes are small. The signal fact about Raritan and colleges like it is that you can get a start with the liberal arts at a tenth of the cost of many private tuitions, and a third of what flagship colleges charge. More than that, you can learn with professors who know your name and have an interest in your future.

University of Notre Dame. Perhaps because of its religious base, the university has successfully avoided the faddish academic trends and compulsive consumerism that has overwhelmed many other colleges. The campus looks relatively spartan. Teaching appears to have genuine import; Notre Dame has a 13-to-one student-faculty ratio, and only 10 percent of the classes are taught by graduate assistants. The president, the Rev. John Jenkins, has himself taught undergraduates—and he personally counsels them if they are suffering a spiritual crisis. Interestingly, for a university famous for football, sports don’t seem to overwhelm. On Notre Dame’s Web site, it is academics and student life that are trumpeted. It’s as if the administrators are saying, “Listen, we have our priorities.”

The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art. While many Ivies describe themselves as meritocracies, Cooper Union, a no-tuition college for engineering, fine arts, and architecture, actually is one. Art and architecture applicants are considered not only by their standardized-test scores, but through a “home test” of six or 10 open-ended questions. When one sits around a table with Cooper seniors and they speak of their futures, their tone is different from students we’ve met elsewhere. Without the miseries of debt, they contemplate limitless possibilities. Cooper can do that because it dedicates its endowment to a tuition-free education; other well-endowed universities might do well to follow suit.

Berea College. Berea, a liberal-arts college rated by U.S. News & World Report as one of “the best comprehensive” colleges in the South, also does not charge tuition. Instead, students are asked to contribute 10 hours a week of labor. Most of them come from the top 20 percent of their high schools and from families where the annual income is under $50,000 a year. For those fortunate enough to win admission, a first-rate education is proffered. The student-faculty ratio is 10-to-one with no graduate teaching assistants substituting for professors.

Arizona State University. At a distance, Arizona State seems like just another oversized state university: a giant credential factory with a football team. But look closer and one quickly sees that it may well be the most experimental institution in the country, a university where the old rules are up for grabs and anyone with an interesting idea can get a hearing. Many academic departments have been dissolved and re-formed within new interdisciplinary institutes, breaking the stranglehold of the disciplines that is so deadly at most colleges. Like Ole Miss, Arizona State has a first rate Honor’s College. Good, bad, smart, stupid, it’s possible to get new things started at this university. Even some old-time professors, tenured long before the reformer Michael Crow assumed the presidency, told us that they found it exciting to be working at an institution with so much buzz.

University of Maryland-Baltimore County. The Meyerhoff Scholars Program has greatly increased the number of African-Americans in the biological sciences and engineering. In addition, although the university is a research institution focused on science and engineering, undergraduate instruction in the liberal arts is not an afterthought. President Freeman A. Hrabowski sets a tone at the top that says teaching undergraduates is important, and the faculty knows he means it. Of all the research universities we’ve visited, it is the place that has most capably connected research with undergraduate education.

University of Colorado at Boulder. Despite one of the longest-running football scandals in college sports and the debacle of Ward Churchill (an ethnic-studies professor who compared the victims of the World Trade Center bombing to a Nazi war criminal, and who was later charged with research misconduct), the University of Colorado is capable of doing some things right. For example, in the undergraduate course, “Physics for Everyday Life,” founded by the Nobel Prize winner Carl Wieman, the lessons are broken down into modules. A feedback system employing computers and clickers means that the lecturer never moves faster than the students. Trained and supervised graduate teaching assistants keep track of the students, and the lead professor gets weekly reports on their progress. Above all, the course is taught in a way that is interesting to students.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It’s good to be a contingent at MIT. One part-time writing professor we know teaches two and a half courses a year and coordinates internships. For that, she earns half the compensation of a senior professor, plus benefits for five contract years. Depending on the discipline, part-timers who teach a half-time load are eligible for health insurance, making MIT the contingents’ Valhalla. So far as we’ve heard, decency, fair pay, and health insurance have yet to bankrupt it—and they probably wouldn’t other institutions, either.

Western Oregon University. A former teachers’ college, Western Oregon does its job without any frills or pretense and with utter seriousness and dedication. Most of its students are either rural or working class; a majority are the first in their families to attend college. Costs are kept at a minimum. The university even offers a “tuition promise” to entering freshmen: Their fees will remain constant throughout their four years. Although the campus is attractive and modern, it has few of the bells and whistles that are routine at other institutions. While salaries are modest, faculty members are enthusiastic. There are no star professors, little research, and the administrative pool is bare bones. All energy is focused on one thing: educating undergraduates.

Evergreen State College. Evergreen is very much a product of the 1960s, when the State of Washington created a new type of public college—one rooted in the ideas of the progressive-education movement. There are no grades or set curriculum. At the end of each quarter, professors present students with long written evaluations of their work; the students, in turn, do the same for their teachers. Courses are cross-disciplinary and team taught, and they are invented or redesigned annually. Despite the university’s reputation as a countercultural bastion, 82 percent of its graduates found full-time employment within a year, and 93 percent of those who applied got into graduate schools. For students who want to spend four years in an atmosphere of pure learning, this is the place.

This original list appeared in the Chronicle of higher education. They followed it up on their website and invite readers to submit their own suggestions.

Linfield College, in the wine country of Western Oregon, is a small liberal arts school that manages to educate its bright students without frills. It’s campus attractive, but simple. Teaching matters there. Our pal Amy Tan is an alumn.

Portland County Community College–a largish institution with the traditional vocational courses that characterize many community colleges also has marvelous liberal arts classes. We sat in on poet Caroline LeGuin freshman English class; the students and the teacher were as impressive as any we’d seen. This school is fine starting point for students who want to go on later to Portland State University. PCCC is low cost and high quality.

The Honors College at the City University of New York. Claudia’s been a guest speaker in classes offered at the Hunter College Honor’s program and was impressed with both the students and the teachers–very bright, very up for the adventure. Prof. Mike Levitas media class is as good as anything found at pricier downtown NYU and the course costs a fraction of NYU’s debt-inducing fees.

Speaking of the City University system, their new journalism school, down the block from the New York Times, offers a J-School degree at a public university price. It’s in New York, the sticker price is is a low public university fee for in-state students. One of my NYT editor’s daughter will be attending there soon. Great teachers from the real world. This is a fine J-School at wholesale cost; it’s a great deal for New York residents who pay in-state tuition.

We like it that Emory is the only major university in the South lacking a football team. Their liberal arts college, which we have not visited, gets enthusiastic reports from students .

There’s Bard College–which has a NYC campus and suburban one, run by the much admired Leon Botstein. Here’s a liberal college with an eye on learning and personal development. While there’s a social action consciousness, the boring political correctness that plagues some of the similar schools is absent here. Students are free to come to their own conclusions about public issues. Our friends Anne Nelson and George Black have a child there who is thriving

We’re intrigued by Hampshire College, where free-speech and controversy abound–and yet (sic) the faculty isn’t tenured. Somehow, everyone manages with long-term contracts. The dark-ages have not descended.

Several of our readers have written warmly of the great books program at St. John’s/Annapolis.

This impressive feet includes:

• 2,085,500 downloads
• over 2,286,704 visitors downloaded files
• currently averaging* 491,000 downloads a week
• 89.3% of visitors from outside the United Kingdom
• 1 in 16.5 downloaders go on to visit the OU website (to 30 June 2010)
• 314 albums containing 2,727 tracks (1,231 audio, 1,496 video)
  250 of the albums contain audio visual material taken from 146 courses currently in presentation with the Open University
  64 of the albums contain non-course specific material
  96% of the tracks have transcripts (in PDF format)

and the top 10 downloads?

• Beginners’ Spanish introduction
• Beginners’ French Introduction
• Beginners Chinese
• Beginners’ German Introduction
• Introduction to drawing
• Start writing fiction
• Aristotle’s theory
• Our Invisible Sun
• A holiday in France
• What are economic bubbles?