Recently, Newsweek ran an article called 25 New Ivies. It basically is saying that the rule of supply and demand also applies to American colleges and universities, and right now, there are so many qualified college bound high school graduates that the top schools cannot accept them all, so many higher education institutions are getting what essentially amounts to excess talent.
Whereas, a generation ago, the 8 Ivy League schools, Stanford, MIT, Caltech, and University of Chicago were the "top" schools and got most of the brightest high school students, these schools cannot accept all of the qualified applicants, so many are opting to attend other schools.
Some of you know that I attended the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, one of the 8 Ivy League schools. True to the Ivy rumor mill, UPenn is the party school of the Ivys, and as such, I didn't study much. I ended up graduating from the University of Rochester in Rochester, NY. I'm on the Rochester alumni email list, and just happened to notice an alumni email that mentioned the Newsweek article on Rochester.
University of RochesterA year or two after I attended Rochester, I remember that they were implementing some kind of new program to accept fewer students for more personal attention and so that they could become a little more "elite" and rise in the rankings (basically trim the fat). It' looks like that plan has worked since the 2006 London Times ranked the UR as 21st among American universities. I'm not sure that that report carries much credence in the United States, but the one that does is the 2007 US News and World Report's list of America's Best Colleges where UR ranks 34th. Looks like my alma mater is gaining some street cred!
Rochester, N.Y.
Over the past decade, this small, private university has dramatically changed its curriculum. "We threw out general education," says Jonathan Burdick, dean of admissions. Students now pick all their courses. As a research institution, Rochester is particularly strong in science and engineering, but liberal arts are also popular, along with music and nursing. About 70 percent of humanities students study overseas, and about 80 percent go to grad school. Most students live on campus, which is some distance from downtown Rochester. Overlap schools: Cornell, Brown, Tufts, NYU and Northwestern.