America's Best Colleges from the students point of view

The best public and private colleges and universities,from the student's point of view.

America's Best Colleges

The best college in America isn't in Cambridge or Princeton, West Point or Annapolis. It's nestled in the Berkshire Mountains. Williams College, a 217-year-old private liberal arts school, tops our third annual ranking of America's Best Colleges. Our list of more than 600 undergraduate institutions is based on the quality of the education they provide, the experiences of the students and how much they achieve.Williams rose to the top spot on our rankings, which are compiled with research from the Center for College Affordability & Productivity, after placing fourth last year and fifth in 2008. It's a small school (just over 2,000 undergrads) with a 7-to-1 student-to-faculty ratio, affording students the chance to really get to know their teachers and have a unique college experience.

"One of the things that we really embrace is that we are tiny and very aware of where we are in the world. This fosters an incredible sense of community," says Amanda Esteves-Kraus, a double-major in art history and biology in the class of 2012. "It takes a very specific type of student to go to Williams, and there is a quirkiness here that you can't find anywhere else. This all makes the fact that we are in the middle of nowhere totally irrelevant because you don't actually want to be anywhere else."

Rank	Name	State	Cost	Total Student Population
1	Williams College	MA	49,530	2,072
2	Princeton University	NJ	49,830	7,330
3	Amherst College	MA	50,230	1,697
4	United States Military Academy	NY	0	4,553
5	Massachusetts Institute of Technology	MA	50,100	10,299
6	Stanford University	CA	51,760	17,833
7	Swarthmore College	PA	50,381	1,490
8	Harvard University	MA	50,250	26,496
9	Claremont McKenna College	CA	50,990	1,212
10	Yale University	CT	51,400	10,192
11	United States Air Force Academy	CO	0	4,537
12	Wellesley College	MA	50,026	2,498
13	Columbia University	NY	51,406	23,196
14	Haverford College	PA	51,637	1,169
15	Wesleyan University	CT	51,935	3,149
16	Whitman College	WA	46,212	1,458
17	Pomona College	CA	49,745	1,532
18	Northwestern University	IL	52,120	19,291
19	California Institute of Technology	CA	48,990	2,126
20	University of Chicago	IL	53,310	14,788
21	Carleton College	MN	50,000	1,983
22	Harvey Mudd College	CA	50,073	738
23	Vassar College	NY	51,370	2,389
24	Centre College	KY	39,200	1,197
25	Rice University	TX	43,586	5,357