Elite College Admissions Intel

Unlike its primary historical rival, Williams College, Amherst has no core curriculum. It instead encourages a “flexibility and independence” to coursework that is guided by faculty advisers. Not only does Amherst offer 41 majors, but the college was one of the first to pioneer interdisciplinary fields of study, allowing students to submit proposals for independent interdisciplinary pursuits or to join unorthodox discipline-bending departments such as Law, Jurisprudence & Social Thought or American Studies. As a result of the lack of distribution requirements, a little less than half of students opt to double major. As a member of the Five College Consortium, Amherst allows students to take classes at neighboring Mount Holyoke College, Smith College, Hampshire College, and UMass Amherst.

The college was founded in 1889 in response to Columbia’s refusal to become coeducational. It was named after Frederick Augustus Porter Barnard, a former president of Columbia who advocated for coeducation. Throughout the 20th century, Barnard’s relationship with Columbia was dynamic, sometimes amicable and sometimes contentious. Some members of the community envisioned a future in which Barnard fully integrated with Columbia in a merger akin to Radcliffe College’s merger with Harvard, but such an agreement faced opposition from Barnard’s leaders. While the relationship remains complicated, the present arrangement allows for Barnard to maintain institutional autonomy while giving its students access to the ample resources and opportunities inherent to an Ivy League education.

The Boston College Core Curriculum is shared among all undergraduates to “acquire a common intellectual foundation” across the student body. Coursework is required in the following disciplines: “Arts,” “Cultural Diversity,” “History,” “Literature,” “Mathematics,” “Natural Science,” “Philosophy,” “Social Sciences,” “Theology,” and “Writing.” By taking a “Complex Problems and Enduring Questions” course, taught by two faculty from different departments to encourage an interdisciplinary exploration of the subject material, students can satisfy two core requirements at once.

Founded in 1764, Brown University was the first university in the United States to codify in its charter that religious affiliation would have no bearing on admissions, even though the fledgling university maintained ties to the Baptist Church. It was named after its first benefactors, the Brown family of Providence. Their economic ties to the Atlantic slave trade were detailed in 2003 by the “Slavery and Justice” report commissioned by then President Ruth Simmons, the first African American president of an Ivy League school. Brown has since been at the forefront of contending with its own history, setting the tone for the rest of the Ivy League.

The California Institute of Technology does not beat around the bush with what it demands from its students. The academics are stringent, the workload is high, and the admissions process is famously competitive. However, as their admissions website puts it, “the payoff? You’ll change the world.

With access to research funding in excess of $400 million, it is no surprise that Carnegie Mellon students and faculty have been responsible for many groundbreaking discoveries, including Kevlar (the substance that makes bulletproof vests bulletproof), the first Wi-Fi network, some of the first AI software, and the first autonomous car program. CMU affiliates have also founded companies with big names such as Duolingo, Adobe Systems, and Coursera. The Robotics Institute at CMU is considered the leading robotics research center in the world, while the Human-Computer Interaction Institute leads in computer science.

With some of the most competitive admissions in the Ivy League and a centuries-long reputation for academic excellence, Columbia University is indisputably one of the best institutions of higher education in the United States. Columbia’s factsheet is formidable: it is a founding member of the Association of American Universities, it administers the Pulitzer Prize, and it can lay claim to seven Founding Fathers as alumni.

Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell has been a trailblazer in American higher education for generations. Its admissions have been co-educational and nonsectarian since its inception, serving as a model for similar policies at Stanford University, which was referred to as the “Cornell of the West” during its founding in 1891. Throughout the twentieth century, Cornell was known as a research powerhouse in space exploration, car safety, and physics. Cornell faculty played pivotal roles in the Manhattan Project, early missions to Mars, and early advancements in computer science.

Faculty member John Rassias pioneered the Rassias method of foreign language teaching while at the College, leading to the creation of The Rassias Center for World Languages and Cultures. The original version of the BASIC programming language was created at Dartmouth in 1963 by Professors John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz. The Nelson A. Rockefeller Center, named for the famed Dartmouth alum and Vice President of the United States, is devoted to the study and advancement of public policy and social sciences, and offers undergraduates opportunities for internships, leadership development, and research. 

Duke University is known for many things: its gorgeous campus, designed in the Gothic style primarily by Julian Abele, its spirited student body who quite literally camp out for varsity sports games, its formidable roster of alumni such as Apple CEO Tim Cook and President Richard Nixon, and its Nobel prize-winning faculty who regularly rank as some of the most cited and well-funded in the world. Duke challenges prospective students with a highly competitive application process, but rewards those who are admitted with a Southern college lifestyle in sunny Durham, North Carolina with all of the trappings of an elite research university.

With current and former faculty such as U.S President Jimmy Carter, author Salman Rushdie, and former CDC Director William Foege (who, for the record, was credited with the global eradication of Smallpox), Emory’s academic program goes virtually unrivaled in its renown in the American Southeast. Undergraduates, who number around 8,100 on campus, choose between enrolling in the College of Arts and Sciences and the Neil Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing to complete their Bachelor’s. Over 80 majors and 60 minors are offered. Students enrolled in the College of Arts and Sciences complete general education requirements in the following categories: “Success at Emory;” “Exploration Courses;” “Expression & Communication;” “Belonging & Community;” and “Experience & Application.

Georgetown University offers up many contradictions upon initial inspection: it’s America’s first Catholic university, but also the nation’s first federally-chartered university. Its guiding principles are deeply informed by Jesuit teachings, but it also has a religiously and ideologically diverse student body. The university draws Catholic and non-Catholic students alike because of its world-renowned academics and history of producing political, economic, and cultural leaders.

Johns Hopkins University has forged a legacy of academic excellence in the fields of medicine, engineering, public health, and international relations. With over $3 billion in annual research and development expenditures, the university has had the highest levels of federal funding for any American university since 1979, as evaluated by the National Science Foundation. Roughly 5,300 undergraduates and 25,000 postgraduates are enrolled primarily at campuses in Baltimore, Maryland, but also at auxiliary campuses in Washington, DC, China, and Italy.

It is almost a cliche at this point to put Harvard on a pedestal, venerating it as the most prestigious university in the world and as an admissions Holy Grail. Harvard’s esteem derives from a legacy of excellence in higher education that has gone unparalleled for generations. Between the eight U.S. presidents, 188 billionaires, and 49 Nobel Laureates who can call themselves Harvard alumni, many would probably agree that they were mystified by this Harvard mythology prior to arriving on campus. The crowning jewel of the Ivy League, Harvard has a renown that is ubiquitous with American culture itself.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has a world-renowned reputation for innovation in the fields of science and technology, boasting an elite cache of alumni such as former chairman of the Federal Reserve Ben Bernanke and U.S. astronaut Buzz Aldrin, formidable faculty such as linguistics expert Noam Chomsky and machine learning pioneer Daniela Rus, and as fans of Good Will Hunting will note, one mathematically-gifted janitor who looks a whole lot like Matt Damon.

Beginning with the establishment of the School of German in 1915, Middlebury has offered world-renowned language-immersion courses each summer for over a century. These “Language Schools” enroll roughly 1,350 students annually. Another famous summer program, The Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, through Middlebury’s Bread Loaf School of English, was established in 1926. When one considers that past faculty and affiliates of the conference include Robert Frost, Toni Morrison, and George R. R. Martin, it should not come as a surprise that it is regarded as the most prestigious writing conference in the nation.

Undergraduate education at NYU is split between ten schools: the College of Arts and Science; the Tandon School of Engineering; the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development; the Stern School of Business; the School of Professional Studies; the Rory Meyers College of Nursing; the Silver School of Social Work; the Tisch School of the Arts; the Gallatin School of Individualized Study; and Global Liberal Studies (a program created in 2009 providing a liberal arts education to students who live at various NYU campuses across the globe while completing their bachelor’s).

Northwestern University brings every facet of an elite college experience to the table: an outstanding academic reputation, an active student social life bolstered by the allure of the Chicago cityscape, and a longstanding history of producing incredibly successful alumni in all major fields. While admission to the private R1 university in Evanston, Illinois is competitive, those who are admitted go on to find a diverse variety of research, entrepreneurial, artistic, and pre-professional opportunities at their disposal.

While some Ivy League colleges have a medical, law or business school, and other Ivies have all three, if you’ve ever wondered why Princeton does not have any, it’s because the focus is on the undergraduate education. And while Princeton does have an engineering school, the university’s commitment is to the liberal arts education. Perhaps this is why Princeton students so love their school and why Princeton University admissions is getting that admission rate to drop year after year.

Rice was established in 1912, and was named for industrialist William Marsh Rice, whose immense estate provided the university with its initial endowment. These funds were only secured following the discovery of a conspiracy to create a fake will that would squander Rice’s fortune. Scandals aside, the first years at Rice were marked by a rigorous curriculum that failed most of its students.

What do Google, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Snapchat all have in common? Aside from being multi-billion dollar businesses, they were all founded by Stanford students. Entrepreneurship is a core tenet of Stanford’s culture. After all, this culture was responsible for the creation of Silicon Valley, not the other way around. Students from around the world are drawn to the R1 research university not only for its stellar academic reputation and educational resources but for this unparalleled focus on start-ups, research, and innovation.

Not only is Swarthmore College one of the most highly-ranked liberal arts colleges in the nation, it is also one of the historical centers of the women’s suffrage movement. Furthermore, the renowned institution boasts an alumni base with some of the highest rates of Ph.D. completion and Nobel Prize reception per graduate (trailing just behind Harvard and Caltech). The private liberal arts college located in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania is home to a tiny student body of just 1,700 students, but once these select few graduate, they sure do make quite an impact. In addition to those five Nobel Laureates, Swarthmore alumni include thirteen MacArthur Fellows, and other big names such as feminist icon Alice Paul, U.S. Senator Chirs Van Hollen, fashion designer Joseph Altuzarra, and Governor of Hawaii Josh Green.

Established in 1852 as “Tufts College” by the Universalist Church of Boston, the Tufts of the nineteenth century grew with the philanthropy of benefactors such as Circus businessman P. T. Barnum, whose namesake lives on with the Barnum Museum of Natural History on campus. Barnum also donated the stuffed hide of the famed Jumbo the elephant to the university in 1884. Today, Jumbo lives on as the campus mascot and the affectionate term for Tuft’s athletic teams, who compete in NCAA Division III.

Berkeley was originally founded in 1868 as the “University of California” in Oakland. Within a year of its inception, the fledgling university became co-educational and moved to its current location in Berkeley, California. Other campuses in the UC system were originally offshoots of Berkeley, including the University Farm near Sacramento that would become UC Davis and the Los Angeles State Normal School that would turn into UCLA. By World War II, Berkeley faculty had discovered 16 chemical elements, more than any other university in the world. This reputation for scientific discovery led to Berkeley serving a major role in the war effort through the Manhattan Project. Professor J. Robert Oppenheimer, “the father of the atomic bomb,” was named the scientific head of the project.

UCLA was originally founded in 1881 as the southern branch of the California State Normal School (now San José State University). In 1919, the school transformed into the Southern Branch of the University of California after overcoming pushback from snobbish UC Berkeley affiliates who wanted to maintain their status as the only UC campus. By the 1950s, UCLA had blossomed into a fully-fledged university with a reputation for student activism (even drawing the scrutiny of anti-communist McCarthyists!). At the same time, the athletics program grew in prestige, securing national championships in football, track, tennis, and volleyball. As the 20th Century progressed, UCLA expanded its research apparatus and made significant advances in the fields of medicine, chemistry, and internet software.

The University of Chicago is widely considered to have the most rigorous liberal arts curriculum in the nation. Nestled into the Hyde Park Neighborhood of its namesake midwestern metropolis in Illinois, UChicago has forged an impeccable reputation for its commitment to academic excellence, its history of establishing entire schools of thought (ever heard of the Chicago school?), as well as its extensive itinerary of successful alumni, which includes several heads of state, world-renowned writers and thinkers, and a significant number of CEOs and billionaires.

As part of the creation of the Michigan Territory in 1817, Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania, was established as a centralized system of schools and libraries. It wasn’t until 1837, when Michigan entered the Union, that the University of Michigan was commissioned on land in Ann Arbor. Around the turn of the 20th Century, Michigan was one of the largest universities in the nation, rivaling Harvard and Columbia. In the late 20th century and as recently as 2008, some groups have advocated for the complete privatization of the university, but no change has thus far been enacted.

UNC’s undergraduate student body of approximately 20,000 students is split between eleven schools and programs. The “IDEAs in Action General Education Curriculum” shapes undergraduate coursework beyond the requirements of the 70 different majors offered at UNC. This core curriculum requires first-year classes in data literacy, English composition, and a Freshman seminar. As students progress through their bachelor’s, nine “Focus Capacities” classes and “Disciplinary Distribution” classes covering “humanities and fine arts,” “mathematics and natural sciences,” and “social and behavioral sciences” are required.

Notre Dame was established in 1842 when priest Edward Sorin was commissioned by the Catholic Church to construct a college on 524 acres of land in northern Indiana. In the late nineteenth century, under the presidency of Thomas Walsh, Notre Dame invited literary intellectuals to campus through a “belle-lettres” campaign. As the university was swept into the twentieth century, tensions grew around whether Notre Dame should become a research university, as was the tendency of elite institutions at the time. Eventually the administration made the shift, expanding the chemical engineering program, attracting more faculty, and increasing the graduate population on campus.

The University of Pennsylvania, one of the eight Ivy League colleges, is a private institution in spite of its name. Located in Philadelphia, PA, an historic, vibrant, cultural, and diverse city, Penn is the fifth oldest post-secondary institution in the United States. Approximately 10,600 undergraduates attend Penn.

Founded in 1880, USC is the oldest private research university in California. Judge Robert M. Widney solicited donations from prominent Angelinos to begin construction on the newly established institution. Initially affiliated with the Methodist Church, the university lost its religious affiliation in 1952. In 1984, the university hosted many events for the Summer Olympics in Los Angeles and provided residences for the athletes. Around this same time, Paul Mockapetris, a researcher with USC’s Information Sciences Institute, developed the modern Domain Name System that is now ubiquitous across the internet.

Few American universities can lay claim to the same degree of historical and architectural significance as the University of Virginia (UVA). Located in Charlottesville, the public research university has a storied legacy within American higher education not only for its academic renown, but for serving as a site of many major activist, civil, and educational movements. With roughly 17,600 undergraduates, 8,300 postgraduates, and a $13.6 billion dollar endowment, UVA has cemented its place as a fixture of elite education in the South and as one of the leading public universities in the nation.

Vanderbilt University sits in the heart of Nashville, Tennessee on a lush campus known for its beauty and architectural variety. The private research university consistently ranks at the top of lists for student quality of life and happiness, administrative efficiency, and academics. Its student body of 7,100 undergraduates and 6,700 postgraduates is composed of some of the strongest students in the nation, while alumni include former Vice President Al Gore, U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Penn Warren, and the “Father of Modern Anesthesia,” James Tayloe Gwathmey.

Williams is named after the wealthy Revolutionary War hero Ephraim Williams, who provided for the creation of a free school in Western Massachusetts in his will. The school was originally chartered in 1762, but a pesky institution nearby known as Harvard College pressured the governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony to revoke the charter so as to avoid competition. It would take another 30 years before Williams College would land on its feet again and receive a new charter. In 1821, Williams affiliates abandoned the fledgling college, which was struggling financially, to move east and establish Amherst College, but it would not be long before Williams began to prosper again. 

Founded in 1701, Yale College, with some of the most beautiful architecture in the world ranging from Gothic to Georgian to Colonial to Modern, has one gorgeous campus — and the Yale University admissions department maintains its standing as one of the most selective universities in the nation. There are approximately 5,300 undergraduates and another 6,000 graduate students at Yale.