On Monday, US News & World Report published the annual ranking of the best colleges in the country, from large research universities to small liberal arts schools.
US News calculates its ranking based on six categories that are weighted differently: student outcomes (40%), teaching resources (20%), expert opinion (20%), financial resources (10%), excel · students (7%) and alumni (3%).
US News made a slight change in its methodology this year to account for changes in standardized testing requirements. Previously, if less than 75% of students entering a particular school presented standardized test scores, US News would discount the importance of standardized test scores in the school’s overall ranking by 15%. This year, because so many schools adopted optional testing policies in response to the coronavirus pandemic, U.S. News lowered the threshold to 50%.
This year’s top liberal arts colleges have small classrooms, including first-rate Williams College, where 84% of classes have less than 20 students and only 1% of classes have 50 or more students. At Pomona College and Wellesley College, which ranked fourth and fifth on the US News list respectively, only 0.2% of classes have 50 or more students.
Entering one of these schools is not easy. Admitted students have a strong high school history and high standardized test scores. However, many of these prestigious liberal arts schools have higher acceptance rates than top-tier universities.
For example, while the top-ranked national university, Princeton, accepts only 6% of students, Williams accepts more than 15% of applicants. Wellesley College has an acceptance rate of 20%.
The best liberal arts colleges also tend to perform better than leading national universities in comparative measures of social mobility, designed to represent a school’s likelihood of helping students improve their circumstances by taking into account counts graduation rates and post-graduate results. of students who qualify for federal Skin grants.
These are the top 5 liberal arts colleges of 2022, according to US News, and what it takes to get into it.
1. Williams College
Williams College
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Location: Williamstown, Massachusetts
Average SAT score: 1410-1560
Percentage of first-year students among the top 10% of the high school class: 95%
Acceptance rate: 15%
2. Amherst College
Location: Amherst, Massachusetts
Average SAT score: 1410-1550
Percentage of first-year students among the top 10% of the high school class: 85%
Acceptance rate: 12%
3. Swarthmore College
Swarthmore College
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Location: Swarthmore, Pennsylvania
Average SAT score: 1395-1540
Percentage of first-year students among the top 10% of the high school class: 93%
Acceptance rate: 9%
4. Pomona School
Pomona College
Ted Soqui | Corbis | Getty Images
Location: Claremont, California
Average SAT score: 1390-1540
Percentage of first-year students among the top 10% of the high school class: 90%
Acceptance rate: 9%
5. Wellesley College
Wellesley College
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Location: Wellesley, Massachusetts
Average SAT score: 1350-1520
Percentage of first-year students among the top 10% of the high school class: 85%
Acceptance rate: 20%
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