Top Universities #6-10

 

#6 Oregon offers all the amenities of the marquis university in a midsized state - good programs in pretty much all areas, the confidence of being The School in the state, and all without the excess attitude of certain elite universities. They have the great sports and enthusiasm around both those teams and their school that is endearing (to me at least) with the "you've been to Eugene? How did you like it?" aw shucks sincerity you won't find at certain schools that perceive themselves as the obvious #1 academic (or athletic) universities. That brings me to a campus that is unassuming without being nondescript. Does that mean it is descript without being assuming? I'm not really sure, so let me try again. What it means is that none of the buildings are especially ostentatious, but they are attractive and work well together. Walking around the place you think that it seems like they meant to do it this way. If you see enough campuses, you'll find a few where it looks like the random building generator created 100 unrelated buildings and put them all on a 1 mile x 1/2 mile grid. Oregon is not one of those places. Some have a surplus of landmark-type buildings that look like alternate residences for the Federal Reserve or the Supreme Court. Oregon is not that either. It's just a nice comfortable campus that I could happily have called home for 4-5 years. Not to foreshadow the top two or anything, but Oregon is a big school in a little town next to a mountain ridge in a place where it rains a lot and snows a little. 

#7 Indiana is in a cool little college town: Bloomington, IN. The University of Georgia made the top 20 thanks to Athens - well Indiana made it with a little upgraded clone of Athens in the Midwest - Bloomington. It is not amazing or anything, it's just a really good backdrop for the school (or perhaps a co-star, if you prefer to think in those terms).  The school happens to have really good departments that in areas that are important to me - things like Business, Communications/Journalism and Foreign Languages, and I'm already liking it. Then you get to the campus - lots of trees, beautiful limestone buildings that fit together, administrators with a pleasant attitude.




#8 Duke was my #2 choice when I was in high school. There is still a lot that I like about the place: of course it has great academics, big-time love of school among the students, beautiful architecture, good administrators, good weather, etc. It's just got a great package on one neat little campus in Durham. Still a winner and I think I would have found a half decade or less in Durham to be a fine experience. 

#9 Washington is a school that takes its natural advantages and runs with them: it is   a top tier state university well located on the water in a beautiful city. It also had the foresight to not only be located in the city where Bill Gates grew up, but also to let said Mr Gates use the computers during the downtime from 2-5am back in 1970. Young Mr Gates got older, made some money, and (along with his friend Paul Allen) gave a portion thereof to the U of Washington. The result is that an otherwise very good school with beautiful, historic buildings in a great city got an endowment to take UDub to the proverbial "next level". We call that next level the Universities Rated Top Ten. If endowments alone created rankings, we'd be clogged with private schools here (oh wait, we are between Stanford and Duke!). No, U Dub had that It, that vibe, that special thing that makes an otherwise dreary, rainy, cold visit memorable. I can't put my finger on it, but the Huskies have it. 

 

#10 Stanford represents exactly what the rest of the rankings do not. At first glance, Stanford is Goliath - the brand name, elite university getting by on the hardscrabble funding of Silicon Valley venture capital firms, admitting plucky little underdogs like the daughter of a sitting President of the United States. To up the ante on pretentiousness, they changed their mascot (long before anyone else thought of PC sensitive mascots) from the Indians to the color Cardinal.  Then you look at it, this is not really as much the aristocracy at work as a meritocracy: Stanford kids are generally really smart (including the erstwhile First Daughter). Those Silicon Valley VCs made it on their own (helped by irrational exuberance) and they knew when to sell, unlike a few of us. Those are nice alumni, but today's Stanford gets it done: Their Business School beats Harvard while their football team runs up the score on Southern Cal's home field. So what about the school? Well, the Farm is beautiful of course. Palo Alto is a cool town (maybe not "town", let's just call it a suburb) with more character than anything between San Francisco and Santa Barbara (Monterey has an argument with that statement, but that's it).  All that might not make the top twenty, but Stanford also has down-to-earth administrators and students. No, Stanford delivers.  

Top Universities #11- 15

1.     

#11 #11UCLA - the top of the University of California system (for me, at least) is the pride of Westwood, the university in the "cool part" of LA. When I was in high school, no urban university would have made the cut for me. Still, UCLA is in a great area, the buildings are attractive, it is a great school with a nice spirit. 

2.     #12 UC San Diego - put paradise on a cliff, surrounded by the smell of eucalyptus trees. Honestly, much like UC Santa Barbara and the U of San Diego, the simple fact that a place this beautiful with these students is even accredited makes it eligible for the the top 20. Of course, UC San Diego is near the top of the University of California system, so we had to bump it up a little because the classroom experience is pretty nice too. 

3.     #13 UC Santa Barbara - to be blunt, you could put a trailer park on UC Santa Barbara's campus and it would be top five in natural beauty. Throw in a nice college scene and restaurants just off campus, it's worth a visit. As a favor to the rest of us, they did not put a trailer park there. I have no idea if the professors are any good, but the extremely logical demand to come here should make this a competitive place to get into for a long time to come.

  

4.     #14 U of North Carolina - great school, top students, great college town. That is all. 

5.     #15 UC Davis - great little college town, nice university. I absolutely love going there. First class operation, no attitude, and the best winemakers in the Western Hemisphere. OK, that last bit won't get parents too enthused about Davis, but it's a nice little Midwestwern town that happens to be an hour and a half from San Francisco. You can bike to Lake Berryessa or drive to the Coast. 

Top Universities #16- 20

#16 Penn State
The craziest thing I will admit to in this blog is that I grew up in Pennsylvania, wanted to go to a school in a rural setting, and I never even visited Penn State. I knew I wanted to go out of state so it was never a serious consideration. Still, I liked the place in theory and I expected that I would like it in person. I did like it - there are good students and a good vibe. There are attractive buildings, but no one building that stands out as being exceptional. Still, we're not judging a whole school on the absence of one building. It's a nice place with good people in it's administration as well as cool students - one could go there and really enjoy the college experience. They definitely have their own form of Penn State nationalism which would probably be kind of fun if I were one of them.

#17 University of San Diego
First off, what a beautiful campus! Seriously, I knew there were three schools named San Diego: San Diego State, UC San Diego, and isn't there another one just named the University of San Diego? Or is that just UC San Diego's nickname? Well, first of all, yes there is a small, private Catholic school named the University of San Diego on top of a hill a little north of the downtown off the 5. Second, that school is stunningly beautiful. Third, their administration is a pleasure to deal with and their students are pretty bright. I like the place and I want to get back.

#18 Clemson University
As my top 20 unfolds, you will find that I have an affinity for big schools in small towns in the South. Clemson fits the bill: attractive campus, small town, nice people.  There's a nice school spirit there.

#19 - University of Pittsburgh
I'm originally from Pittsburgh and I took a Spanish class at Pitt, but I was never all that big a fan of the school. You could say that familiarity led me to take it for granted, but when I was able to compare it to so many other schools it came out much better. I am also more amenable to living in a city than I was as a high school kid. Enough about my relationship to the school, it has beautiful buildings:  all over campus you see attractive, substantial, and even a few architecturally unique ones with some history (like Forbes Field). Then you have the Cathedral of Learning: Just a fantastic signature building - it is unique in appearance both outside and inside and host to historical classrooms typical of all different nationalities.

#20 - University of Georgia
First of all, the University of Georgia is in a classic college town, Athens. While it is known for it's music scene, I did not really get to see any of that. However, I found the town to be pretty nice and the campus to be attractive, the administrators were good, and the students seemed pretty cool. As someone with friends from Georgia Tech and someone who has only ever cheered against the University of Georgia when watching them play football on TV, I was not exactly inclined to like Georgia but I did.  It's got a lot to recommend it.