<3 The U-Store
If we were an iTunes single right now, we'd be "Moves Like Jagger."
Like a J-Lo summer pop single, Princeton has made a comeback, tying Harvard for #1 on the US News and World Report 2011-12 Ranking of the best undergraduate colleges in the United States.
After a year of being slighted by the Crimson menace, Princeton has returned to its former place on the leaderboard chart. One trivial beef I have: we always seem to inexplicably “tie” with Harvard and yet are listed after it– and don’t tell me it’s in alphabetical order.
I call shenanigans.
Changes from last year among the Ivies were sparse:
- Dartmouth falls from #9 to #11
- University of Pennsylvania is still tied in a pan-America five-way with CalTech, Stanford, MIT, and University of Chicago.
- Columbia’s holding strong after a huge four-spot jump to #4 last year (mirroring their plummeting acceptance rates with the adoption of the Common App, or, as my theory goes, the result of Jay-Z’s “Empire State of Mind”. See also: Brown’s Emma Watson effect.)
- Cornell: Still in Ithaca.
Other than that, rankings haven’t moved much. Methodology changes every year, and people always debate the legitimacy of college rankings. Unfortunately, we can’t all be Sarah Lawrence.
