U.S. News: Best Colleges - Liberal Arts Rankings (2009)

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Amherst College

Williams College

Swarthmore College

Wellesley College

Middlebury College

Bowdoin College

Pomona College

Carleton College

Davidson College

Haverford College

Claremont McKenna College

Vassar College

Wesleyan University

Grinnell College

Harvey Mudd College

United States Military Academy

Washington and Lee University

Colgate University

Smith College

Hamilton College

Oberlin College

United States Naval Academy

Bryn Mawr College

Colby College

Bates College

Macalester College

Barnard College

Mount Holyoke College

Scripps College

Bucknell University

Colorado College

Kenyon College

Trinity College

University of Richmond

College of the Holy Cross

Lafayette College

Bard College

Furman University

Occidental College

Whitman College

Sewanee–University of the South

Connecticut College

Franklin and Marshall College

Union College

Centre College

Dickinson College

Skidmore College

St. Olaf College

DePauw University

Gettysburg College

Pitzer College

Rhodes College

Denison University

Reed College

Wabash College

Lawrence University

Wheaton College

St. Lawrence University

Wheaton College

Agnes Scott College

Beloit College

Illinois Wesleyan University

Kalamazoo College

Thomas Aquinas College

Willamette University

Wofford College

Earlham College

Berea College

Hobart and William Smith Colleges

Southwestern University

Austin College

Drew University

Lewis and Clark College

Muhlenberg College

St. John’s University

Virginia Military Institute

College of Wooster

Hendrix College

Spelman College

Transylvania University

Birmingham-Southern College

University of Puget Sound

Ursinus College

College of St. Benedict

Millsaps College

St. Mary’s College of Maryland

Sweet Briar College

Augustana College

Cornell College

Gustavus Adolphus College

Hope College

Knox College

Luther College

Allegheny College

Lake Forest College

New College of Florida

Washington College

Coe College

Hampden-Sydney College

Hanover College

Hillsdale College

Hollins University

Juniata College

Albion College

Bennington College

Hampshire College

Presbyterian College

St. Mary’s College

St. Michael’s College

Washington and Jefferson College

Goucher College

Lyon College

Ohio Wesleyan University

Westmont College

Calvin College

Stonehill College

Susquehanna University

Berry College

Linfield College

Randolph College

Siena College

Central College

St. John’s College

Westminster College

Source: U.S. News

Methodology:

The U.S. News rankings system rests on two pillars. It relies on quantitative measures that education experts have proposed as reliable indicators of academic quality, and it’s based on our nonpartisan view of what matters in education.

 

How does the methodology work? First, schools are categorized by mission, derived from the basic Carnegie classification, and, in some cases, by region.

 

The national universities offer a full range of undergraduate majors, plus master’s and Ph.D. programs, and emphasize faculty research. The liberal arts colleges focus almost exclusively on undergraduate education. They award at least 50 percent of their degrees in the arts and sciences. The universities-master’s offer a broad scope of undergraduate degrees and some master’s degree programs but few, if any, doctoral programs. The baccalaureate colleges focus on undergraduate education but grant fewer than 50 percent of their degrees in liberal arts disciplines. The baccalaureate colleges include institutions where at least 10 percent of the undergraduate degrees awarded are bachelor’s degrees. The universities-master’s and baccalaureate colleges categories are further subdivided by geography—North, South, Midwest, and West.

 

Next, we gather data from each college for up to 15 indicators of academic excellence. Each factor is assigned a weight that reflects our judgment about how much a measure matters. Finally, the colleges in each category are ranked against their peers, based on their composite weighted score.

 

Schools are unranked and listed separately for America’s Best Colleges 2009 if they have indicated that they don’t use the SAT or ACT in admission decisions for first-time, first-year, degree-seeking applicants (or, in a few cases, if they didn’t receive enough responses on the peer assessment survey to allow us to use their peer score as part of the overall ranking). Other schools were unranked for the following reasons: a total enrollment of fewer than 200 students; a vast proportion of nontraditional students; no first-year students (these are sometimes called upper-division schools). We did not rank private, for-profit universities; nor did we rank a few specialized schools in arts, business, or engineering.

 

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