Unigo.com’s Top Tens: The Brainiest Students

Posted on May 10, 2010
Filed Under Advice, Media, News, Unigo.com Top Ten | By bmckenna

Reed College’s QuadThe top ten brainiest colleges, according to Unigo.com, range in size from small to super small.  Number one on the list is Reed College, Portland’s renowned liberal arts bastion.  The remaining nine schools are sprinkled throughout the United States, from Indiana to Massachusetts.  All but one has fewer than 3,000 students (University of Chicago, number three on our list, is the largest by far).  Part two will follow tomorrow!

Onto the list:

#1: Reed College

Just last week, we noted that Reed was not in the top ten for biggest drug schools, despite potential legal troubles on the horizon.  In our survey of 15,000 college students, the college was on top for its academic atmosphere instead and that is probably where Reed’s administration would rather be.  As noted in our synopsis of the school, “There are no two ways about it: Reed is heaven for the academically obsessed. There are few other colleges in the country, Ivy League included, where the bar for academic excellence is set so high, and where students are as committed to meeting those standards.”

#2: Wabash College

Wabash College, located in Indiana, only has 900 students – and is all male (one of only four left in the United States).  Some comments about Wabash include, “Students are actively engaged with each other and with their professors, which provides a learning environment in which the student is constantly learning and questioning” or “between pledgeship, sports/intramurals, immersion trips, and the amazing atmosphere of learning all over campus, one learns just as much outside the classroom as within.”

#3: University of Chicago

I can offer a personal attestation that the University of Chicago is academically obsessed.  I once was sitting at a campus bar, surrounded by Chicago students debating minute details about environmental feminism.  I was just a history major in college (at a perhaps less rigorous college), so all of this was over my head – it was intense.  Students seem to concur, “Studying does take up a good portion of your time, sometimes all of it and then some, but there are a lot of opportunities to get out and take a break from all that.”

#4: Whitman College

Whitman, located in Washington (it’s academic nirvana in the Pacific Northwest apparently), is another small school, and might be less known than its Portland rival (see number one), but that doesn’t mean it’s academics are more lax (maybe more laid back though), “As for academics, Whitman is a very good school with tough classes (and some not-so-tough classes), but there isn’t a really competitive atmosphere–it’s more laid back and less high strung.”

#5: Swarthmore College

Swarthmore, small Quaker liberal arts school on the Main Line, rounds out our top five.  Long known as a liberal, virtually socialist kind of place, the college has remained academically obsessed since its founding in 1864.  And the school chooses substance over style, as this reviewer notes, “High emphasis on learning, understanding and hard work, low emphasis on superficial things like money and dress and showing you know how to party. Small community that is very invested in itself, usually in a good way, although sometimes people complain too much and forget their blessings.”

Tomorrow: the final five…

 

  • Share/Save/Bookmark

Comments

3 Responses to “Unigo.com’s Top Tens: The Brainiest Students”

  1. Christa Jones on May 13th, 2010 10:15 am

    It is refreshing and it lifts my soul to see that there are still colleges that concentrate on acadamics rather than sports. I am proud to be the grandmother of one of the students that just completed his freshman year at Reed.

  2. Nicole on May 14th, 2010 10:57 am

    What about JHU? Where the only fights between students are caused by academic disputes. Where t-shirts claim “Johns Hopkins, Where Your Best Has Not Been Good Enough Since 1876.”

  3. Sheila Case on July 30th, 2010 4:34 am

    I love to see Reed at the top of that list. At one time Maru a Pula School (Botswana\’s best) had three students in Reed, all of them extolling the virtues of their college.

Leave a Reply




Security Code: