Forbes recently published a list of best colleges for each state in U.S.A. The list includes some of the well known colleges such as Yale, Princeton, Duke, Northwestern, Georgetown, Brown, but it was interesting to see a number of smaller colleges on this list such as Pomona (California), Hendrix (Arkansas) , Grinnell (Iowa), College of Idaho (Idaho), Center college (Kentucky) , Oberlin College (Ohio), Reed College (Oregon) etc. It reinforced my belief that U.S. has many great colleges and many options for graduating high school students.
Twenty five years ago, when I first came to the US to pursue my M.S. in Engineering from University of Texas at Austin, I did not know many of these colleges. My knowledge of good colleges was limited to either the well-known Ivy leagues or the top engineering colleges in the country. Over the years, as I met classmates at Harvard Business School, co-workers at number of companies such as Intel, American Express, many of who had studied at these schools and had done well in their professional life, I realized there are a great number of colleges with excellent programs. These colleges may not have the global brands such as Harvard, Yale, Wharton, Stanford, but they are no less in what they have to offer to a student.
For high-school students in the U.S. or International students interested in pursuing education in this country, I would suggest students and parents spend time looking at these smaller colleges, in addition to the well known larger ones, visiting them, learning more about them, and deciding on a college shortlist that can be potentially good fit for the child. This has been a driving factor for us to develop “Find My College” functionality on Stoodnt platform. Additionally, we have created a shortlist of top 200 collegesthrough our own analysis and assessment.
At Stoodnt, our goal is to help students, parents in learning about good colleges and providing them insights and information that can help them with the admissions process and decision making.
Below is the summary of the best colleges by state list published by Forbes.
Alabama: Auburn University
Alaska: University Of Alaska, Fairbanks
Arizona: University of Arizona
Arkansas: Hendrix College
California: Pomona College
Colorado: United States Air Force Academy
Connecticut: Yale University
Delaware: University of Delaware
D.C.: Georgetown University
Florida: University of Florida
Georgia: Emory University
Hawaii: University of Hawaii, Manoa
Idaho: College of Idaho
Illinois: Northwestern University
Indiana: University of Notre Dame
Iowa: Grinnell College
Kansas: University of Kansas
Kentucky: Centre College
Louisiana: Tulane University
Maine: Bowdoin College
New Jersey: Princeton University
New Mexico: Saint John’s College
New York: United States Military Academy
North Carolina: Duke University
North Dakota: University of North Dakota
Ohio: Oberlin College
Oklahoma: University of Tulsa
Oregon: Reed College
Pennsylvania: Swarthmore College
Rhode Island: Brown University
South Carolina: Wofford College
South Dakota: University of South Dakota
Tennessee: Vanderbilt University
Texas: Rice University
Utah: Brigham Young University
Vermont: Middlebury College
Virginia: Washington and Lee University
West Virginia: West Virginia University
Washington: Whitman College
Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin, Madison
Wyoming: University of Wyoming
About Author Ajay Singh
I graduated from I.I.T India and came to U.S. for higher studies in Engineering 20 years back. After working for a few years in Austin, Texas as a design engineer, I went back for a M.B.A at Harvard Business School. I have worked for number of global companies in senior leadership and management positions. Over the years I have advised number of students on college admission.