Street Smart

Rankings

This is the companion ranking to “Bucolic and Smart” but switched so that inclusion requires location in or with convenient public transportation access to a dynamic urban center.

1. Columbia University
2. Harvard University
3. Barnard College
4. Swarthmore College
5. Massachusetts Institute of Technology
6. University of California, Berkeley
7. Georgetown University
8. University of Pennsylvania
9. Northwestern University
10. Brown University
11. Bryn Mawr College
12. University of Chicago
13. Macalester College
14. Haverford College
15. Cooper Union
16. New York University
17. George Washington University
18. Johns Hopkins University
19. Polytechnic Institute of NYU
20. Northeastern University
21. University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
22. Boston University
23. Georgia Institute of Technology
24. New School
25. Reed College
26. Emory University
27. University of Texas, Austin
28. California Institute of Technology
29. American University
30. Drexel University
31. Boston College
32. University of San Francisco
33. St. John’s University (Queens, NY)
34. University of California, Los Angeles
35. Villanova University
36. Agnes Scott College
37. Rhodes College
38. Seattle University
39. Hofstra University
40. Yale University
41. Fordham University
42. Pomona College
43. Rice University
44. Lewis and Clark College
45. Providence College
46. Milwaukee School of Engineering
47. Wellesley College
48. Occidental College
49. University of Washington, Seattle
50. University of California, San Diego
51. University of Southern California
52. University of Portland
53. New College of Florida
54. University of Wisconsin, Madison
55. Sarah Lawrence College
56. Tufts University
57. Seattle Pacific University
58. University of Pittsburgh
59. Carnegie Mellon University
60. Claremont McKenna College

This ranking requires a location in an urban center or nearby suburb with access to the urban center. Schools received a subjective score based on degree of this convenience. Within that requirement, schools are ranked with heavy weight to the degree of said access, but also including equal weights to PhD production, Fulbright production, the Wall Street Journal Feeder School ranking, and the SAT ranking.

Note that the subjectivity of the urban access score is crucial – Swarthmore finished fourth in this ranking, yet anyone who’s visited Swarthmore would hardly consider it an urban school. However, Swarthmore’s on-campus SEPTA stop with hourly 20 minute access to the heart of Philadelphia earns it a strong score in the urban access category. Combined with Swarthmore’s unmatched scores in the other categories, this quiet idyllic campus ranks top 10 in the Street Smart ranking.