No school, however capable, will be the "best" for every student. As "Forbes" magazine stated in the introduction to its 2008 rankings, "A student who will thrive at Williams might drown at Caltech." It is important to know the criteria used by the major rankings lists and compare them to your personal list of what's important and what isn't. A lower-ranked school may have a better program in your major, so it's worth looking for lists that rank the programs you're interested in. You may have different criteria from that used by the ranking organization, such as whether a campus appeals to you or whether you like the area.
The most widely quoted rankings list is published annually by U.S. News & World Report. In addition to its main list, there are secondary lists for graduate schools, small liberal arts colleges and other categories. In 2008, the top ten schools on the main list were, in order, Princeton, Harvard, Yale, Stanford, California Institute of Technology, the University of Pennsylvania, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Duke, Columbia and the University of Chicago. Criteria included factors like student retention, graduation rates and quality of the faculty.
In 2008, business magazine "Forbes" launched its own rankings, with data and research from the Center for College Affordability and Productivity. The criteria were designed to be student-centered and weighted toward higher educational quality and lower costs. The top ten schools listed, in order, were Princeton, California Institute of Technology, Harvard, Swarthmore, Williams, the United States Military Academy, Amherst, Wellesley, Yale and Columbia.
Attempts to judge schools by objective factors have one obvious flaw, which is that subjective factors are often equally important in choosing one college over another. "Newsweek's" school ranking is perhaps more subjective, relying heavily on interviews with experts--admissions officials, educational consultants, high-school counselors, college and university leaders--as well as students and parents. Instead of ranking several schools within a category, "Newsweek" lists 25 categories and names one the "hottest" school for that category. The list provides an anecdotal summary of each school. In 2008, their list included Cornell, as the "Hottest Ivy;" Morehouse College as the "Hottest Men's College;" Smith College as the "Hottest Women's College;" California Institute of Technology as the "Hottest for Science and Technology;" and Princeton as "Hottest for Liberal Arts." The "Hottest Small State School" was the University of New York at New Paltz, while the "Hottest Big State School" was the University of Wisconsin at Madison.