General college rankings appear annually in news magazines and reference volumes available at newsstands, large supermarkets and local libraries. The most respected national rankings appear in "U.S. News & World Report," "Newsweek" and the Princeton Review. These news outlets and education prep firms employ strict methodologies to determine top programs and produce consistently similar results year after year. Their rankings help students to evaluate a potential college’s English department reputation, core faculty, class sizes and fundamental approaches.
Prestigious private universities on the East Coast offer students the most high-ranked choices for an English degree pursuit. English is a top degree track at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Cornell, the University of Pennsylvania, Brown, Hamilton College, John Hopkins and New York University. Private universities beyond the East Coast fare consistently well in national college rankings and English programs in particular, most notably: Stanford, University of Chicago, Duke, Rice, Northwestern and Indiana University. These schools’ world-renown faculties, small class sizes, massive library holdings and competitive low admission rates guarantee strong showings in college rankings overall.
National rankings typically include factors such as undergraduate social life and alumni student loan debt as determinants of overall excellence. Such considerations bolster the rankings of America’s most outstanding public universities. The University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, University of California-Berkeley, University of California, Los Angeles, University of Wisconsin-Madison and University of Texas-Austin provide a prestigious, name-recognized English degree at a much lower tuition cost and amidst environments that feature spirited school athletic programs. They also expand the regional breadth students can scour for a top-ranked degree to include the warmer and sunnier parts of America.
For many students and their families, national rankings serve as guideposts on the next step to their future. Students should also base their college decisions on a variety of factors specific to them: affordability, proximity to family, compatible campus atmosphere and long-term career goals. Students also ultimately want to consider campus attributes beyond academics, including environmental efforts, political atmosphere, artistic opportunities and racial, ethnic and cultural diversity. Plan to visit college campuses in advance to assess such characteristics. An English degree from a top-ranked national program will go a long way in most circumstances.