Washington and Lee University

Washington and Lee University (Washington and Lee or W&L) is a private liberal arts university in Lexington, Virginia, United States.

Washington and Lee University is the alma mater of three United States Supreme Court Justices, a Nobel Prize laureate, winners of the Pulitzer Prize, the Tony Award, and the Emmy Award, as well as 27 U.S. Senators, 67 U.S. Representatives, 31 state governors, as well as numerous other government officials, judges, business leaders, entertainers, and athletes.

Several well-known alumni include Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin, United States Supreme Court Justice Lewis F. Powell, Jr.; United States Senator John Warner from Virginia; United States Solicitor General John W. Davis, Democratic Party nominee for President of the United States during the 1924 presidential election; author Tom Wolfe, founder of New Journalism; broadcast journalist Roger Mudd; artist Cy Twombly; voice actor Mike Henry, explorer Meriwether Lewis of the Lewis and Clark Expedition; Federal Judge and Civil Rights Champion John Minor Wisdom; and billionaire Rupert Johnson, Jr. of Franklin Templeton Investments.

Archives of the papers of notable alumni and other resources relating to the history of the university may be found in the manuscript collections at Washington and Lee's James Graham Leyburn Library. Publication of the 1995 guide to the collections was made possible by a grant from the Jessie Ball DuPont Fund.

Today the university has about 2,000 undergraduate students and 315 in the School of Law. Both the undergraduate and law schools are in the first tier of the U.S. News & World Report rankings for national liberal arts colleges and law schools, respectively. In the 2016 guide, the undergraduate college is ranked number 14,  amongst national liberal arts colleges and the law school is ranked number 42nd nationally amongst all law schools.  The 2015 Forbes magazine college rankings place W&L 29th. Kiplinger's Personal Finance had the college atop its 2016 list of the 300 best college values, one spot above its number two ranking in the 2015 list. In 2015, The Economist ranked Washington and Lee first among all undergraduate institutions in the United States in terms of the positive gap between its students' actual median earnings ten years from graduation and what the publication's statistical model would suggest. Of its findings, the newspaper wrote that "No other college combines the intimate academic setting and broad curriculum of a LAC [liberal arts college] with a potent old-boy network."

University of California, Berkeley

The University of California, Berkeley (also referred to as Berkeley, UC Berkeley, California or simply Cal)  is a public research university located in Berkeley, California. It is the flagship campus of the University of California system, one of three parts in the state's public higher education plan, which also includes the California State University system and the California Community Colleges System.

The Times Higher Education World University Rankings for 2015–2016 ranks Berkeley 13th in the world for academics and 6th in the world for reputation. In its 2016 edition, U.S. News & World Report ranked Berkeley 3rd in their "Best Global University Rankings". In 2015, Berkeley was ranked 4th in the world by the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU)  and 26th in the QS World University Rankings. The Center for World University Rankings (CWUR) ranked the university 7th in the world based on quality of education, alumni employment, quality of faculty, publications, influence, citations, broad impact, and patents in 2015.

The 2016 U.S. News & World Report "Best Colleges" report ranked Berkeley first among public universities and 20th among national universities. The Washington Monthly ranked Berkeley fourth among national universities in 2015, with criteria based on research, community service, and social mobility.  The Money Magazine Best Colleges ranking for 2015 ranked Berkeley 9th in the United States based on educational quality, affordability and alumni earnings.  For 2015 Kiplinger ranked Berkeley the 4th best-value public university in the nation for in-state students, and 6th for out-of-state students.  The 2015 Forbes America's Top Colleges report ranked Berkeley 35th among all universities and liberal arts colleges in the United States. 

In 2014, The Daily Beast's Best Colleges report ranked Berkeley 11th in the country.  The 2013 Top American Research Universities report by the Center for Measuring University Performance ranked Berkeley 8th over-all, 5th in resources, faculty, and education, 9th in resources and education, and 1st in education.   Berkeley was listed as a "Public Ivy" in Richard Mull's 1985 Public Ivies.

University of Notre Dame

The University of Notre Dame is a Catholic research university located adjacent to South Bend, Indiana, in the United States.

Notre Dame is known for its competitive admissions, with the incoming class enrolling in fall 2015 admitting 3,577 from a pool of 18,156 (19.7%). The academic profile of the enrolled class continues to rate among the top 10 to 15 in the nation for national research universities. The university practices a non-restrictive early action policy that allows admitted students to consider admission to Notre Dame as well as any other colleges to which they were accepted. 1,400 of the 3,577 (39.1%) were admitted under the early action plan. Admitted students came from 1,311 high schools and the average student traveled more than 750 miles to Notre Dame, making it arguably the most representative university in the United States. While all entering students begin in the College of the First Year of Studies, 25% have indicated they plan to study in the liberal arts or social sciences, 24% in engineering, 24% in business, 24% in science, and 3% in architecture.

In 2015-2016, Notre Dame ranked 18th overall among "national universities" in the United States in U.S. News & World Report's Best Colleges 2016. In 2014, USA Today ranked Notre Dame 10th overall for American universities based on data from College Factual.^[129] Forbes.com's America's Best Colleges ranks Notre Dame 13th among colleges in the United States in 2015, 8th among Research Universities, and 1st in the Midwest. U.S. News & World Report also lists Notre Dame Law School as 22nd overall. BusinessWeek ranks Mendoza College of Business undergraduate school as 1st overall. It ranks the MBA program as 20th overall. The Philosophical Gourmet Report ranks Notre Dame's graduate philosophy program as 15th nationally, while ARCHITECT Magazine ranked the undergraduate architecture program as 12th nationally. Additionally, the study abroad program ranks sixth in highest participation percentage in the nation, with 57.6% of students choosing to study abroad in 17 countries. According to payscale.com, undergraduate alumni of University of Notre Dame have a mid-career median salary $110,000, making it the 24th highest among colleges and universities in the United States. The median starting salary of $55,300 ranked 58th in the same peer group. Named by Newsweek as one of the "25 New Ivies," it is also an Oak Ridge Associated University.

Harvey Mudd College

Harvey Mudd College (HMC) is a private residential liberal arts college of science, engineering, and mathematics, founded in 1955 and located in Claremont, California, United States. It is one of the institutions of the contiguous Claremont Colleges, which share adjoining campus grounds. The college's mission is: "Harvey Mudd College seeks to educate engineers, scientists, and mathematicians well versed in all of these areas and in the humanities and the social sciences so that they may assume leadership in their fields with a clear understanding of the impact of their work on society."

For the class of 2019, the middle 50% of SAT scores for enrolled freshmen were 730–800 (out of 800) in mathematics, 670–760 in critical reading, and 680–760 in writing. A third of the student body are National Merit Scholars, and at one point, about 40 percent of graduates were going on to earn a Ph.D. — the highest rate of any college or university in the nation.

Harvey Mudd College, along with Wake Forest University, long held out as the last four-year colleges or universities in the U.S. to accept only SAT and not ACT test scores in their admissions process. In August 2007, however, at the beginning of the application process for the class of 2012, HMC began accepting ACT results, a year after Wake Forest abandoned its former SAT-only policy.

Harvey Mudd today still maintains the highest rate of science and engineering Ph.D. production among all undergraduate colleges and second highest (Caltech ranks first and MIT third) compared to all universities and colleges, according to a 2008 report by the National Science Foundation.

Money Magazine ranked Harvey Mudd 7th in the country out of the nearly 1500 schools it evaluated for its 2014 Best Colleges ranking. The Daily Beast ranked Harvey Mudd 78th in the country out of the nearly 2000 schools it evaluated for its 2013 Best Colleges ranking. According to U.S. News & World Report's 2015 America's Best Colleges rankings, Harvey Mudd College is tied for the 15th best liberal arts college in the United States and is tied for the best undergraduate engineering school in the US whose highest degree is a Master's. Forbes in 2014 rated Harvey Mudd College #52 of its America's Best Colleges ranking, which includes military academies, national universities, and liberal arts colleges. In 2006, Harvey Mudd was also named one of the "new Ivy leagues" by Kaplan and Newsweek.

Harvey Mudd College is one of the few colleges in the US with very low grade inflation. As of 2010, only seven students in the history of the college have achieved a perfect 4.0 GPA.

In 1997, Harvey Mudd College became the sole American undergraduate-only institution ever to win 1st place in the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest. As of 2015, no American school has won the world competition since.

According to PayScale, graduates of Harvey Mudd College earn the highest salaries among graduates of any college in the United States. The Harvey Mudd College mathematics department is highly ranked and was the 2006 recipient of the American Mathematical Society award for an Exemplary Program or Achievement in a Mathematics Department. Two of the department's alumni, Joshua Greene and Aaron Archer, were winners and honorable mention for the Morgan Prize in 2002 and 1998 respectively. The Morgan Prize is an annual award given to an undergraduate student in the US, Canada, or Mexico who demonstrates superior mathematics research.