Hey prospective college students! Are you struggling to decide which college is the right one for you? Well have no fear, because USA Today has come to your rescue with their brief write-up of some researcher's rankings of the nation's best college towns.

The college town is one of the most important factors for prospective students in making their college decision. After all, in a typical freshman's week of studying, crying, and having sex (not necessarily in that order), he or she has a massive two hours of free time to spend in the town. And when that student is in said town, it must contain the resources necessary to allow the student to fulfill his or her important tasks of running to Wegmans and buying pot (not necessarily in that order). Determining suitable college towns is not something to be taken lightly. That is why dozens of researchers and statisticians spent months laboring to identify the towns with the most optimal sketchy bar-to-student ratios.

And in the end, Ithaca came out on top! This is truly a great day for Cornell (and to a lesser and more communications-based extent, Ithaca College). Take that Columbia and Harvard! Ithaca truly is gorges, just like your mom.

Oh, and about those quotation marks in the title. First, Ithaca technically was the best college town in America. This article was written back in the beginning of September--well before the great Pig Microbe Armageddon of 2009. We didn't know about this article until now because, well, it was in USA Today and we haven't stayed in any hotels in the past month.

Secondly, a "college town" is defined in this instance as a metropolitan area with a population of under 250,000 people. There were four categories in total, with the other four consisting of metropolitan areas with over 250,000 people, over 1 million people, and over 2.5 million people. In that last category, New York was number 1 and Boston was number 3. So Columbia and Harvard may not necessarily agree to "taking that".

Finally, the towns Ithaca beat in its category include State College, Ames, and Iowa City. This competitive situation is known in economic game theory as the "guy with one leg versus the three guys with no legs in the Tour de France" condition.

Okay, so maybe its not so great a ranking for Ithaca. Cornell recognizes this, as they didn't even mention the article on their website. Though that may be due to this ranking's lack of wizarding movie tie-ins.

College rankings are generally quite zany, but this year's lists have taken ridiculousness to a new level. We've seen the Princeton Review name Columbia as topping the list of the best college towns--with Barnard coming in third despite being located three yards away. We've seen Forbes rank Cornell as the 207th best university in America thanks to a formula that assigns a 25% weight to RateMyProfessors.com. We've even seen GQ magazine redefine the Jeremy Piven Hierarchy of Assholery™ by sticking Brown at the top of their "Douchiest Colleges" list.

It's all made for great amusement (and page views, cha-ching!). However, we here at IvyGate feel we can do one better in terms of ludicrousness, while at the same time create a college ranking equally as reasonable as anything U.S. News can produce. (Ivy League schools only, of course.)

Like Forbes, we're also going to utilize a website in our ranking methodology. However, we're going to show up those flat-tax pussies by giving our chosen website 100% of the weight. Also, the website we've chosen is one that, like RateMyProfessors, is very popular with college students. The difference between IvyGate's data source and Forbes' is that ours is a trusted source of factual information and it is a better teacher than any professor in history--because no professor has encyclopedic knowledge of British monarchs, the periodic table, and Seth Rogen movies. Our chosen source of college ranking data is Sporcle. Read the rest of this entry »

HYP: Time to celebrate. Everyone else: Get ready to be pissed off.

Justin Pope over at the Associated Press scooped the US News & World Report college rankings by 6 and a half hours. While we vivisected some of the rankings from the the Princeton Review's "Best 371 Colleges" and Forbes, no one cares about those lists.

Onward past the jump to the rankings that really matter, which we arrange into a handy, numbered list, because for some reason Pope didn't do that. Read the rest of this entry »

Well we've come to that point in the summer where its time for the temporary IvyGate editors (Max and Michael, not that it matters) to say goodbye. It hasn't been a great season for the Ivy League though. Cornell lost everyone's social security numbers. Harvard is broke and is trying to own English. A Brown student and a Yale student competed to see who could be more annoying. Californians don't understand us. Don't even mention lacrosse. And we seem to be forgetting something. What could it be? Oh well, it probably wasn't important.

But the worst news of all came just this week. Forbes Magazine, the nation's premier experts on all things list-related, released their ranking of America's Best Colleges. Here are the sobering results:

1. Army

2. Princeton

3. Caltech

4. Williams

5. Harvard

6. Wellesley

7. Air Force

8. Amherst

9. Yale

10. Stanford

11. MIT

12. Swarthmore

13. Columbia

14. Centre

15. Haverford

...

...

...

Umm, it'll be a while until we reach the next Ivy League school, so we'll warp ahead after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

The Princeton Review released its 2010 guide to the Best 371 Colleges last week. Along with overviews for every one of those arbitrary number of schools, the Princeton Review also released their college ranking lists in various categories. The lists are determined by surveys taken by current students at every school, and the categories run the gamut from schools with the most accessible professors to schools with the most stoned professors.

To see these lists, you could buy the Princeton Review book for $25. If you're smart, you could just go to the Princeton Review website to see them. But if you're lazy and can put up with not-great formatting, we've got all 62 of the rankings right here. Every single one, including those without any Ivy League schools on it. And because we felt like it, four of us have added our own commentary to the lists below.

In reading through the lists, we point out the good (Harvard, Princeton, and Columbia have the top three best libraries), the bad (No Ivy League schools classified as "Dodgeball Targets"), and the absolutely ridiculous (It appears Yale had only one student fill out a survey and it happened to be on opposite day). But mostly, our group of one Harvard grad (Adam), one Cornell grad (Max), and two Princeton grads (Maureen and Michael) just riff on everything. We're just like the Satellite of Love Crew. Heck, one of us is even named Mike! So please join us, will you, as we blow up the Hitler building. There may even be railing kills. All the lists are after the jump, including an Ivy League school summary at the very end. Read the rest of this entry »

The Paper Trail - an education blog for U.S. News & World Report - has once again listed IvyGate as a contender for the best alternative media outlet of the year. Other nominees for the poll, which closes on February 17, include Wesleying, Bwog, The Daily Clog, Mads Vassar, Onward State, Saxa Speak, Timothy Dwight, MiddBlog, and the Critical Badger. Presently we are in last place, with a mere 1.35% of all votes. By contrast, Timothy Dwight - a blog about a certain cult group residential hall at Yale - is leading the polls at 28.72%, and Bwog - the blog of Columbia's Blue & White - is in second place with 24.9%.

The reasons why IvyGate is being trounced by the likes of a dorm blog at Yale and campus-specific new media rags are numerous. One explanation is that some sites, like Timothy Dwight and Bwog, have posted links to the poll below their mastheads and are urging readers to vote multiple times. Another reason may have to do with the fact that IvyGate content has been conspicuously spare since the beginning of the new semester. This is due to our own laxity - we're lazy and underpaid (read: paid nothing) - and also because we've been sorting out, in a productive way, our various levels of commitment for 2009 and onward.

In short: the hibernation is over and we're as eager to probe the bizarre depths of higher ed as we've ever been.  If you've got a hot tip or want to write for us - we're hiring! - email us at tips@ivygateblog.com.

Here's yet another reason for all you smug Princeton bastards to gloat:  A group of college bashers over at Radar released a "semiscientific" (aka they bs'ed it like we all bs'ed our bio lab reports) guide to what they're calling the worst colleges in America.  The only problem?  They've got some not-so-bad colleges on this list, namely Harvard and Cornell.

Harvard is no doubt blushing crimson from winning the title of "Most Overrated College In America."  The article goes on to bludgeon Harvard's over-enthusiasm for giving out awards, honors, high grades and newspaper editorships.  I was skeptical at this point, until I got to the next paragraph, which recounted "A mysterious scabies-like infestation last fall left freshmen scrambling out of their dorms and into Harvard Yard, dirty sheets in tow."  Does it make me a soulless and bitter Barnard girl if I snorted into my coffee?  But that wasn't all Radar had to say about Harvard:  apparently most Harvard students graduate with undeserved honors, but when it comes to making sexy time, they stipulate that the student body is vastly underserved.  Check out the article (click the above image) for more Harvard-Hate.

What's the only thing worse than being named "Most Overrated College In America?"  I dunno, how about being named "runner up?"  Poor Cornell!  Must you always be a runner up to Harvard (kidding, sort of)?  Emphatic yes, if Radar has anything to say about it, since they levy one lame "Cornell isn't a real Ivy" joke after another, and then decide to go balls out with the claim that (according to collegeprowler.com), "Cornell is also home to the ugliest girls in the Ivy League—and that's saying something."  Ouch!  So...does anyone else find it ironic that Cornell's campus just gained a Playboy rep?

Everyone is getting into the college rankings game these days, and everyone - it seems - has the same goal in mind: to dethrone the juggernaut that is the U.S. News & World Report. But while students and alums of certain liberal arts colleges and lesser-known universities are probably reveling in Forbes.com's inaugural rankings, the newest kid on the block is unlikely to find much support among the non-Princeton Ivy set this year.

Of the 569 schools included in the rankings, here's how the Ivies stacked up:

1. Princeton
3. Harvard
9. Yale
10. Columbia
27. Brown
61. Penn
121: Cornell
127: Dartmouth

Brown at 27 already seems like a stretch, but Penn at 61, Cornell at 121, and Dartmouth at 127? How vulgar, indecent, cruel! Some quotes and commentary after the jump.

Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to judgment day, Ivy Leaguers, where we find out whether the grassy quadrangles encased by your school’s iron gates are a heaven or a hell. So gather round, because I’ve got the results hot off the press from The Princeton Review’s The Best 368 Colleges 2009. Gems from this Compendium of All Things Safety School after the jump.

Read the rest of this entry »

So apparently U.S. News & World Report has thrown in the towel when it comes to reporting news items that AREN'T gimmicky lists of colleges generated from statistical trivia. Following the lead of such pioneers of capitalism as Blackula and Black Caesar, U.S. News & World Report is proud to present America with another overhyped, arbitrary list: "America's Best Black Colleges."

According to the press release, this list "closely resembles that of of U.S.News & World Report's annual "America's Best Colleges" rankings." No shit -- you could almost say it's the exact same thing, just tailored to a specific minority in order to make more money.

Here are the top five colleges:

1.  Spelman College (Atlanta, GA)

2.  Howard University (Washington, DC)

3.  Hampton University (Hampton, VA)

4.  Morehouse College (Atlanta, GA)

5.  Fisk University (Nashville, TN)

I guess Howard University, 1st in prestige but 2nd in thist list, really is the "black Harvard." We are eagerly awaiting the list of America's best Jewish colleges.

After the jump -- IvyGate selflessly, courageously violates yet another USN&WR "embargo" (you guys might want to stop sending us these, btw).

Read the rest of this entry »