Brown University

Brown University

Brown University is a private, Ivy League research university in Providence, Rhode Island.  Brown is the seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the nine Colonial Colleges established before the American Revolution.

Brown admission policy is stipulated need-blind for all domestic applicants. Brown's financial aid basics website, in August 2014, stated: "For families (including both parents) with a total income below $60,000, and assets less than $100,000, no parent contribution is calculated towards the Expected Family Contribution (EFC). For families with total income below $100,000, the loan component of the financial aid award is replaced with additional scholarship." In 2013-14, the program awarded need-based scholarships worth $95 million. The average need-based award for the class of 2017 was $43,427.

In 2014, National Science Foundation ranked Brown University 66th in the United States by research.[115] As of 2016, U.S. News & World Report ranks Brown University 99th globally.

In its 2015 ranking of the "Best Colleges Nationwide," USA Today–College Factual placed Brown 6th (between MIT and Stanford University). The same USA Today–College Factual ranking put Brown 5th (between Harvard University and the University of Virginia) among "Best US Colleges for a Major in English."The 2013 U.S. News & World Report rankings' peer assessment portion gives the school a score of 4.4, tied with University of Pennsylvania, Dartmouth, Northwestern, and University of Michigan.In 2014, Forbes magazine ranked Brown seventh (between Caltech and Princeton University) on its list of "America's Most Entrepreneurial Universities." The Forbes analysis looked at the ratio of "alumni and students who have identified themselves as founders and business owners on LinkedIn" and the total number of alumni and students.LinkedIn particularized the Forbes rankings, placing Brown third (between MIT and Princeton) among "Best Undergraduate Universities for Software Developers at Startups." LinkedIn's methodology involved a career-path examination of "millions of alumni profiles" in its membership database.Brown ranked 7th in the country (between Princeton and Columbia) in a study of high school seniors' revealed preferences for matriculation conducted by economists at Harvard, Wharton, and Boston University, and published in 2005 by the National Bureau of Economic Research. The 2008 Center for College Affordability and Productivity (CCAP) ranked Brown 5th in the country among national universities."

Williams College

Williams College

Williams College is a private liberal arts college located in Williams town, Massachusetts, Williams is classified as "most selective" by U.S. News & World Report and "more selective" by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. 

Williams College currently occupies 1st place in U.S. News & World Report's liberal arts ranking. Forbes magazine ranked Williams the second best undergraduate institution in the United States in its 2016 publication of America's Top Colleges. The college is one of the eight Little Ivies, and is known as a Hidden Ivy.

United States. There are three academic curricular divisions humanities, sciences, and social sciences, 24 departments, 33 majors, and two small master's degree programs in art history and development economics. Students may also concentrate in 12 additional academic areas that are not offered as majors (e.g., environmental studies). The academic year follows a 4–1–4 schedule of two four-course semesters plus a one-course "winter study" term in January.During the winter study term, students study various courses outside of typical curriculum for 3 weeks. Students typically take this course on a pass/fail basis. Past course offerings have included: Ski patrol, Learn to Play Chess, Accounting, Inside Jury Deliberations, and Creating a Life: Shaping Your Life After Williams, among many others. Williams students often take the winter study term to study abroad or work on intensive research projects.

The college's 2015-2016 Comprehensive Fee was $64,790; or $63,290 (if study abroad program is not pursued). 53% of students were given need-based financial aid, which averaged $46,006. For the 2015 admissions cycle, the acceptance rate was 16.8%. The admitted students’ academic profile showed average SAT scores of 735 in critical reading, 727 in math, and 735 in writing. The average super-scored ACT was a 33. 82% of the students who submitted high school rank were projected to graduate in the top ten percent of their class.

Yale University

Yale University

Yale University is the  third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States.  It is an American private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut. 

Yale is organized into fourteen constituent schools: the original undergraduate college, the Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and twelve professional schools. While the university is governed by the Yale Corporation, each school's faculty oversees its curriculum and degree programs.

Yale College undergraduates follow a liberal arts curriculum with departmental majors and are organized into a system of residential colleges. Almost all faculty teach undergraduate courses, more than 2,000 of which are offered annually. Students compete inter collegiately as the Yale Bulldogs in the NCAA Division I Ivy League.

Undergraduate admission to Yale College is considered "most selective" by U.S. News. In 2014, Yale accepted 1,935 students to the Class of 2018 out of 30,932 applicants, for an acceptance rate of 6.3%. 98% of students graduate within six years.Through its program of need-based financial aid, Yale commits to meet the full demonstrated financial need of all applicants. Most financial aid is in the form of grants and scholarships that do not need to be paid back to the university, and the average need-based aid grant for the Class of 2017 was $46,395. 15% of Yale College students are expected to have no parental contribution, and about 50% receive some form of financial aid. About 16% of the Class of 2013 had some form of student loan debt at graduation, with an average debt of $13,000 among borrowers.

The U.S. News & World Report ranked Yale third among U.S. national universities for 2016, as it has for each of the past sixteen years, in every list trailing only Princeton and Harvard. It was ranked 15th in the 2015/16 QS World University Rankings and 12th in the 2015 Times Higher Education World University Rankings. The Academic Ranking of World Universities placed Yale at 11th in the world in 2015.

Amherst College

Amherst College located in Amherst, Massachusetts, United States. It is a  is a private liberal arts college. Amherst is the third oldest institution of higher education in Massachusetts.  Amherst has historically had close relationships and rivalries with Williams College and Wesleyan University which form the Little Three colleges.

Amherst is an exclusively undergraduate four-year institution and enrolled 1,795 students in the fall of 2015. Students choose courses from 38 major programs in an open curriculum. Students are not required to study a core curriculum or fulfil any distribution requirements and may even design their own unique interdisciplinary major. Freshmen may take advanced courses, and seniors may take introductory ones. For the class of 2020, Amherst received 8,397 applications and accepted 1,149 yielding a 13.7% acceptance rate.  Amherst was ranked as the second best liberal arts college in the country by U.S. News & World Report, and ninth out of all U.S. colleges and universities by Forbes in their 2015 rankings.

Amherst College offers 36 fields of study not less than  850 courses in the sciences, arts, humanities, mathematics and computer sciences, social sciences, foreign languages, classics, and several interdisciplinary fields including premedical studies and provides an unusually open curriculum. Students are not required to study a core curriculum or fulfil any distribution requirements and may even design their own unique interdisciplinary major. Freshmen may take advanced courses, and seniors may take introductory ones.Amherst College has been the first college to have undergraduate departments in the interdisciplinary fields of American Studies; Law, Jurisprudence and Social Thought; and Neuroscience and has helped to pioneer other interdisciplinary programs, including Asian Languages and Civilizations.The Amherst library is named for long-time faculty member, poet Robert Frost.Amherst College has been recognized for its commitment to quality teaching, with professor-student interaction, so much so that Harvard and Columbia University looked to Amherst in 2007 when they were in the throes of reviewing their teaching program. The student-faculty ratio is 8:1 and 90% of classes have fewer than 30 students.

Pomona College

Pomona College

Pomona College was  established in 1887  and it is a  private liberal arts college located in Claremont, California, United States.

Pomona practices need-blind admission for students who are U.S. citizens, permanent residents, DACA status students, undocumented students, or who graduate from a high school within the United States, and promises to meet 100 percent of demonstrated need for all admitted students, including admitted international students. No loans are packaged in the financial aid package, though students can choose to borrow if so desired. No merit awards or athletic scholarships are offered by Pomona. Furthermore, need based financial aid is not available to international transfer applicants.

For the 2014-2015 school year, Pomona charged a sticker price (tuition, room and board, and associated fees) of $60,532. Close to 40 million dollars worth of scholarships were awarded in 2014. 56% of students received a financial aid package, with an average award of $46,247. The scholarship awarded is scaled accordingly with the family income level of the student, ranging from $60,620 for the poorest students to $6,930 for students from backgrounds making above $160,000.

The Pomona College Career Development provides pre-professional opportunities. The Pomona College Internship Program (PCIP) connected 134 students in the 2014-2015 year to paid internships at 102 different organizations in Southern California, undertaken during the school year. Students receive a wage as well as transportation funding. The Summer Experience Funding (SEF) program provides funding for students with unpaid or low paying summer internships, including international internships. For the 2014-2015 year, 88 students received these awards in 72 sites, including with 16 international internships. Sites included UNAIDS, Yale University, Deloitte in China, and the Office of U.S. Senator Richard Durbin. The Shadow a Sagehen program enables current students to connect with alumni from a variety of career fields during winter break, and the SagePost program links students to alumni on a virtual platform. In addition, Pomona participates in Winter Career Recruiting, which provides travel funds for graduating seniors applying for careers in a variety of areas to Boston, New York City, Washington DC, and Los Angeles.