Top 6 Universities in the U.S.

1. john-Brown University

Located in Providence Rhode Island, Brown University has easy access to both Boston and New York City. The university is frequently considered the most liberal of the Ivies, and it is well known for its flexible curriculum in which students construct their own plan of study. Brown, like Dartmouth College, places more emphasis on undergraduate study than you'll find at research powerhouses like Columbia and Harvard.

2.Columbia University

Strong students who love an urban environment should definitely consider Columbia University. The school's location in upper Manhattan sits right on a subway line, so students have easy access to all of New York City. Keep in mind that Columbia is a research institution, and only about a third of its 26,000 students are undergraduates.

3.Duke University

Duke's stunning campus in Durham, North Carolina, features impressive Gothic revival architecture in the campus center, and extensive modern research facilities spreading out from the main campus. With an acceptance rate in the teens, it is also the most selective university in the South. Duke, along with nearby UNC Chapel Hill and NC State, make up the "research triangle," an area purported to have the highest concentration of PhDs and MDs in the world.

4.Dartmouth College

Hanover, New Hampshire, is the quintessential New England college town, and Dartmouth College surrounds the attractive town green. The college (really a university) is the smallest of the Ivies, yet it can still boast of the type of curricular breadth we find at the other schools on this list. The atmosphere, however, has more of a liberal arts college feeling than you'll find at any of the other top universities.

4.Princeton University

In the U.S. News & World Report and other national rankings, Princeton University frequently vies with Harvard for the top spot. The schools, however, are very different. Princeton's attractive 500-acre campus is located in a town of about 30,000 people, and the urban centers of Philadelphia and New York City are each about an hour away. With just over 5,000 undergrads and about 2,600 grad students, Princeton has a much more intimate educational environment than many of the other top universities.

5.Harvard University

For better or worse, Harvard University almost always tops the rankings of national universities, and its endowment is by far the largest of any educational institution in the world. All of those resources bring some perks: students from families with modest incomes can attend for free, loan debt is rare, facilities are state of the art, and faculty are often world-renowned scholars and scientists. The university's location in Cambridge, Massachusetts, places it within an easy walk to other excellent schools