In our essays on each school, we try to give readers an idea of what it’s like to go to each school. Here is where we go into detail about each institution’s residential life: Are all dorms coed? If so, are there coed rooms? Coed bathrooms? Does the school guarantee housing for all four years? Would you want to live in the dorms in any case? (Some are Gothic gems, others Stalinist monoliths.) In this section we also try to give some idea of how students spend their time outside the classroom. Is this a service-oriented school? Do the kids party five nights a week or are they a studious, intellectual bunch? In addition, we discuss whether campus crime is a problem, the extent to which athletics, particularly intercollegiate athletics, shapes the campus atmosphere, and whether school traditions still create a spirit of cohesion. There is much else in this section besides, depending on the character of the institution—including everything from controversial mascots, quaint customs, school songs and curious but telling facts. (Did you know, for instance, that in the chapel of Washington and Lee, General Robert E. Lee is actually buried under the main altar? That Louisiana State University keeps a live tiger on campus? That Caltech freshmen are encouraged to try to vandalize the dorm rooms of seniors—who fortify them like bunkers to weather the siege?)

In Choosing the Right College, we cover the most well-known schools in America—the Ivy League schools, the most prominent small liberal arts colleges, leading state universities—and judge them according to the exacting standards I’ve laid out for you today.

In All American Colleges, we decided to do something a little different—to pick out 50 schools which met these same criteria, which offered a liberating education, and which were especially congenial to three types of students who are underserved by the educational establishment: Conservatives, Old-Fashioned Liberals, and People of Faith.

Instead of looking skeptically at the schools that do well in famous rankings—some of which are simply coasting on reputations won long ago—we took a fresh look at the field of higher education. In compiling this guide, we largely ignored our competition and the schools they were writing about every year. Instead, we looked first at the curricula offered at hundreds of schools. We checked which courses each school required of every student, regardless of major, to determine that college’s philosophy of education.

You can tell what an institution thinks is important by what it makes mandatory.

Does a school require that students acquire a broad background in the liberal arts—in European and American history, politics, philosophy, laboratory science, and religion? Or are those core areas of knowledge left up to chance and consumer choice? Have they been replaced by mandated (and typically politicized) courses informed by “race,” “class,” and “gender”? We tried to identify those schools that were most serious about offering their students a solid grounding in the traditional disciplines, the precise kind of knowledge that universities in the West were founded to transmit. And we came up with the fifty schools profiled here, nearly all of which require their charges to take a reasonable number of foundational classes in these disciplines.

You might be surprised to learn that some of the best schools we have found— academically, socially, spiritually—happen to be less well-known to high school guidance counselors than the fifty “top” schools ranked by selectivity. But think of these colleges as if they were fine wines from regions not yet trumpeted by the critics, or as if they were important writers too long overlooked (just as Melville and Hawthorne were once all but forgotten). These schools have mostly stayed true to their founding visions, attracting scholars and students who aren’t driven by fashionable trends and academic fads. By flying “under the radar,” they have evaded the pressure to conform and retained their individual characters. Here you will find schools that really are devoted to such glorious particularities as the Great Books, the Bible, Thomist philosophy, Mennonite peacemaking, Southern military traditions, or Quaker theology.

We are not so pessimistic as to think that there are only fifty such schools in the U.S. What we present here is a selection of the best schools we have heard recommended by the students and teachers we work with, based on their experiences. We chose mostly schools with solid core curricula or strong distributional requirements chosen among serious courses. We also covered a few whose overall excellence demanded their inclusion—despite the excessive flexibility of their curricula. At such schools with mostly top-notch courses on offer, education may be too much left to student choice, but it’s not really left to chance.

In the profiles themselves, 2,500 to 3,000-word, in-depth essays on each of the fifty institutions, we offer candid assessments of the strengths and weaknesses of major departments at each school, assessments arrived at through extensive consultation with a network of hundreds of professors and students. You’ll learn which departments to seek out and which to skip, and what special programs at each school make for an unforgettable undergraduate experience—whether a semester learning theology through walking tours of Rome, a first-rate honors program, or inner-city internships devoted to putting the Gospel into action. We also explore the pros and cons of dormitory life at each campus, the range of social activities provided (or, in some cases, forbidden) at each school, and the state of religious life at those schools associated with particular faiths.

This point is important. If you’re a member of a faith community, chances are you know the four or five most venerable schools sponsored by your denomination—though you may not know how faithful (or faithless) each has proved to the traditions which founded them. Dozens of colleges created by devout religious communities have shed all but the most meaningless traces of their original missions; at such institutions, clergy and creed are only emphasized in fundraising materials sent to alumni—if then. These schools could now best be described as Catholic- or Baptist- or Methodist themed institutions, reminiscent of cheddar-flavored “cheese food.” Some are scant steps away from becoming entirely secular, and a few have already been defrocked, so to speak. Expect that to happen more often during the next few years, as churches try to retain or regain control over the college they founded and funded—and as secular-minded administrators and faculty push back.

It’s worth recalling that schools such as Harvard and Yale were founded as Congregationalist seminaries. What happened to them can happen to the college your pastor or parents attended; in fact, it may have happened already. That is why in choosing schools for this guide we looked for those which carry on the creeds of their founders, and thus help students deepen the faith of their mothers and fathers. To achieve that, a school needn’t be a seminary, nor need it relentlessly drive home the lessons of faith in subjects where reason rightly prevails. Rather, it means that where these schools do teach theology, they accurately present the broadly accepted tenets of a given faith, presenting dissenting opinions as dissent. It also implies that the vision of human dignity enshrined in the religious beliefs treasured by the college’s founders guides how the school manages student life.

It may mean that certain student organizations are not permitted on campus, that intervisitation between the sexes is restricted, that an honor code governs grading and questions of academic honesty, or even that chapel attendance is mandatory. Various religious traditions will make different demands of a student. We lay out what they are, so that parents and prospective undergrads can choose for themselves. Where religious services offered on campus leave something lacking, or do not accommodate every faith tradition, we suggest local alternatives.

It’s an open secret among the largely secular intellectual class that men and women of faith are responsible for many of the achievements that made the West great and good. From the preservation of ancient learning after the fall of Rome to the abolition of slavery and the end of segregation, the power of faith in a life after life has transfigured and ennobled earthly existence. Men and women of faith peopled the first American colonies, fought for the nation’s independence—and founded most of the best colleges in the country. All-American Colleges includes those schools that best carry on this great tradition.

Where on earth did you find out about the Caltech thing? I can't imagine a school doing that, but I doubt you're making it up. If it was my room, my bunker walls would be reinforced by the foolish souls piled up who would fail trying to vandalize my room. In any event, I must agree with the post as my alma mater is not what it used to be and I will not send my kids there. I encourage parents to pick up both guides and study them with your child, so that you will be better informed, as it is a bad thing to come out with mountains of debt and realize that your college is not what you thought it was. I know from experience.

To John Zmirak:

There was a series of three articles by Charles Murray in the WSJ earlier this week on education. He essentially argued for the revival of intelligence tracking in schools. Also, he believes that American society places too much emphasis on too many people pursuing four-year degrees and that we (and they) would be better served if more went into vocational or apprenticeship training. Four-year colleges, he believes, should be only for the intellectually gifted. Did you see these articles, and what do you think of his assertions?

I would agree entirely with Dr. Murray. Entirely too many Americans enter colleges and universities for reasons that have nothing to do with gaining a liberal arts education--the heart of a college's true mission. Most come in to gain professional certification so they can enter fields such as marketing, journalism, nursing, or other professions for which a liberal arts education is superfluous. (Yes, I meant to include journalism. Emphatically.)
In Europe, a much lower percentage of students attend colleges and universities--even as ordinary citizens (graduates of their high schools, or gymnasia) display a much higher level of knowledge and general culture than most American college graduates. Were we to emulate them, and in high school actually teach students facts about their culture, foreign languages, historical data and the principles of our system of government, then the majority of students who have no interest in or aptitude for liberal arts education could do something else--for instance, get started on preparing for their careers. This would allow colleges to raise their intellectual and scholarly standards to something approaching those in Europe.
Sadly, this idea, like the idea of intelligence tracking, has no chance of success in the U.S., where a gross and unexamined egalitarianism (not of opportunity, but of results) recoils at the idea of admitting the inequality of gifts that divide the elite of students from the average. Murray's plan, while as worthy as his arguments in The Bell Curve, is every bit as likely to fall victim to the intellectual self-censorship which covers American public life like a curtain of lead.

Is it not true, though, that in America it is hard to be successful or to be considered a "professional" without a four-year college degree? With our present system, parents have to encourage even an "average" student to go to college (if they can get in) because the alternatives are largely viewed as inferior.