# School  #Svys Score 1 Brown University   72 86.9% 2 Vassar College   17 83.2% 3 Dartmouth College   23 82.6% 4 University of Chicago   40 82.0% 5 Colgate University   39 81.3% 6 Mount Holyoke College   23 79.9% 7 University of California -- Berkeley   53 79.4% 8 Simon's Rock College of Bard   21 79.4% 9 Rice University   18 78.9% 10 Massachusetts Institute of Technology   46 78.9% 11 Reed College   16 78.7% 12 Carnegie Mellon University   27 78.0% 13 Bates College   17 77.5% 14 Carleton College   13 77.5% 15 Vanderbilt University   31 77.5% 16 Yale University   19 76.8% 17 Harvey Mudd College   31 76.1% 18 Emory University   20 76.0% 19 Stanford University   28 75.9% 20 Georgetown University   35 75.7% 21 Bryn Mawr College   24 75.6% 22 Ohio Wesleyan University   54 75.3% 23 Kalamazoo College   32 75.2% 24 Hobart and William Smith Colleges   13 75.1% 25 University of California -- Los Angeles   29 75.1% 26 University of Southern California   56 74.7% 27 Ohio University   15 74.6% 28 University of Notre Dame   27 74.5% 29 Pomona College   16 74.5% 30 Fordham University   24 74.4% 31 Washington University in St. Louis   28 74.3% 32 College of William and Mary   68 74.0% 33 Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute   34 73.9% 34 Texas A&M University at College Station   41 73.8% 35 Kenyon College   13 73.6% 36 Beloit College   14 73.6% 37 Oberlin College   14 73.5% 38 Trinity College   13 73.4% 39 Cornell University   55 72.7% 40 New York University   65 72.6% 41 Bowdoin College   13 72.6% 42 Northeastern University   19 72.3% 43 Northwestern University   47 72.2% 44 University of Illinois -- Urbana Champaign   50 71.9% 45 Harvard University   30 71.7% 46 Columbia University in the City of New York   23 71.7% 47 Ohio State University Columbus   21 71.6% 48 Princeton University   21 71.6% 49 University of Richmond   18 71.5% 50 Clemson University   24 71.4%

About StudentsReview's Criteria for the Top 50 Schools for the Creatively Brilliant is: 65% - Creativity 10% - Competition & Collaboration 10% - Student Body 10% - Schoolwork is Useful 5% - Would Return again Innovation  Innovation is the conversion of educational knowledge into new opportunities, and new ways of doing things.  Pure education can become outdated, but teaching a student how and encouraging their creativity and innovation will provide them with returns for the rest of their lives. Course Competitiveness  While a certain amount of competition is a good thing, this metric measures the amount of “bad competition” — the kind that results in cheating, hoarding knowledge, looking over the shoulder, and the general kind that is counterproductive to the working relationships at highly profitable companies, or in effective management. Effective companies and employees — and “people” in general are those that work together openly.  Cut-throat competition teaches a work ethic & mentality that is actually counter to success. Student Body (reflected by ACT & SAT)  In “schools to be aspired to”, as much of the learning takes place from the fellow students as it does from the faculty. Student Body captures this, at least partially, through ACT & SAT scores, where the students were ambitious enough to insure that a standardized test score were as high as possible, to attend an institution with other ambitous students. Schoolwork is Useful & Instructive  Many schools give coursework for the purpose of delivering grades rather than the purpose of educating students.  Students have evaluated to say what proportion of their coursework is useful and instructive.  In the context of a good education, busywork does not assist (for the most part) understanding and competency in the workforce, and provides a mechanism by which grades do not match competency, harming students post-graduation opportunities.  The purpose of universities is to educate, not to babysit, nor to leverage customers for reputation. Would Return (Overall Experience)  All things stated, would the students choose to return?  This blanket captures things that all of our ratings did not, or could not capture. Is there some unknown factor affecting why students would not return? Top 50 Schools for the Creatively Brilliant was reweighted to focus on the opinions of those students who describe themselves as “brilliant” or “super brilliant”, and to emphasize a distribution of those students.  Filtering and Analysis To find out how the data analysis was performed for the 2005 New Years Day OFFICIAL Rankings, including filtering, invalidity, weighting, distribution matching, and inherent biases, please go to 2005 NYD Rankings Explained.