what are the 10 best colleges in the u.s. and could i visit them all in a week?

Question

by visiting 2 in a day, taking flights etc?

Answer 1

It's very difficult to say what the ten best colleges are, and it largely depends on what field you plan to enter. Nonetheless, here are my picks:
1. Yale University
2. Princeton University
3. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
4. Stanford
5. California Institute of Technology (Caltech)
6. University of Chicago
7. Harvard University
8. Georgetown University
9. University of Pennsylvania
10. Columbia University

Visiting all of these in a week would be quite a challenge, but most of them are located in or near major cities, so it's quite possible. I don't know where you're starting, but my plan begins and ends in New York City (so you can fly there from virtually anywhere in the world). I used only 3 flights in this sample plan because everyone knows that it takes forever to fly these day and you have to get to the airport far in advance. Instead, for navigating the Northeast, I've included several Amtrak trains. While Amtrak may not be popular, it does have several advantages here in that it allows you to get to the station immediately before your departure and delivers right into the heart of the city you're visiting.

Day 1: Starting in New York (which would be easy to fly to from anywhere), visit Columbia. Then, take the train to Princeton, NJ and visit Princeton (the train ride is about an hour). Spend the night in Princeton, NJ.
Day 2: Take the train from Princeton to Philadelphia early in the morning (there's generally a 6 or 6:30 AM train). The ride takes about 30-45 minutes, so you'd be in Philadelphia by 7 AM. Visit Penn. Then, catch a train to Washington, DC and visit Georgetown. Take a late flight to Boston and spend the night in a hotel there.
Day 3: Visit Harvard and MIT which are both in the Boston area. Then fly to Chicago and spend the night there.
Day 4: Visit the University of Chicago. Fly to San Fransisco (about 4 1/2 hours) and visit Stanford in Palo Alto. The time change works in your favor so you should have enough time to fit it all in.
Day 5: Fly from San Fransisco to Burbank, CA (about an hour long flight). Visit CalTech. Find a cab or take public transit to LAX (Los Angeles International Airport). Doing so should only take about 45 mins. Fly to New York (a 7 or 8 hour flight) on an evening flight (several carriers have overnight flights that leave around 10 PM California time and arrive in New York at about 9 AM New York time).
Day 6: Take the train from New York to New Haven Connecticut and visit Yale. Take the train back to New York and spend the night.
Day 7: Rest and see New York City.

If you follow this plan you can see everything, but you'll probably end up being rather exhausted. Furthermore, taking that many trains and airplanes would be pretty pricey.

Answer 2

Agree with Mr. Dangerous. Stay in NYC. Manhattan is safer than most cities. Why would you spend the money to fly to the USA only to go some boring place like Albany? There is a reason the "cheap" places are cheap. In NYC, you can use the public transportation cheap. Stay at youth hostel, cheaper than a hotel. Eat at any of the multitudes of fast food places. You don't have to go to one of the great delis and spend $30 on a corned beef sammy that is like nothing you will ever find in Ireland.

Answer 3

US News ranks US universities. You can see the list using the link below.

In my opinion, the ten best US universities are:

Harvard (Cambridge, MA)
Princeton (Princeton, NJ)
MIT (Cambridge, MA)
Duke University (Durham, NC)
Stanford University (Palo Alto, CA)
University of Chicago (Chicago, IL)
Northwestern University (Evanston, IL)
University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, PA)
Cal Tech (Pasadena, CA)
Dartmouth (Hanover, NH)

If you also wanted to look at public universities, I'd include:

University of California (Berkeley, CA)
University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, MI)
University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill, NC)
University of Virginia (Charlottsville, VA)
Georgia Tech (Atlanta, GA)

It would be hard to visit them all in a week. It would be hard to do two in a day -- but you might be able to visit the following on the same day:

Harvard and MIT
Berkeley and Stanford
Chicago and Northwestern
Duke and UNC
Princeton and Penn

Answer 4

It's not possible because I know of one which is in the USA but it will take you two days just to visit that one!!

Answer 5

You'll be missing some terrific smaller, private liberal arts schools if you follow just these lists, including: Williams, Amherst, Wesleyan, Middlebury, etc.

Answer 6

you can knock out a good portion i dont know about all 10

the top 10 schools are
Princetion
Harvard,
Pennsylvania (Penn...not Penn State)
Yale
MIT
Stanford
Cal- Berkley
Duke
Columbia
Cornell