Middlebury was ranked 7th overall in The Daily Beast’s list of the “25 Most Rigorous Colleges,” ahead of Harvard, Yale, and Stanford. Middlebury is the highest-ranked NESCAC school on the list; Amherst is the only other to make the list, at spot 14.
According to The Daily Beast’s website, the ranking is determined by the quality both of the student body and of their instructors. Each college’s acceptance rate, as reported by the National Center for Education Statistics, is weighted 50 percent. Student surveys provided by Niche regarding workload manageability are weighted 30 percent. Lastly, the amount of time students are likely to spend with the “best instructors” is weighted 20 percent—a combination of Niche surveys on schools with the smartest professors and class size data provided by National Center for Education Statistics.
Middlebury’s workload manageability score, according to The Daily Beast’s formula, is the fourth lowest on the list—a lower score indicates a less manageable workload. Only Wake Forest, Davidson, Swarthmore and Columbia sported lower workload manageability scores than Middlebury.
Professor of Political Science Murray Dry wasn’t surprised by Middlebury’s high overall ranking. “This is a school where most faculty expect the students to do some work. If students don’t do the work, they’re not going to pass. But most students understand that.”
“Comparatively speaking, this is an academically demanding place,” said Professor Dry, who has taught at Yeshiva College and Harvard in the past.
He noted the heavy emphasis on acceptance rate in The Daily Beast’s formula. Selectivity, he said, translates generally into an overall measure of the student body’s intelligence and achievement. At the same time, he stressed that even at Columbia, ranked first overall, the most intelligent students do not necessarily have the most rigorous workload. “At top universities—even here, I guess—if a student want to coast, it’s a matter of what courses he or she chooses.”
Dry insisted that the best way to compare the rigor of curricula is to read honors theses submitted for comparable departments at colleges and universities. Though time-consuming, this method would directly examine the work being assigned rather than basing calculations on proxies, which can only indirectly assess certain aspects of the workload.
Andrea Lloyd, Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of the Faculty, also wasn’t surprised by Middlebury’s ranking. “One could debate whether The Daily Beast’s index is really measuring rigor, but I would not argue with the assumption that wonderful things will happen if you mix together extremely bright and motivated students, excellent faculty, and small class size.”
Most students, Dean Lloyd believes, meet the high expectations of their professors. “Honestly, that is one of the things that makes teaching here such a joy: students have an unbelievable appetite for learning,” she said. “They’ll rise to just about any challenge that is put in front of them.”
Indeed, Middlebury’s selectivity and admissions data can lead to a rough conclusion that the students here are motivated and inquisitive. The Daily Beast’s methodology in this list poses an important question, though: can there ever be an objective, direct measure of curricular rigor in its truest sense?
Dean Lloyd noted the challenge this question presents. “It would really require taking a careful look at the work we assign and the standards by which we evaluate it, and assessing whether those things have changed over time.”
