25 Hottest Schools

Hottest for No SAT or ACT Needed
Bates College, Lewiston, Maine

Many colleges are SAT- or ACT-optional only for students with very good grades. But at Bates, applicants never have to submit their test scores, and half do not. The liberal-arts school, with about 1,700 students in central Maine, gets high marks on various college rankings. Students like Alex Chou, valedictorian at his Old Orchard Beach, Maine, high school, love the no-test-score option. "My high school did not prepare us for the SATs," he says. When Chou applied, he thought his 1220 score would hurt him, so he didn't submit it. He got in, and graduated this spring summa cumlaude. Once at Bates, students say they like that professors are hired particularly for their teaching ability, the relaxed social atmosphere free of fraternities and sororities, and the international atmosphere—70 percent of students study abroad.

Hottest for Science and Engineering
California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, Calif.

Caltech students think of themselves as geeks with power tools. On a beach weekend they may get sand kicked in their faces, but their assailant will soon find his car disassembled and reassembled on top of a lifeguard station, with the engine still running. There are only 900 undergraduates, and admission is very competitive: 17 percent get in. The lucky ones go on to reap the wealth and fame that come to them in an era in which so many of our troubles—global warming, rush-hour traffic, male-pattern baldness—are thought to be solvable if we just give scientists enough money. Even female Teachers say they have fun once they get used to attending one of the last colleges in America where women are still a distinct minority (30 percent). All students look forward to Ditch Day, when automobiles are sometimes found reassembled in side dorm rooms—with the engines still running.

Hottest Liberal-Arts School You Never Heard Of
Centenary College of Louisiana, Shreveport, La.

When Wendy Andreen, counselor at Memorial Senior High in Houston, visited Centenary, she discovered it had just 1,000 students—half the size of her school. She thought it was too small and too unknown, but then changed her mind. It's "a secret treasure packed with degree options, is five minutes away from a thriving downtown on the riverfront and is sitting on one of Hollywood's latest discoveries for movie locations," she says. It's also a Division I school, the smallest in the country. Centenary is a rare combination of academic innovation, with students creating their own majors, and big-time sports (except football). The college also has a solid reputation in various professions, from performing arts to geology.

Hottest for Rejecting You
Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.

This was a close one. Harvard rejected 91.03 percent of its applicants to the class of 2011. It seemed likely, once again, to win the trophy for Stingiest Admissions. But wait: Columbia College, part of Columbia University, rejected 91.05 of applicants. Its student newspaper declared it the winner. Some Columbia freshmen, however, attend the School of Engineering and Applied Science or the School of General Studies, which means that only 89.6 percent of applicants felt the pain. Not that any of the people who send out all those thin envelopes are happy about it. The über-selective Ivies know their admission process is a dreary march toward disappointment. The Harvard admissions office, the prime offender, particularly feels the strain. Its top officials recently coauthored an essay in The Harvard Crimson, saying they hoped the elimination of Early Decision (along with Princeton's and the University of Virginia's) will give students more time to consider where to apply. That may reduce autumn-application pressure, but nine out of 10 of those candidates will still likely be getting bad news.

Hottest for Election Year
Claremont McKenna College, Claremont, Calif.

Two of every five CMC students major in government/international relations. Most of the rest are also talking politics, the campus obsession. Few selective colleges in America have such ideologically balanced faculties and student bodies. Speakers like Bill Clinton and Justice Antonin Scalia dropped by last spring, and neither was tarred and feathered. CMC, one of the five Claremont Colleges, is vibrating with anticipation of the 2008 presidential race. Andrew Lee, a recent graduate and political junkie who created the Fantasy Congress Web site, says that on long campus weekends he and his friends would skip the beach and drive to a state with a hot election and knock on doors for their favorites.

Hottest on The Rebound
Tulane University, New Orleans, La.

Hurricane Katrina was a blow, forcing the students to abandon the campus just as school was starting in 2005. But the university's long reputation as an attractive option for ambitious high schoolers brought a rush of young talent back to the campus in numbers that surprised even Tulane's administrators. With nearly 1,400 students, the class of 2011 is 56 percent larger than the previous year's, a level the university thought would take three years to achieve.