AMERICA'S 25 HOT SCHOOLS

HOTTEST LIBRARY
Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.
Harvard's library system ranks with the best of any kind in the country, even the Library of Congress. "It contains the largest collection of every kind of book and bit of information anyone would ever want," says library director Sidney Verba. The collection includes more than 15 million volumes, 5.5 million microforms, 6.5 million manuscripts and 5 million other research materials such as photographs, maps and recordings. Even undergraduates take advantage of these resources for writing term papers and senior theses. Harvard's digital collection is particularly strong, and a big draw for students who want access to just about every online journal around.

HOTTEST RIDING SCHOOL
Hollins University, Roanoke, Va.
Located in the rolling hills of Virginia's horse country, Hollins offers outstanding training for equestriennes. With fewer than 800 women undergraduates, the school is a regular winner of the Old Dominion Athletic Conference championship, and the Hollins team has captured seven top 10 finishes in the Intercollegiate Horse Show As-sociation. Many Hollins students work with horses after gradua-tion as trainers, riders or veterinarians. But if they decide to get out of the saddle, the school also offers a strong liberal-arts program and a highly regarded creative-writing curriculum with dozens of famous grads (including Margaret Wise Brown, Annie Dillard and Lee Smith).

HOTTEST ARCHITECTURE
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass.
President Charles Vest is leaving his mark with an ambitious $1 billion construction program that includes Steven Holl's Simmons Hall, a controversial aluminum-clad dormitory that opened in 2002, and Fumihiko Maki's expansion of the Media Lab. The biggest buzz surrounds the Stata Center, a computer-science building by Frank Gehry that opened in spring 2004. The raucous, lighthearted exterior belies purpose-ful planning inside: the center not only contains labs for the "intelligence sciences" but also connects corridors and public spaces in a way that encourages spontaneous collaboration. MIT calls it an "intellectual village."

HOTTEST FOR FITNESS
University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Va.
Long before the invention of the treadmill, Thomas Jefferson, the founder of UVA, wrote: "A strong body makes the mind strong." UVA follows that adage by offering both varsity competitors and weekend warriors some of the best fitness facilities in the country. Associate athletics director Mark Fletcher says 94 percent of all students use one of the four indoor recreation centers, which together make up 300,000 square feet of pools, running tracks, weight rooms and classrooms for yoga and kickboxing. The school also maintains a 23-acre park for outdoor field sports and jogging.

HOTTEST FOR DIVERSITY
Wesleyan University, Middletown, Conn.
"We want to include everyone who would benefit and contribute to the kinds of discussions we have in classes," says Dean of Admissions Nancy Meislahn. More than a third are "students of color," and 7 percent are international students. An additional 15 percent are the first in their family to attend a four-year college. The result, Wesleyan officials say, is a great range of perspectives in the classroom.

HOTTEST FOR THE TECH-SAVVY
Dartmouth College, Hanover, N.H.
Dartmouth's first computer was so expensive that only faculty and administrators were allowed to use it. But Profs. John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz understood that computers were tools for everyone. Forty years ago they created the computer language BASIC, which helped hasten the personal-computer revolution. The school has been in the forefront of technological change ever since, with one of the first e-mail programs and an early campus computer network. Dartmouth was also the first Ivy to install Wi-Fi on campus. The school offers free software to students so they can turn their laptops into telephones using the school's Wi-Fi--a good thing, because regular cell-phone service on the rural campus can be spotty.