Primary Colors: Three College Road Trips
One college lets you take your horse to school. Another gives you a reusable plastic cup when you're a first-year student and tells you, in the interests of the environment, to make it last four years. A third will never forget its roots: Before the Civil War, it was a cotton plantation worked by slaves; today, it offers students the promise of freedom through education.
Think all schools are alike? Not so. This guide lists more than 1,400 four-year colleges and universities, each with a character all its own. To balance the claims of one institution against another, most high schoolers with college aspirations head out with their more-or-less-willing moms or dads on road trips ("If it was Occidental yesterday, it must be Pepperdine today"). U.S. News decided to do the same thing. We sent out three reporters—minus parents. In Texas, we looked at four campuses from the perspective of a family looking for an affordable berth in a big state system. Ohio gave us four liberal arts colleges. We also visited four Northeast campuses with strong science programs. Read on to see what we found...:
Texas
Profiles by Carol Frey
Video: State Schools in Texas
Where better than Texas for a road trip to size up what a state's college system has to offer? The Lone Star State guarantees Texas high school students in the top 10 percent of their class a place at the state institution of their choice. We visited four such schools, all within a hot afternoon's drive of downtown Houston but all with a very different feel, to see what set them apart.
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Ohio
Profiles by Alex Kingsbury
Video: Liberal Arts in the Midwest
Liberal arts colleges hold a special place in American higher education because of their focus on undergraduates, and, like several other midwestern states, Ohio has a strong heritage in this field. We visited four colleges and universities within a short drive of downtown Cleveland. Enrollment ranged from a few hundred students to 3,000 plus, but it was the diversity of what they had to offer that stood out.:
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Northeast
Profiles by Emily Brandon
Video: Science in the Northeast
Studying science in college can mean cutting-edge research, and it can put you on the fast track to graduate school. But picking the right place takes more than donning a lab coat and goggles for the official tour. You'll want to ask about opportunities for undergraduate research—and figure out the often quirky culture of your fellow scientists.:
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