Photo by Lance Hayashida/Caltech.
Tied with Northwestern University at No. 12, the California Institute of Technology was the top Southern California school on the annual Best Colleges Rankings released Tuesday by U.S. News & World Report — a list topped once again by Princeton University.
USC was in 23rd place and UCLA was ranked 24th, tied with Carnegie Mellon and the University of Virginia.
But things weren’t that bad for the Bruins. When a list of the best public universities was segmented out of the main list, UCLA was in second place, tied with the University of Virginia.
Caltech is known across the nation as the academic home of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. But it’s perhaps better known as where the nerd stars work in TV’s monster hit, “Big Bang Theory.” The TV show may be wildly popular, but only JPL is real.
Among liberal arts colleges, two local schools were in the top 10 — Pomona College and Claremont McKenna College, with both tied with two other colleges.
—City News Service