What do Dartmouth, Princeton, Yale, and Brown all have in common? Duh; they’re all Ivy League schools. But here’s a trickier question: What do Dartmouth, Princeton, Yale, Brown, and UMBC all have in common?
According to the US News & World Report’s annual college ranking, those schools boast the best undergraduate teaching in the nation. Perhaps that’s not so surprising when it comes to big-ticket Ivy League schools — when you’re paying $50k for one year of undergrad tuition, you’d better hope the teaching is good! But as a middle-ranked public school with a lot of commuting students, UMBC is a bit of an outlier on the list. Which makes the accolade even more impressive.
Of course, UMBC’s no stranger to praise; US News has consistently ranked it the nation’s top “up-and-coming” school. And everyone knows UMBC president Freeman Hrabowski’s one of the smartest and most influential guys in the greater Baltimore area. But I imagine that being ranked among the Ivies probably never gets old. Nice job, UMBC.
UMBC has a better Chess team than the 4 Ivies and is virtually always in the top 3 in the nation and frequently number 1.
What is a “UMBC”?
University of Maryland Baltimore County
This recognition is very consistent with our son’s experience. He has attended some very fine schools and believes the teachers he has engaged with at UMBC are some of the best he has ever met.