The 10 Most INTELLECTUAL Colleges (PHOTOS)

For most college students, there's a differentiation between life inside the classroom and out; there's a time to be cerebral and then there's the other 22 hours of the day. Unigo looked for schools that cater to students who happily spend all their waking hours in pursuit of intellectual stimulation, questioning life, challenging the status quo and letting their curiosity run wild. Thirty thousand student votes later, they identified the top ten schools where being a "nerd" (as they often, and lovingly, refer to themselves) is truly the norm.

Do you agree or disagree? What makes a school "intellectual" to you? Weigh in below.

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Brown University

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The students at Brown University are said to be among the most intellectual and eccentric of all the Ivy Leaguers. Part of this reputation stems from Brown’s progressive educational philosophy: students can choose to take any course pass-fail, and there are no core requirements. As a result, students only take the courses that interest them and rarely stop talking about their academics. “Everyone in every class has chosen to be there,” writes a senior majoring in English. “Interesting and engaged students then leave class and chat long into the night about every topic you can imagine, hours after classes are done,” another says. One student sums it up: “Overall, and fostered by our open curriculum, Brown students are unique in that we get to place an extremely high value on creativity, on intellectual independence, and on a real, honest passion for learning and being.”

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The students at Brown University are said to be among the most intellectual and eccentric of all the Ivy Leaguers. Part of this reputation stems from Brown’s progressive educational philosophy: students can choose to take any course pass-fail, and there are no core requirements. As a result, students only take the courses that interest them and rarely stop talking about their academics. “Everyone in every class has chosen to be there,” writes a senior majoring in English. “Interesting and engaged students then leave class and chat long into the night about every topic you can imagine, hours after classes are done,” another says. One student sums it up: “Overall, and fostered by our open curriculum, Brown students are unique in that we get to place an extremely high value on creativity, on intellectual independence, and on a real, honest passion for learning and being.”

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Comments

[emncaity]

07:53 PM on 10/11/2010

Would be nice, on a list like this, to mention the locations as well. I happen to know where almost all of them are, just because I taught at three universities, worked in college curriculum development for nine years, and was a sports information director and basketball broadcaster at a small college for a while. But a lot of people won't know where many of these smaller colleges are.

[Amherst14]

02:40 PM on 10/04/2010

Just cause emma watson goes to brown doesn't mean it should be the #1 intellectual school....deeply disappointed that wesleyan is put in this list ahead of Amherst and Williams who have always been ranked ahead of Wesleyan in everything and anything, except for smoking and drugs.

[snesich]

05:47 PM on 09/21/2010

Good list. But Hampshire College should be on this list too.

[Julie Salem]

04:49 PM on 09/20/2010

You forgot Wellesley College - all women but as intellectual as you can get.

[tobynsaunders]

11:22 AM on 09/19/2010

The University of West Georgia might be one of the most anti-intellectual colleges... it hired Newt Gingrich, methamphetamine addicts are lighting up in restrooms around campus, I took advanced level Spanish from a former Korean communist soldier & DIDN'T learn Spanish because HE cheated, if you get raped the univeristy offers you sleeping pills & leaves it at that, oh & it teaches 'humanistic psychology' which means it teaches hippie-New Age-philosophy which considers spirituality to be scientific. It spends LOTS on frat & sorority houses & sports facilites & then treats academic funding like an afterthought!

[Black Guy at Cornell]

03:21 AM on 09/11/2010

By "intellectual" this article means "having eclectic interests that do not include drinking, sports, fraternities, sororities, video games, or anything else that college is supposed to be used for". That's why Brown is the only Ivy on here; it's got zero party scene and virtually no social scene.

[kanku]

12:41 PM on 09/11/2010

aw. sounds like someone did not get into their first choice and had to settle on the loser ivy. bitter much?

[bkrider9]

12:55 PM on 09/12/2010

Doesn't sound like that at all.

Project much?

[Black Guy at Cornell]

09:14 PM on 09/15/2010

For the record, I got into Yale, Dartmouth, Cornell, Vanderbilt, USC, Texas, OU, OSU AND Columbia. Whatever helps you sleep at night, bro!

[Vincent Vega]

12:11 AM on 09/14/2010

As a current Brown student, I can safely say you couldn't be farther from the truth.

[Black Guy at Cornell]

09:14 PM on 09/15/2010

Um...so Brown is more "intellectual" than Harvard and Yale AND Princeton AND MIT AND Stanford? Survey says...not quite.

[Will Chapman]

12:30 PM on 09/10/2010

The open curriculum is what sold me to transfer there, plus the fact that the students seemed happy. I had had a professor at my previous college who told me I couldn't study Greek and Chinese at the same time. I did just that at Brown.

[BosqueVerde]

11:52 AM on 09/10/2010

This is a great category! Go HuffPost. Any university on this list should be proud..

[omabluebird]

10:16 PM on 09/09/2010

I live in Grinnell, and I love interacting with these amazing students. But I am amazed at the quote where the student says it might be warm enough to "lay out" in the grass. I despair for the English language when a very bright college student says lay instead of lie in the grass.

[midwifemama]

04:58 PM on 09/18/2010

As a Grinnell alum, I feel called to defend the grammar of this student at my alma mater. The phrase "lay out" is the cultural vernacular term for sunbathing. Grinnellians, while highly intellectual, are notoriously unpretentious.

[sempronia]

09:10 PM on 09/09/2010

I know people who went to many of these colleges -- some of them are a little off-beat, but all of them have been smart people, and I got to know them in some very nerdy settings! (*cough* Latin camp *cough*)

[bkrider9]

08:10 AM on 09/10/2010

Latin camp?

Oh yeah, that comes right before the renaissance festival.

[sempronia]

11:49 AM on 09/11/2010

3 weeks in Rome. Much, much cooler.

[StCuthbert]

10:42 PM on 09/08/2010

Yeah Haverford! 

[MSGH]

09:18 PM on 09/08/2010

Interesting that, where politics is mentioned, the intellectual students are also liberal.

[sempronia]

09:11 PM on 09/09/2010

yup.

[coblstone]

05:28 PM on 09/08/2010

talk not, do or do not

[bkrider9]

06:33 PM on 09/08/2010

Well said, Master Yoda.

[future primitive]

09:30 AM on 09/08/2010

Now show us the 10 most intelligent universities, please.

[healthanalyst]

07:09 PM on 09/08/2010

Beck U?

[TheSardonicAtheist]

07:52 PM on 09/08/2010

Sadly, that is not a real University. Might you try Clown University?

[themodernleader]

07:08 AM on 09/08/2010

As in third world nations in the Middle East, we are schooling our new generations with ideas that have no way of providing a means of living, a competence that can support a family, a foundation for growth and development through life. This group will likely foment revolution among out tens of millions of unemployed humanity willing and wanting to work. Our idle millions are a time bomb wanting to be set off by the right intellectual ideology and demigoguery.
The failure of our government is paving a path towards a repeat of the end decades of the Roman Republic. We are a selfish, self-centered and arrogant leadership of speculators of the fast, unearned buck. We are walking in a cognitive dream world unknown to our approaching disaster. We are a pathetic and cowardly leadership. We are taking the road to perdition and ruin.

[mn07]

11:53 AM on 09/09/2010

hahaha

[sempronia]

09:31 PM on 09/09/2010

1) If we're going to foment a revolt, at least it's going to be leftist!

(and if you're interested in right intellectual ideology and demagoguery, look no further than the Tea Party who, if average age is any indication, came from a few generations before they stopped schooling us on providing a means of living, etc.)

2) Ah, the fall of the Roman Republic. There are enough classicists from these schools to examine that comparison. And... well... demagoguery? Check. Self-interested politicians who can't get out of deeply entrenched, archaic ideas and react to present circumstances? Check. Dueling generalissimi with quasi-private armies paid for by successful foreign conquest that completely overwhelm all other political factors? Well, not yet... Questionable public morals? Vivamus mea Lesbia atque amemus!

Additionally, Glenn Beck's flight of geese is an indicator that he is going to build a rival America on the Aventine Hill.

3) I do agree with you in certain ways, and I'm messing around a little. But seriously -- those liberal arts degrees were fine for my mother's generation, and I feel like mine has at least given me the flexibility to learn new skills, and the sense of history and rhetoric to know when some politician/celebrity is full of cr*p. And while my generation is going to have to rise to the challenge very soon, a lot of the disappointment and selfishness is coming from the older generation. I worry more about cleaning this damage.