Forget the Ivy League -- you just need to go to a flagship university in California, Michigan, Washington or North Carolina if you want a world-class education.
Our friends at the Washington Monthly published their own ranking Monday of the best universities in the country, and only one Ivy League institution cracks the top 10.
A major difference between the Washington Monthly's ranking and other well-known lists is the magazine does not give credit to schools that reject the most applicants, electing instead to give "high marks to institutions that contribute to society, enroll low-income students."
The list is heavy on campuses from the University of California system, but we can't say we blame them. The University of Texas at Austin doesn't make the cut, but Texas A&M does, ranking ahead of both Harvard and Stanford. Compared to the U.S. News & World Report ranking, which the top 20 is entirely private schools, Washington Monthly's is mostly state universities. Brown, Columbia, Cornell and Yale all fail to even crack the top 50.
The rankings are based on factors under social mobility, research and service, which includes students going into the Peace Corps and ROTC. Full details are available at Washington Monthly's website, where you can see the full list of schools ranked.
See the top 14 below: