Dartmouth College

The smallest school in the Ivy League, Dartmouth places a special emphasis on undergraduate pedagogy. You won't see teaching assistants leading much classroom instruction, as they do at many large schools. Dartmouth operates on an unusual, year-round quarter system, giving students the flexibility to arrange, say, a winter internship and still graduate on time. Partly as a result, 95% of undergraduates finish within six years. Recent graduates report earnings of $65,100 in the years after college, according to PayScale. Greek life is rich on campus; about half of students participate in a fraternity or sorority. In addition to the Dartmouth Outing Club, the oldest and largest such group in the country, the college organizes a freshman orientation program that gives incoming students the opportunity to explore the region's natural beauty by hiking the nearby Appalachian Trail and venturing further afield to Dartmouth's 27,000-acre wilderness expanse, a few hours north of the Hanover campus. Among its better-known alumni are New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, screenwriter and producer Shonda Rhimes, and actor Connie Britton.