Brainz

The 2012 rankings for the 50 Best Colleges & Universities have been released. Coming in at the number 1 spot is Princeton University.

According to the rankings publisher:

"We set out to create a college ranking that does a better job of measuring the things that prospective students and their parents actually care about than other major ranking systems like U.S. News & World Report."

To do that, they looked beyond standard ranking indicators used by other major ranking systems like U.S. News & World Report and Princeton Review to also consider the economic value of each school and the quality of life offered by the city or town it is located in.

Here is the official top 50 list of the 50 best colleges and universities for 2012 ranked by The Best Colleges (there is much more information about each school at the original article):

1. Princeton University
2. Harvard University
3. The College of William & Mary
4. Swarthmore College
5. Massachusetts Institute of Technology
6. Williams College
7. Amherst College
8. Stanford University
9. California Institute of Technology
10. Yale University
11. University of Pennsylvania
12. University of North Carolina
13. Duke University
14. Washington and Lee University
15. University of Virginia
16. Vanderbilt University
17. Colgate University
18. Rice University
19. Brown University
20. Pomona College
21. University of Michigan
22. Cooper Union
23. University of California-Berkeley
24. Dartmouth College
25. Claremont McKenna College
26. Texas A&M University
27. University of California-Davis
28. Georgia Institute of Technology
29. Davidson College
30. University of Notre Dame
31. Cornell University
32. Harvey Mudd College
33. Carleton College
34. Bucknell University
35. University of Washington
36. University of Florida
37. University of Texas at Austin
38. Purdue University
39. University of Chicago
40. Bowdoin College
41. University of California at Los Angeles
42. Berea College
43. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
44. Wellesley College
45. Northwestern University
46. Columbia University
47. Georgetown University
48. Washington University in St. Louis
49. Middlebury College
50. Emory University

For details about each school and photos, you can visit the official rankings at 50 Best Colleges & Universities in America for 2012. Each school is accompanied by useful information and two photos.