Touring prestigious and notable universities in the U.S.

Many foreign visitors to the United States of America, especially those with pre-college-age children thinking about studying abroad, are interested in touring its famous universities and colleges. This article is a short overview of university tourism in the U.S., focused on the nation's most prestigious research and educational institutions as well as the most notable and historic campuses.

For more detailed information about visiting the individual schools here, you will find extensive information for visitors on their own websites, which should be considered the most up-to-date source of information, as well as the linked Wikivoyage city articles.

The Ivy League, which you will often hear Americans discussing, refers to a group of 8 prestigious private universities on the East Coast: Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Princeton, Penn and Yale. While officially a sports confederation, all members are also considered academically to be among the most prestigious universities in the world. However, not all prestigious universities in the United States are members of the Ivy League, and there are non-Ivy League universities like MIT and Stanford which rank alongside them.

The top American liberal arts colleges, including Amherst, Swarthmore, Pomona, Wellesley, and Williams, are smaller than the Ivies and cater exclusively to undergraduates. They are not as well-known, but don't be fooled — they're just as hard to get into and equally respected among American elites, and many experts believe they offer a better, more intimate educational experience. Additionally, there are some specialized schools, such as Curtis and Juilliard for music, that are considered the premier choice within their domain but are not covered here.

There are also some graduate-only institutions that do not admit undergraduates. These often specialize in specific fields; examples include the University of California, San Francisco, CUNY Graduate Center, Rockefeller University and Baylor College of Medicine.

East Coast
New England and the Mid-Atlantic are home to the densest cluster of the top American universities, and therefore a good place to start the tour&mdash;you can cover a lot of institutions without having to spend too much time in transit.

Mid-Atlantic




Get around
Nearly all of the East Coast universities are easily reachable by the Boston-Washington Amtrak Northeast Corridor rail line, although it is much faster to fly between far-flung cities on the Corridor (Boston to Washington is a 90-minute flight versus an eight-hour train ride on the Northeast Regional or a seven-hour ride on the more expensive Acela). Boston, New York City, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. and cities between are also served by commercial bus lines, the cheapest of which are Chinatown bus services, which travel between the Chinatowns in the four major cities (as well as midtown in New York City; Chinatown in NYC is downtown, and so the buses serve both locations). Road travel, whether by bus or by car, may not be the best option for the farthest-flung points. Car travel can be a nightmare in tangled cities like Boston and New York.

Get around
Travel to the West Coast can occur through a variety of routes, but most will fly into San Francisco or Los Angeles. For cheaper rates, consider flying into Sacramento or Ontario (California), and renting a car for travel. If driving, some of these universities are in some of the heaviest auto traffic areas in the United States. Ask locals about "rush hour" times (the busiest traffic). The fastest route to travel between San Francisco and Los Angeles is taking Interstate 80 out of San Francisco, changing to Interstate 580 in Oakland and merging onto Interstate 5 in the Central Valley; US Highway 101 is more direct and offers gorgeous coastal views but is a slower and longer drive; expect traffic bottlenecks south of San Jose and west of Thousand Oaks.

Get around
The Midwest is in general a very car-dependent region of the U.S., so renting or bringing your car is for the most part the best way to get around. The Chicago metropolitan area is fairly accessible by public transport, and Northwestern University is accessible on the Chicago "L". The University of Chicago is surrounded by rough neighborhoods, so care should be taken traveling to the campus.

Get around
The southern United States is a large geographic area with an excellent network of interstate highways connecting major metropolitan areas. In some cases, however, driving in between Southern cities may take a prohibitive amount of time and flying to certain locations (e.g., Texas) from other parts of the South may be more efficient.

For the universities in the Research Triangle (Duke and UNC), the closest airport is Raleigh-Durham International Airport. Buses connect the airport to the universities and the universities to each other, though driving is the most popular mode of transport in this region.

Go next
Canada's universities are also extremely popular with foreign students, but there isn't nearly the same variation between them as in the United States. Unlike in the U.S., Canadian schools are almost all funded by the government and fees are capped in most programs (for Canadians, anyway), so there isn't the same cutthroat competition for wealthy students and donors on the basis of reputation. Nevertheless, the oldest and largest schools do have a certain cachet. The biggest schools are all part the U15 Group of Canadian Research Universities.