Teach for America, a non-profit organization that aims to eradicate educational inequity among children, has released its annual rankings of colleges and universities contributing the largest number of graduates to its 2012 teaching corps.

University of California- Berkley, Northwestern University and Wellesley College have topped the list in their respective categories of large, medium and small schools.

The organization was established by Wendy Kopp, after she developed the idea to help eliminate educational inequality in the United States for her senior thesis at Princeton University in 1989.

Teach For America recruits on more than 600 college campuses, seeking seniors and graduates from all academic majors and backgrounds who have demonstrated achievement, perseverance, and leadership.

The selected are usually top college graduates and professionals. They have to teach for two years in urban and rural public schools and become lifelong leaders in the pursuit of educational opportunity for all students.

In 2012, about 5800 individuals committed themselves to the cause. Together with the 2011 corps, they make up more than 10,000 members leading high-need classrooms in 46 regions that span 36 states and the District of Columbia.

"We are grateful to the outstanding colleges and universities that cultivate graduates with the leadership skills and determination to address one of our nation's greatest injustices, the disparity in educational opportunity between children in low-income communities and their wealthier peers," said chief executive officer Kopp.

"These corps members bring a diversity of experiences and accomplishments to the classroom, and they all share a powerful commitment to work toward solving this problem."

The ranking has three categories, large schools with more than 10,000 undergraduates, medium schools with 3,000 to 9,999 undergraduates and small schools with fewer than 2,999 undergrads.

The list of top five schools and number of undergrads they contributed to the 2012 corps goes like this:-

Large Schools:

University of California, Berkley - 88

University of Florida-78

University of California-75 / University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill-75

University of Michigan, Ann Arbor-71 / University of Southern California-71

Penn State, University Park-64

Medium Schools:

Northwestern University-63

Harvard University-62

Georgetown University-61

Boston College-53

Tulane University-41

Small Schools:

Wellesley College-21

Amherst College-19/ DePauw University-19

Colorado College-18/ Denison University-18

Barnard College - 17

Middlebury College-15

For the complete list:-

https://www.teachforamerica.org/sites/default/files/2012.Top_.Contributors.pdf