Just as I was ready to boast of Hamilton College's -- or the school I attended from 2007 to 2011 -- #4 ranking on Unigo's top ten most wired colleges in America (warning, you need to register, for free, to view the whole list), I saw rival Colgate at #3 (just 20 miles away from Hamilton; I know this because I once almost ran the distance) while remembering how little I know about computer technology. Still, it's good to see the alma mater in any type of ranking. Below is the "other eight," which first caught my attention from an article on the Huffington Post.
1. Pomona College
2. Georgia Tech
3. Colgate University
4. Hamilton College
5. Washington University in St. Louis
6. Carnegie Mellon University
7. Dennison University
8. Wake Forest University
9. Harvey Mudd College
10. University of Richmond
No M.I.T.? Apparently, boasting some of the most advanced computer technology in the country isn't enough to make Unigo's list. Rather, the college review website seemed to focus on schools with perhaps more practical technological layouts. I can't speak as much for the other institutions, but that makes sense for a school like Hamilton. Besides citing a 2-to-1 student to computer ratio (which may have something do with the size of the student body, approximately 1,700, and a proportionally large campus), Unigo mentioned the liberal arts college's research intensive regime, backed by an extensive online network of scholarly articles. Similarly convenient to students, Unigo praised Colgate for a newly installed campus wireless system and their recently structured computer science program. At Georgia tech, it was, among other things, an online master's program costing participants just $7,000.
M.I.T. may have the best pure tools and the most brilliant professors, but those resources probably only add complexity to their students' lives (which they likely want anyway). Schools on Unigo's list are "wired" to help make the college experience as technologically friendly and efficent as possible, while also offering the students the possibility to move on in that field, if they should so desire.
At the same time, M.I.T. and institutions like it may contain all the conveniency and practicality schools on Unigo's top ten reportedly offer -- Maybe I'm over-worshipping the country's most uber elite colleges, maybe not. On the company's website, they don't actually explain the criteria from which they derived their list. Thus, the safest conclusion to draw is that the schools mentioned are definitely technologically savvy. Whether they are the best in that regard is too difficult to say, based on Unigo's subjective grading.
