The second most desirable colleges in the U.S. are Harvard and Radcliffe, says the top 8% of 1,500,000 high school entrants in the National Merit Scholarship competition. So who's on first and so on down to tenth? The bright kids' picking order, according to a three-year survey:
BOYS
M.I.T.
Harvard
Stanford
Caltech
California (Berkeley)
Yale
Princeton
Cornell
Columbia
Michigan
GIRLS
Stanford
Radcliffe
Cornell
California (Berkeley)
Michigan
Wellesley
Duke
Northwestern
Columbia (Barnard)
Smith
...