Brenau named one of 20 'most rigorous' colleges

GAINESVILLE - Sandwiched between Amherst College (#15) and MIT (#17), Brenau University has been named one of the country's 20 "most rigorous" colleges and universities by The Daily Beast.

The list includes such well-known schools as Duke University, Stanford, Harvard, Princeton, Yale and Columbia, which tops the list - in addition to a number of lesser-known colleges and universities.

According to The Daily Beast website, in determining the most rigorous schools, "we looked at both the competitiveness of student peers and of instructors. We analyzed the data on the selectivity of admissions and the student-to-faculty ratio from the National Center for Education Statistics, as well as the student ratings for workload manageability and smartest professors from College Prowler. Lastly, we considered the percentage of classes with fewer than 20 students. All factors were weighted equally."

The data on Brenau which is also on the website reads:

Smartest Professors (score out of 10): 9.2
Acceptance Rate: 33.8%
Student-to-Faculty Ratio: 8:1
Classes with fewer than 20 students: 81.7%
Workload (score out of 10): 8.1

The Daily Beast, if you are not familiar with it, owns Newsweek magazine and is run by a former head of the New Yorker and Vanity Fair magazines, according to Brenau spokesman David Morrison.

According to its website, "The Daily Beast was founded in 2008 as the vision of Tina Brown and IAC Chairman Barry Diller. Curated to avoid information overload, the site is dedicated to breaking news and sharp commentary. It regularly attracts more than 15 million unique online visitors a month. It is updated seven days per week, 24 hours per day. Deidre Depke is the managing director of The Daily Beast. John Avlon is the executive editor."