Most Academic Rigor

21) Cornell University
22) University of California, Berkeley
23) Dartmouth College
24) Vanderbilt University
25) University of Notre Dame
26) University of California, Los Angeles
27) Washington University
28) Amherst College
29) University of California, San Diego
30) Emory University

At the end of the day, employers aren’t gonna know what Harvey Mudd, Swarthmore, or Reed Colleges even are. Cornell’s got some of the best exits, along with a few others in the top 10 and Harvard. No chance Brown or Rice take any jobs from cornell kids, carnegie mellon only is good for CS, and U chicago is basically just arts and law students

doesnt CMU have a high ranked undergraduate business school (Tepper), top engineering programs on par with Columbia and Cornell, and a solid math department? also they have a great design school too. pretty sure CMU is on par with Cornell if not better in every single way except the name brand in the average public eye... in fact, I got into Cornell but not CMU. i would have chosen CMU over Cornell if you asked me as a senior, but I ended up falling in love with ithaca and the school so no regrets anymore.

also while I agree with you @Nah about employers (though a very skeptical about your statement of UChicago, considering its a world renown economics and hard science powerhouse), what this rank is talking about is "Academic rigor". sure your first job out of Cornell will likely be better than someone at Harvey Mudd or Rice and def better than Reed College-- but 4-10 years down the line, it's going to matter much more what you do as you progress in your career. if you aren't used to a rigorous, hyperintellectual, hyperdisciplined environment, you will not have a strong chance of getting ahead in your career. Someone at Princeton, UChicago, Columbia, UPenn or even CMU, would have had that environment and thats why these schools have much better longer term outcomes on average.

i mean just think about it- MIT and UChicago are known as just nerds and geeks. but then how come these schools are so prestigious and so well sought out career wise? even 10-20 years postgraduation, hearing "MIT" makes you want to hire that person. why? because you know they are super disciplined from the academic environment they were selected for back in college. a lot of students at Cornell really lack that "hyperdiscipline" that gets people like jeff bezos or elon musk or the best surgeons, professors and lawyers ahead. Cornell still has a massive population that does have this hyperdiscipline but its a much smaller percentage than at MIT or any of those top 10 schools

btw Bill Gates son at UChicago....