What school is racked, stacked and wired

Q: My friends and I are currently in 11th grade. We are all very into technology and we would like to attend colleges that can satisfy our need to constantly be "wired" and "connected." Can you give us guidance on some colleges that satisfy this need?

A: Most colleges today realize the importance of technology and attempt to integrate it into their campus experiences. However, some colleges do a better job of this than others. Approximately a year and a half ago, PC Magazine teamed up with the Princeton Review and put together a ranking of the Top 20 Wired Colleges.

In order to put together this ranking, PC Magazine sent out surveys to all the schools in the Princeton Review's guidebook, The Best 361 Colleges. Based on the survey results, they came up with their list of the top 20.

No. 1 on the list, which may come as a surprise to some, beating out schools such as MIT and Stanford, is Villanova. Villanova, located in a Philadelphia suburb, is ranked first for a number of reasons. All incoming freshman at Villanova receive free Dell laptops loaded with all the necessary software. Villanova has its own tech support with "guaranteed 24-hour turnaround time" and because all the students have the same computer, Villanova's tech support is very good at diagnosing and fixing problems. Students at Villanova receive another new Dell laptop at the end of their sophomore year, which they are free to take with them once they graduate.

Another reason Villanova is No. 1 on the list is because of its finance lab. In this "state-of-the-art trading floor that doubles as a classroom, filled with stock tickers, LCDs, and Bloomberg workstations," both undergraduate and graduate finance majors make trades with real money, over $100,000, in real-time thanks to a generous donor.

Almost every college in the top ten has amazing technological aspects to its campus from No. 2 MIT's own Unix-based, campuswide operating system to number ten University of Oklahoma offering its students "up to 1GB of online storage, free Web space, and access to the university's more than 1,000 Dell and Apple computers" throughout campus.

Rounding out the ranking's top nine are No. 3, Indiana University, Bloomington; No. 4, Swarthmore College; No. 5, Creighton University; No. 6, University of Illinois; No. 7, Michigan Tech University; No. 8, University of Southern California; and No. 9, Quinnipiac University.

As you can see, there are big universities and small colleges on this list, public schools and private schools, but they all have one thing in common, great technology. You and your friends may want to research some of these schools to see if any of them would be a good fit for you.

http://www.paloaltodailynews.com/article/2008-4-5-katz
Reprinted by permission, Palo Alto Daily News. Jason Katz ©4.05.2008 All rights reserved. This article may be printed for your personal use, but may not be reprinted in whole or in part in any publication or website without permission. www.jkatzcollegecounseling.com