According to collegecrunch.org the top 50 universities in America can vary depending on who you are asking. They have created a META ranking system that takes several variables into consideration when choosing their top 50. These variables include: technology infrastructure, student to teacher ratio, how diverse the university is, average GPA and, number of published papers from professors.
. For the year 2009, the site has nominated 50 schools that fall high in these categories. For more information on which schools where chosen you can go to the following link: http://www.collegecrunch.org/rankings/top-50-colleges-ranked-for-2009/