11 Underrated Colleges Where You Can Get A Great Education

Peter Jacobs

Mar 5, 2014, 23:11 IST

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Last week, we wrote about a new ranking from QS that found that Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are the best American universities for 80% of academic subjects.

However, we wanted to find out what schools shined outside of the Boston-based powerhouses. Using U.S. News & World Report's university rankings as a reference, here are the best specific academic programs that you don't need to go to a top ranked school for.

We created this list by looking at QS' rankings of the top academic programs for American universities, and then eliminated any school that appeared in U.S. News' top 25 universities. We've included where each school appeared in the QS rankings for American universities on our list below.

QS uses three distinct data sets - including their own academic and employer reputation surveys - to produce their World University Rankings by Subject. While this list is still dominated by a handful of schools, it definitely offers more of a range in focus and accessibility than Harvard and MIT. The University of Michigan appeared the most in our revised rankings, topping eight subjects, including Modern Languages and Mechanical Engineering.

Here are 11 underrated universities and the subjects they excel in:

University of Michigan: