Admission difficulty: Medium

School size: Small

Tuition: About $27,000 per year

Typical student: "Hi my name is ____ and I come from [insert small, Nebraska farming community here] where I was involved in every single extracurricular offered and was the most popular kid in school. While at Doane I plan to drink every day, join a Doane-only fraternity/sorority and become homecoming royalty."

Upon graduation, one is likely to: Teach at an elementary school in the middle of nowhere; get married to another Doane grad; do crazy research in Germany on a Fulbright; and/or wonder why the rest of the world hasn't instituted Stop Day

Important Doane lingo: Stop Day—classes officially canceled; students permitted to drink to oblivion, canoe across the pond and compete in ridiculous tournaments; chaos commences

Athletics: The football team is so bad it makes former Nebraska national championship quarterbacks resign as head coach in embarrassment; about 50 percent of the student body is on the track team, and they make it to nationals every year; the forensics team is better in competition than all of them

Pros: Thanks to very loyal alumni, the school is loaded; some of the best professors in the Midwest, and they actually care about their students; traveling to Africa, India, Thailand or any other foreign country for credit is a frequent and affordable opportunity; it's a wet campus

Cons: The Crete population is about 6,000 and is home to a dog food factory and three old-man bars; the media relations department has used the same two or three people to illustrate how "diverse" the student population is for the past five years; you better like dorm life, because you're stuck on campus all four years; you'll know EVERYONE by the time you graduate, and probably before.

Lindsy Mercer graduated Doane in 2008.