The 44 best small colleges in America

The benefits of going to a small school include more individualized attention from professors, getting to know more of your classmates, and a tighter-knit alumni community.

We recently published our list of the 50 best colleges in America.

The list ranks colleges by median starting salary, average SAT score, and a survey that asked more than 1,000 Business Insider readers to choose the colleges that best prepare their students for success after graduation. Read our full methodology here.

We looked at our full list of 100 colleges and filtered them to only include those with 5,000 or fewer undergrads, then reranked them here to find out which are the best small schools in America. Read on to see which schools made the list.

SEE ALSO: The 50 best colleges in America

SEE ALSO: The 24 best public colleges in America

44. Yeshiva University

Enrollment: 2,817

Median starting salary: Unavailable

The Jewish-affiliated school is home to just over 2,800 students on four different campuses around New York City. More than a fifth of the student body takes advantage of the university's year-long Joint Israel Program to study Jewish law and thought, philosophy, and Israeli culture and history. YU hosts one large multi-industry career fair each year, and a number of industry-specific ones, including fairs for finance, communications and marketing, nonprofits, and year-long service programs.

43. Sarah Lawrence College

Enrollment: 1,437

Median starting salary: $39,000

Courses at this Bronxville, New York-based liberal-arts school are taught in round table-style seminars with a student-to-faculty ratio of 10:1. SLC puts a heavy emphasis on writing and one-on-one time between students and professors — students write long term papers for every class with the guidance of their professors and academic advisors — which helps prepare students for rewarding careers at companies like The New York Times, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Viking/Penguin Books, the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and more.

42. Macalester College

Enrollment: 2,073

Median starting salary: $41,200

St. Paul, Minnesota's Macalaster College ranked seventh in the nation, according to US News, for commitment to teaching. And some of the classes taught at Macalester are quite unusual: The school is proud of its "cutting-edge courses" that bring out-of-the-box perspectives to today's global issues. Previous classes include "inside the animal mind," "constructions of a female killer," and "the automobile and the American environment."

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