While it can be easy to despair of the actual education obtained by college students on today’s campuses,  there is a list of  schools with some of their remarkable achievements for the year 2014.

Here is a sampling from list, which features some College Insurrection favorites, and are heavy on sports and science.

…1. UCLA

– Jordan Adams’ three-pointer broke a 68-68 tie with 45 seconds left against Arizona, allowing UCLA to win the Pac-12 men’s basketball tournament title. It vaulted the Bruins into a better spot for the NCAA tournament, where they reached a regional semifinal before losing to playoff nemesis Florida.

…17. UC Berkeley

– UC Berkeley engineers develop fitness trackers could soon add blood-oxygen levels to the list of vital signs measured with new technology.

– UC Berkeley scientists have found mounting brain evidence that helps explain how humans have excelled at “relational reasoning,” a cognitive skill in which we discern patterns and relationships to make sense of seemingly unrelated information, such as solving problems in unfamiliar circumstances.

…23. Rutgers University

– A team of Rutgers researchers from Bonnie Firestein’s lab assisted last semester in the discovery of a protein to detect the symptoms of schizophrenia in order to treat the polygenic disorder.

…26. Purdue University

–A laboratory at Purdue University provided a critical part of the world’s first transistor in 1947 – the purified germanium semiconductor – and now researchers here are on the forefront of a new germanium milestone. In new findings, Purdue researchers show how to use germanium to produce two types of transistors needed for CMOS electronic devices.

– A Purdue University student won an engineering competition that sought ideas for extracting heavy oil from Alaska’s North Slope.

…34. UC San Diego

– UC San Diego’s Trident Rocket Club recently released a balloon high into the atmosphere to test some electronics that it will include in a rocket scheduled to fly next year. The balloon also was fitted with a camera that peered down at Earth from 80,000 feet, taking stark images of parts of Southern California, particularly the Salton Sea.

…43. Brown University

– We found out Brown Alumni,  Susan Bennett ’71 was the voice of Siri

It seems Cornell University didn’t make this list, though it was on the list of “Top 25 Schools with Best Off-Campus Dining”.