The College Board tool (linked above) also allows students to sort based on costs, location, setting, and program emphasis. I wanted to mention that there are ways of looking at the qualitative factors that you're interested in.
The one sorting tool that we've looked (unsuccessfully) for is one that would allow sorting on the basis of
pedagogy/academic culture. That is, are most classes taught with an interactive, intimate kind of philosophy involving
faculty and classmates, or are they taught as cogs in a larger well-oiled 'machine' that has more-or-less interchangeable parts and uses the same script year after year while only the players (students, instructors) change? (That's not to say that the latter, if high-quality, isn't good for some students-- it's a learning style issue, mostly.)
In that mode, one must rely more on "best party school" lists as a negative indicator; in some sense also on size as a proxy for "more probably large/impersonal and less interactive." Research institutions may have a focus on
efficiency at the lower-division undergraduate level, too.
I'm mentioning that because there are some limitations that I think it is important to be aware of when using sorting tools.
None of these measures are perfect, as you're probably well aware, and as soon as there IS a measurement tool, colleges will begin jockeying and 'spin-control' to make themselves look more appealing using that tool.
Forbes also had a recent college sorting tool that was fairly remarkable in that it differs significantly from the rubric that USN&WR uses, and also differs from College Board's.
Triangulation is a pretty good way to find institutions that offer what interests you-- at least theoretically. It's also a good way to find schools that make PR a top priority. Obviously.
