beat out by MIT ($1.128B), Johns Hopkins ($1.072B), and Stanford ($848.1M).

Incidentally, all 4 are a top-100 happiest school.

beat U of Wisconsin-Madison ($738.7M), U of Michigan ($713.2M), Penn State ($693.4M), and U of Minnesota-Twin Cities ($672.1M), and others, ending with Amridge Univ ($0.0K).

914 out of the other 3,121 colleges were ruled out due to missing, unknown, or not-applicable values for research spending, e.g., U of Phoenix-Online Campus.

1. Spending on research and public services is from the Finance Data File 2009 (Revised March 2012) as reported by the National Center for Education Statistics (http://nces.ed.gov/ipeds).
   

Duke is in Durham, NC, is private and nonprofit, is in the Atlantic Coast Conference, is United Methodist, research intensive, a top-100 happiest school, a member of the American Association of Universities, accepts the Common Application, has a Phi Beta Kappa chapter, has a hospital, has a law school, has a nursing major, has had a Final Four men's basketball team, offers a Doctor of Medicine degree, offers on-campus housing, plays division I/FBS football, requires test scores for undergrad admissions, was attended by a U.S. President, its top major is economics, is on the semester system, its top Masters major is business administration and management, its top Doctoral major is law, and enrolls from 10,000 to 19,999 students.

• Wall St. Journal feeder school ranking (6th place)
• USNews MBA ranking (11th place)
• USNews law school ranking (11th place)
• Times Higher Education world ranking (17th place)
• Webometrics world ranking (25th place)
• ARWU world ranking (31st place)
• PayScale mid-career median salary ranking (44th place)
• research spending ($758.6M)
• endowment per full-time student ($343,975)
• average full-time teaching salary ($118,251)
• research spending per student ($44,305)
• in-state undergrad tuition & fees ($43,623)
• out-of-state undergrad tuition & fees ($43,623)
• average grant aid to undergrads ($33,191)
• cost of a shared room ($6,983)
• average undergrad student loan ($4,878)
• full-time retention rate (97%)
• undergrads who get financial aid (69%)
• ratio of female full-time freshmen (52.2%)
• average teaching salary differential (men vs. women, 47%)
• undergrads who receive student loans (29%)
• minorities (25.3%)
• foreign students (16.4%)
• undergrads who get Pell grants (14%)
• Asians (13.3%)
• tuition & fees increase over three years (12.6%)
• in-state freshmen (10.4%)
• Blacks or African Americans (7%)
• Hispanics (4.6%)
• American Indians or Alaska Natives (0.4%)
• non-resident tuition & fees surcharge (0%)
• average teaching salary differential (women vs. men, -32%)
• 25th percentile SAT math score (690)
• 25th percentile SAT reading score (660)
• 25th percentile SAT writing score (670)
• 75th percentile SAT math score (780)
• 75th percentile SAT reading score (750)
• 75th percentile SAT writing score (770)
• alumni who played in the National Football League (99)
• average January temperature (37.8 degrees)
• dorm capacity (5,652)
• first-year applicants (28,145)
• foreign students (2,810)
• members of the National Academy of Sciences (23)
• men's basketball Final Four appearances (15)
• Rhodes Scholar alumni (40)
• total 75th percentile SAT score (2,300)
• yearly for-credit students (17,123)
• on-campus yearly property crimes per thousand students (3.97)
• students per faculty member (7)
• annual rainfall (47.8 inches)
• diversity and inclusion ratio (0.21)
• elevation (116 meters)

Sources