<p>Beyond Amherst and Williams not much difference in top 25 LAC's. More distinctions between top 10 National Univ, and 11-25 National UNiv. Most LAC's are in the miidle of nowhere.</p>
<p>MIddlebury is SAT optional, anyone know what percentage submit their scores?</p>
<p>
[quote]
Williams has a more academic culture, which reflects its superior graduate school placement, Bard a more creative ambiance, with many more alumni involved in the arts.
[/quote]
Actually, that isn't accurate. Williams has a very creative, arts-oriented side. It has excellent art history, art studio, theater, music, dance, creative writing. In fact so many of the country's top museums are run by Williams grads (e.g. MOMA, Guggenheim, LACounty, National Gallery DC) that they're called the Williams mafia.</p>
<p>I don't mean this as a slam on Bard which I think is a good school. I just want to clarify that a person interested in pursuing the arts shouldn't eliminate Williams as strictly a pre-professional feeder.</p>
<p>Thomas Aquinas deserves the leap. It is a wonderful little school.</p>
<p>I was never big on Thomas Aquinas' innovated, but extremely tight one track curriculum. More power to them though that they are getting noticed more now. School like this in California are virtually unheard of outside of their county.</p>
<p>The whole peer assessment thing is pretty suspect to me, I mean obviously there are more liberal arts schools in the NE so their presidents know more about other NE colleges and not as much about ones about their area and rate those generally higher. I mean Pomona and Harvey Mudd have average SATs over 100 points higher than Midd..and Pomona also had an 18.4% acceptance rate last year, over $1 billion endowment, resources galore and was founded before Stanford. It seems pretty weird that no one will challenge AWS as the leaders in the liberal arts even when some stats seem to do so, maybe I'm missing something here though..</p>
<p>
[quote]
Also, when it comes to Williams & Amherst in rankings, I'm not sure of any other LACs (maybe Grinell & Wellesley) with endowments over $1 billion dollars.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>The top 10 in per student endowments are:</p>
<p>Grinnell
Pomona
Swarthmore
Williams
Amherst
Wellesley
Smith
Bowdoin
Bryn Mawr
Middlebury</p>
<p>There is a huge drop-off in per student endowments below Wellesley. For example, Swarthmore's per student endowment is more than double that of Smith (#7), Bowdoin (#8), or Bryn Mawr (#9).</p>
<p>As of the the Fiscal Year 2004 reports, five LACs had endowments over $1 billion:</p>
<p>Grinnell
Williams
Wellesley
Pomona
Swarthmore</p>
<p>As of June 2005, the Amherst College endowment was $1,154,570,000.</p>
<p>Grinnell's endowment is roughly 350 million dollars more than the above June 2005 Amherst citation.</p>
<p>I like Thomas Aquinas curriculum, but it is a very conservative school. The National Review version of St. John's.</p>
<p>Are Union, Conn. Coll., Trinity, and Lafayette not as good this year as last? I doubt it. This ranking business is absolutely insane.</p>
<p>Hear Hear!!!</p>
<p>Glad to see my alma mater (Wheaton, Ma.) has gone up a few. There's a reason why its been on the college exchange with Williams, Amherst etc.for the past 35 years.</p>
<p>If it's just 2 or 3 slots LAClover, then it's means almost nothing but flucuation from a college or two moving up past it and shifting the ranks, that's all. Means nothing really.</p>
<p>Here's a more comprehensive list of "per student endowments" from the Questbridge people. It includes a number of schools that the Williams alumni office did not include in their list (Berea, etc.). This list has the top 50 colleges and universities based on per student endowment:</p>
<p>conn college's ranking is an absolute and complete joke. does it make any reasonable sense that it has dropped 15 spots in a mere 5 year period???</p>