<p>JohnAdams12, Amherst does a lot better than Reed in professional schools-law and business. At Reed, you’ll see a lot of students who consider themselves idealists and intellectuals (even though the reality may be different), and want little to do with evil consumerist, corporate culture. Therefore, you’ll see us better represented in doctoral programmes and other non-professional schools. It’s merely a reflection of student culture and not necessarily ability. I’m personally interested in one of business or law school at this point, and I don’t think Reed will impede my chances because there are a number of Reedies who go onto business, law and medical schools, but they aren’t as strong in number, as the ones who go onto doctoral programmes. I’d believe the converse is true of Amherst as well, ie. you could very well go onto get your PhD, but most of your classmates would be interested in professional fields and business/law/med school.</p>
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<p>As far as I know, there’s no blood test. But you might find lists of student organizations indicative.</p>
<p>[Reed</a> College | Student Activities | Student Organizations](<a href=“http://info.reed.edu/student_activities/studentorgs.taf?_function=list&_start=1]Reed”>http://info.reed.edu/student_activities/studentorgs.taf?_function=list&_start=1)
<a href=“https://www.amherst.edu/campuslife/studentgroups[/url]”>https://www.amherst.edu/campuslife/studentgroups</a></p>
<p>By the way, according to the Washington Monthly tallies for liberal arts colleges, Reed and Amherst are #6 and #7 respectively for Bachelors-to-PhD per capita (“the number of undergraduate alumni who have gone on to receive a PhD in any subject relative to the size of the school”). These results are a little different than the ones on Reed’s own site, which show Reed #3 for “All Disciplines”, among all institutions (LACs and universities combined). On the latter site, Amherst shows up in the top 10 for English (#3) and for Humanities. ([REED</a> COLLEGE PHD PRODUCTIVITY](<a href=“http://www.reed.edu/ir/phd.html]REED”>Doctoral Degree Productivity - Institutional Research - Reed College))</p>
<p>Maybe the two sites use a different calculation formula. In any case, according to the WM site, or according to Reed’s tallies for Humanities and English, the two schools are rather close by this metric (at least in some fields), despite what has been said above about Amherst being more “pre-professional”. I agree that Reed has one of the most rigorous academic programs, but would hesitate to conclude that Amherst is “easier”. Perhaps it is … but an Open Curriculum carries its own responsibilities and expectations. Not to mention, Amherst is an even more selective college, with a different grading approach (at Reed, you ordinarily don’t even see your course grades), so it may seem harder to excel in some courses at Amherst.</p>
<p>Don’t be stupid. Go to Amherst.</p>
<p>I can see that the Reed college students came out in force for their school–admirable. But the number 1 LAC in the country is Amherst, and Reed, not that close. In the eyes of the world, Amherst is a top school, Reed is a Hampshire for smart people. Amherst is FAR more prestigious and it is a fantastic school. Not to knock Reed,but they aren’t in the same league.</p>
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<p>That’s going to have me laughing for sometime. Oh, Endicott, I get your logic. Reed equals Hampshire, because both are known to be druggy, hippy schools and Reed is SLIGHTLY better academically and admission wise, therefore it’s Hampshire for smart people. Interesting. Fallacy. Especially when you take Amherst into account. Now, there you’ve got a real Hampshire for smart(er than Reed, if you like) people. It’s an open curriculum school, just like Hampshire and it’s even in a consortium with it. It is FAR more competitive admission wise, lest I be accused of missing out on that detail. </p>
<p>The thing is Reed and Amherst aren’t Harvard and Stanford-where legitimate arguments can be made for which university has better research facilities, better faculty etc. Here, you’ve got two small colleges that a majority of people haven’t heard of, with their own unique brands of education and styles of delivering them. The question of prestige is one that descends into a vicious circle, but I’ll just say in my opinion, Amherst is not significantly more prestigious than Reed to raise alarm bells; besides prestige shouldn’t even be a criteria when you’re going to a Liberal Arts College to become an academic. Both Reed and Amherst produce their fair share of academicians.</p>
<p>Also,tk21679, when I said Amherst is “easier”, I only meant curriculum-wise. One of the factors that come up while considering the merits of the Open Curriculum, is that the rigour is not inherent in the structure of the curriculum, but instead on the student him/herself. Reed, on the other hand, has rigour in its structure-it’s not like you have absolute freedom and you have to follow requirements. No matter which way you twist it though, Reed will always have more of an academic focus than Amherst-both by way of pushing students into academia and challenging students while in college. Amherst, likewise, is great at many other things that Reed may not be good at all in. Wall Street Employment, for example. Ergo, each college has its own strengths relative to the other, and an individual has to decide what matters to him/her when making a choice between the two.</p>
<p>Since I’ve been praised for pushing Reed’s case, I’ll just say Reed is a special place indeed. I’ve said this earlier, and not to brag, but I know of people who’ve chosen Reed over Harvard, Stanford, Brown and even Amherst while not weighing in financial considerations. There are several other places as well that are seemingly better choices, but a Reedie knows if he belongs at Reed. It’s honestly a college like no other-whether you call us the Amherst for dumb people or the Hampshire for smart people. Personally, I’d stick with Reed for Reedies.</p>
<p>Don’t we all know by now that schools are not better than each other in general, but rather for a given student or for a given metric? Amherst is not in the same league as Reed for a student wanting prep for a PhD in biology, and likewise Amherst over Reed for a student wanting a Wall Street job, and even here it’s just a statistical comparison. These are both excellent schools.</p>
<p>Re the OP’s prestige question, you must ask prestige with whom or in which areas?</p>
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<p>Amen. OP, it’s an environmental issue–where will you fit?</p>
<p>Thank you for making my point explicit, vossron. :)</p>
<p>for those that are saying that Reed’s program is much more rigorous than Amherst’s:</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-california-davis/169176-easy-gpa-davis.html#post2118856[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-california-davis/169176-easy-gpa-davis.html#post2118856</a></p>
<p>The L.A. Times ran an article 7/16/97 "Grading the Grades:
All A’s Are Not Created Equal "on how the admissions dept.
from UC Berkeley’s Boalt Hall re-formulated the law school’s
applicant’s G.P.A. The formula ranked each college
according to how its students perform on the standardized
law board exam, the LSAT, and how common a certain
G.P.A. is at that school.</p>
<p>The following is UC Berkeley’s rankings of toughest schools
to get an “A”</p>
<p>Swarthmore 89.5
Williams 89.0
Duke 88.5
Carleton 88.0
Colgate 88.0
J. Hopkins 87.5
Chicago 87.0
Dartmouth 87.0
Wesleyan 87.0
Cornell 86.5
Harvard 86.5
Middlebury 86.0
Princeton 86.0
Bates 85.5
MIT 85.5
Haverford 85.0
Pomona 85.0
Virginia 85.0
Amherst 84.5
Reed 84.5
Vanderbilt 84.5
Wm & Mary 84.5
Bowdoin 83.5
Tufts 83.5
Vassar 83.5
Bryn Mawr 83.0
Hamilton 83.0
Oberlin 83.0
Rice 83.0
U. Pennsylvania 83.0
Clrmt. McK. 82.5
Yale 82.5
Brandeis 82.0
Northwestern 82.0
Colby 81.5
Michigan 81.5
Notre Dame 81.5
Wash. U. 81.0
Barnard 80.5
Columbia 80.5
Stanford 80.5
Brown 80.0
Georgetown 80.0
Smith 80.0
Wellesley 80.0
Emory 79.5
U. North Carolina 79.5
Whitman C. 79.5
Rochester 79.0
UC Berkeley 78.5
UC San Diego 78.5
Illinois 78.0
SUNY Bing 78.0
Texas 78.0
Trinity U. 77.5
Boston College 77.0
UC S. Barbara 77.0
Wisconsin 77.0
Florida 76.5
U. Washington 76.5
Santa Clara 76.0
Geo. Wash. 75.5
UC Davis 75.5
UCLA 75.5
Colorado 75.0
Michigan State 75.0
Boston University 74.5
Cal Poly SLO 74.5
Massachusetts 74.0
Penn State 74.0
Iowa 73.5
Purdue 73.5
SMU 73.5
SUNY Albany 73.5
BYU 73.0
Minnesota 73.0
Ohio State 73.0
Oregon 73.0
UC Irvine 73.0
Indiana 72.5
NYU 72.0
SUNY Buff 72.0
SUNY Stony 72.0
Mills 71.5
American 71.0
Arizona 71.0
Loyola Mary. 71.0
Maryland 71.0
Fordham 70.5
Kansas 70.0
Syracuse 70.0
USC 70.0
Arizona St. 69.5
CS San Diego 69.5
Catholic U. 69.5
Oklahoma 69.5
Pacific 69.5
Hofstra 69.0
UC Riverside 68.5
Utah 68.5
CS Chico 68.5
Miami 68.0
New Mexico 68.0
San Diego 68.0
CS Northridge 67.0
Pepperdine 67.0
CS San Fran. 66.0
CS Sacramento 65.0
Hawaii 64.5
Denver 63.5
CS Fullerton 63.0
CS Hayward 63.0
CS Long Beach 63.0
CS San Jose 63.0
CS Fresno 62.5
St. Mary’s 61.5
CCNY 59.0
CS LA 58.5
Howard 57.5
San Francisco 57.5</p>
<p>JohnAdams12, I clearly stated the rigour is not due to grade deflation, but the structure of the curriculm and the requirements therein. Anyway, if you want to use grade deflation as a yardstick, let’s use something more current than 1997:</p>
<p>[GradeInflation.com’s</a> Sweet 16 of Tough Graders](<a href=“http://gradeinflation.com/sweet162010.html]GradeInflation.com’s”>GradeInflation.com's Sweet 16 of Tough Graders)</p>
<p>PS-vergilfan1, you can pick whichever you like, but this is more about proving that Reed isn’t weird, artsy (we suck at the arts by the way, compared to a lot of LACs) place that has a funky curriculum. I apologise for overtaking your thread, but these myths need to be dispelled.</p>
<p>“I agree that Reed has one of the most rigorous academic programs, but would hesitate to conclude that Amherst is “easier”.”</p>
<p>Right. If you went to Amherst with the determination to build an easy program, you probably could, and you can’t at Reed. But that’s not what most Amherst students choose to do. If it’s not what YOU would do, then the fact that it’s possible shouldn’t deter you from choosing Amherst if you prefer it.</p>
<p>Paradox, so now you are posting a current article that puts Reed at the level of CS Fullerton?</p>
<p>ok, thanks</p>
<p>^ Um, you forget the likes of Harvey Mudd and Princeton. Gradeinflation.com just studies how grades are given at colleges-nothing more, nothing less. The Boalt Hall study can be just as skewed as any other because it just measures LSAT versus College GPA. How is that a representative statistic for grade deflation across the board? Ask anybody clued onto graduate school admissions and you’ll know Reed gets points for its grade deflation. I doubt Amherst gets points specifically for grade deflation. Like I said it doesn’t meant it’s a bad place, it’s even better you might say and indeed for many it is, but it operates differently than Reed does. Reed’s average GPA ranges from 2.9-3.1; I doubt Amherst’s could compare even though it is more selective. </p>
<p>Like Hanna said, at Reed there’s no option to choose the level of rigour and at Amherst, there is, so it’s an individual preference, as has been repeated ad nauseum.</p>
<p>These are two amazing colleges. Some of the best America has to offer and although seemingly similar, they differ quite a bit. Let’s just leave it at that.</p>
<p>but Paradox, it is YOU that has claimed the significant academic demanding superiority of Reed to Amherst:</p>
<p>“Reed is academically a far more demanding college with what some might call grade deflation,…”</p>
<p>and</p>
<p>"Amherst is a less academically demanding and an easier college when compared to Reed… "</p>
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<p>Of course Reed is harder! I think we’ve all gathered at least that by now. You’re implying academic superiority because I mentioned academic challenge. I would too. However, as we’ve discovered, not everyone has the same preferences and opinions, as far as academic models are concerned. At Reed, you can’t escape the rigour; at Amherst, you can-that’s a significant difference to my mind, but may not be to someone else’s. </p>
<p>What is your argument, anyway, JohnAdams12? That Amherst is the more challenging college or the better college? Again, those can mean different things to different people.</p>
<p>Paradox, again it is YOU that is claiming that Reed is much more academically demanding than Amherst.</p>
<p>It has not been concluded on this message board or in real life.</p>
<p>Hmmm. I rest my case because I never thought I’d find someone who’d argue a core curriculum coupled with notorious grade deflation versus an open curriculum, but there you have it. Good Luck in revelling in Amherst’s purported toughness vis-a-vis Reed. To those that matter, know that Reed is tough and you’ll have to study like your life depends on it. :)</p>
<p>Paradox, again, it is YOU that has claimed that Reed has significantly more demanding academics than Amherst, which is known as one of the two best LAC, together with Williams.</p>
<p>had you said “similar” or “slightly more demanding” than Amherst, it would have been OK, but you didn’t did you?</p>
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<p>Talking to all sorts of people–musicians, athletes, internationals, “students of color”–and getting to know them on a deeper level beyond the aforementioned labels. =P</p>
<p>I’ve come to realize that Amherst takes “diversity” very seriously, in a genuine way, not just as a euphemism.</p>
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<p>You are right that Amherst is more well-know. You are wrong that it sends more students to top grad schools. Reed actually sends more students to top grad schools than almost any other college in America.</p>