Agree with Prezbucky and OnTheBubble. Go where you fit best! Can’t go wrong with any of these, you are lucky to have such amazing choices!
I wouldn’t pick Amherst over Middlebury just on the basis of rep or ranking. I’d strongly recommend visiting. Middlebury has a beautiful arts center and lovely dance studios. I’m a princeton review fan, and Middlebury is on seemingly all their good top 20 lists, and scores very highly on their other metrics. Terrific school.
I have a freshman D at Middlebury who couldn’t be happier. She has taken a wide variety of classes, everything from env studies, economics, Italian, dance, literature, philosophy, art history- a true liberal arts kid. and she hasn’t even registered for fall term yet. It’s very, very easy to fulfill distribution requirements. In one year she has met most of them without even trying. She’s most likely going to wind up an environmental studies major with possible human ecology focus and a dance minor. Loves the dance department. If you visit Midd make sure you meet the head of the dance department, she is already one of my D’s favorite professors on campus. Can’t say enough positive about Middlebury!
D loved Bowdoin when she was visiting. Would have been happy to pursue Bowdoin if Midd didn’t work out for her ED. Can’t speak too much about Amherst or Wellesley but obviously they are fabulous schools. I agree with posts upstream that academically you are splitting hairs a bit when trying to tease apart which school is better/best. Every single one will prepare you well for law school. Every one has strong programs in your academic areas of interest. My advice would be to choose based on which campus/community feels like the best fit for you. And if all else is still equal follow the best FA even if that doesn’t seem to be your #1 priority (based on what you posted originally).
Good luck deciding, you can’t go wrong with four wonderful choices!
Amherst has an interesting program in Law, Jurisprudence and Social Thought. Check it out on their website. But you can major in anything and still go to law school, of course, so pick the college you love best overall! Your choices are similar enough that you are likely to enjoy your time at any of them. Maybe the easiest first decision is single sex or coed, since that is the biggest likely difference in social life among your schools.
By its campus alone, you could possibly regard Amherst as unremarkable. This may be a reason to visit your other options.
I agree that you should visit all 4 schools. They might look similar on paper, but a personal visit will make the decision much easier for you. Amherst and Bowdoin are significantly smaller than Middlebury and Wellesley which might also be something to consider. As a Midd alum, I can vouch for the fact that the school has strong Political Science and dance departments and has the best study abroad programs of the schools you are considering. You can’t make a bad choice, but visiting should make your decision much more clear. Good luck!
I don’t have much to add here, everyone has said most of what I’d say.
As a low-income student, is it important that there be lots of other low income students and a lot of support specifically for them? I can tell you that Amherst has that support and it goes beyond financial aid to grants from the school to do unpaid summer internships, a “start up” grant to pay for dorm stuff (that was the case for very low income kids last year, IDK if it is a regular thing), free transportation to Boston and NYC and Hartford (airport) for breaks, absolutely everything paid for - if you join the outing club on a ski trip, your ski rental and fees are covered, for instance. Not just for low income kids - for everyone. So there’s no “apply for this special benefit because I’m poor” thing going on there. And, it’s a a college where everyone lives on campus and eats at the dining hall. Those things may be true of the other schools as well, I don’t know.
The open curriculum allows a lot of exploration. There’s one required class (first semester seminar) and then whatever your major requires - that’s it.
Regarding gender balance, Amherst is actually one of the very few LACs that has more men than women, slightly, but I agree that the two women’s schools in the consortium might alter that, though I haven’t heard it. They’re the two furthest schools from Amherst in the consortium. When you walk into town (across the street, really), most of the students around are from UMass.
If there’s any way to visit all 4, that would be ideal.
It would be ridiculous to claim any sort of objective academic difference between these schools. Look at it this way. One of these LACs is ranked number 2. The others are tied for fourth. To put that in terms of national universities, Princeton is number 2 and Stanford is tied for fourth. Would you really claim an academic difference between Princeton and Stanford? Of course not. Choose the one with the best fit.
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Unfortunately Middlebury says that they cannot provide travel funding, so I think I’ll have to knock it off of the list. Still waiting on a reply from Wellesley.
Hey everyone! So after visiting Amherst, Bowdoin, and Wellesley, I have committed to Amherst!!
Well done, and congrats, @justoneoz !
Thanks for coming back and letting us know. Best of luck to you as you begin this exciting next step of your journey!
^^^ What they said - congratulations and thank for letting us know!