I’m applying to colleges in the fall and I’m trying to figure out which college to apply ED to. As I was visiting colleges, I realized that I like smaller class sizes since that’s what I had in high school, and I would like to continue to have small class sizes in college. I like Amherst, Bowdoin, and Colby. I look at the US News rankings, but they rank liberal arts colleges separately from universities. So I’m wondering if Amherst is as good as Harvard or Columbia or if Amherst would be considered lesser. Prestige matters a lot to me. I guess I’m a little conceited, but I want people to know I’m smart when they ask what college I go to. So I’d be willing to go to a college with larger classes (maybe Dartmouth) if it means that it’s a more prestigious place.
Yup! They’re just as prestigious.
If you want a “name brand”, though, LACs are not nearly as well known to the general public as Harvard or Dartmouth.
It depends what “top” means to you. I think.
The “top” universities are often considered to be: Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, MIT.
The “top” Lacs are often considered to be: Amherst, Swarthmore, Pomona, Williams, and maybe Wellesley.
I think if the data was available one would find only a relatively small percentage of cross-admits choose one of these top LACs over one of these top universities. Certainly not nobody, but not fully competitive overall.
However I think you’d find that those five LACs had more competitive cross-admit results with the next ten or so “next to top” universities.
If you are not sure which is really your top choice (or you need to compare financial aid and scholarship offers), then it not a good idea to apply ED anywhere.
Whether a LAC or a university fits you better involves a lot of “it depends”, such as your possible majors and post-graduation goals. In many cases, specific LACs and universities vary enough that it does not make sense to assume that a school is a good or bad fit for your preferences because it is a LAC or university.
In terms of using your college’s name to signal that you are smart, it really doesn’t work beyond Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, unless the people you are signally to are also smart in which case they would know about top LACs along with the other top schools I didn’t mention.
Some people even think Penn, Chicago and Columbia are prestigious, but colleges named after states, cities or South American countries cannot compare in prestige to HYP. Dartmouth is the subject of Animal House. How can you possibly think that’s prestigious. Knowledge is good? C’mon!
Have you considered applying to Oxford. You don’t have classes but have private tutors, so class size is 1.
The answer may relate to: Considered by whom? Forbes, for example, recently rated some LACs especially highly when viewed in the same field as universities:
10 Expensive Colleges Worth Every Penny
- *Amherst*
- Dartmouth
- *Williams*
- UChicago
- Tufts
- *Colgate*
- UPenn
- Columbia
- *Hamilton*
- *Vassar*
Yes, the top LACs are as well respected by those who matter as the top universities (ex. grad schools, future employers) but they are not as widely known to the general public. So if you want “oohs and aahs” when you tell people where you are going to college a LAC may not work as well. However, I would strongly suggest that you look at fit rather than perceived prestige.
I can promise you that you will not care about this 2+ years out of college. You may even stop caring about this while you are still IN college. One thing you’ll learn is that while all of the people who currently surround you may be more or less obsessed with the college admissions whirl - and be more familiar with prestigious small liberal arts colleges and universities - the average person who is beyond college is familiar with only a small handful of schools. Most of them have no reason to pay attention to colleges and universities anymore. I don’t even know where a lot of my coworkers went to undergrad.
I live on the West Coast, and there are plenty of people who squint when you say you went to Brown or Dartmouth; or who get Penn and Penn State confused; or who have no idea what Rice or Wash U are. And I work at a large technology company that hires people from all over the world. The college recruiters know those schools, but no one else really cares. It doesn’t mean the schools are not good. Furthermore, once you are more than a year or so out of college, you won’t tie your valuation of your intelligence to what college you went to anymore. People will judge you by the work that you do, and where you went to undergrad will become…maybe small talk at a party.
What’s going to actually be far more important to you is the experience that you have, what you learn, and the connections you maintain. Going to a small LAC and having really small classes, for example, shaped the way that I interact with people and the way I learn. That’s far more important than people being familiar with the school you say.
I’m going to be frank and say that there’s a really good chance that you will have to explain where you went if you go to Bowdoin or Colby. Academically, they are just as good. But no, people won’t recognize the names as easily.
I don’t think its true that there aren’t a lot of cross admits between HYPMS and top LACS. I know students from my daughter’s high school prep school had to largely choose between Amherst or Harvard, and Pomona and Yale. And they were tough choices, with yes, students choosing the “ivy” LACS over large universities. It’s apples and oranges. Both are top fruits. It’s very true that for some, a LAC is a better fit, the focus is on undergrads, and being part of a community over graduate classes, research and eating clubs. Although more and more its easier for LAC students to join research projects with faculty as the undergrads there often have better access than at large research universities. Do some soul searching and determine where you’ll be happiest and where you can do your best work. What do you need? Cast a wide net and see where you get in. Unfortunately in selective college admissions, they largely pick you. But after you get selected, then you have the power to choose where you will matriculate. You can’t go wrong at any of these top LACS including Bowdoin and Colby.
The top LACs, variously called the “little ivies” or “potted ivies” or NESCAC+ (the eleven members of the New England Small College Athletic Conference, plus Swarthmore, Pomona and Carleton) are very much creatures of a carriage trade that predates the passage of the land-grant or Morrill Act of 1862 which established a majority of the state university systems in the United States. They were the dominant form of higher learning in America for all of the eighteenth, nineteenth and a good portion of the twentieth centuries, whereupon Big Science began to dim their predominance. They have played outsized roles in the diplomatic corps, the judiciary, and American politics with at least ten American presidents, four Supreme Court Justices and no less than eight Secretaries of State receiving some portion of their education from a present-day LAC.
Today, they clearly exist as powerful feeders to American graduate and professional schools as well as fertile incubators for future writers, artists and performers. Per capita, they exercise a greater influence over American culture and education than any similar group of colleges or universities outside the Ivy League.
And, as @juillet points out above, the average person on the street would be hard put to name more than three or four expensive private colleges outside the local favorite. If you conflate “prestige” with being able to impress strangers, LACs probably aren’t for you. If you’re the sort of person who likes to shop the boutiques of the world with all of their subtle variations in tradition, history and piquancy, then, you should explore them further.
“I want people to know I’m smart when they ask what college I go to”
This is a bad idea. Fortunately you will probably get over this as you get older. People will figure out that you are smart, or nice, or conceited, or annoying, or fun to be with, or not, fairly quickly as they get to know you.
Go to a college or university that is a good fit for you and where you are comfortable and will do well. That is the smart thing to do, and what the smartest 18 year old that I know is about to do.
“In terms of using your college’s name to signal that you are smart, it really doesn’t work beyond Harvard, Yale, and Princeton.”
I was going to say “HYSM, actually” (most people will have heard of Princeton, but go outside the coasts and many would think of Princeton, and sometimes Yale as well, as just a generic Ivy or equate them to whatever college is deemed a good school in their neighborhood), except that we know that all the Ivies and Stanford have admitted athletes and developmental cases who, even if they were not as dumb as rocks, certainly didn’t measure up to the average at those schools in intellect.
So really, you’re restricted to only MIT and Oxbridge (and maybe Caltech and LSE).
Those in the know, however, would include those schools that are famously challenging and who don’t really soften admissions standards for certain small subgroups of people: Caltech, Oxbridge (unless you’re a royal) and LSE, definitely. MIT, UChicago, Mudd, Swarthmore, and Reed for the most part as well.
What do all these famous people have in common: Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, a bunch of other presidents, Martha Stewart, Herbie Hancock, Harrison Ford, John Glenn, Allison Janney, Paul Newman, Hillary Clinton, Gary Cooper, Lin Manuel-Miranda, Chevy Chase, Clarence Darrow, Michael Eisner, Bryant Gumble, Kofi Annan, Olaf Palme, Jack Kerouac, Emily Dickinson, Meryl Streep, Lisa Kudrow, Michael Eisner, George Steinbrenner, Lena Dunham, Nancy Pelosi, MGMT (band), Shoot the Moon (band), Passion Pit (band), Yeah Yeah Yeahs (band), a multitude of other famous people and bands, etc…
I think you get the picture. They all went to highly respected LACs. And I will repeat what someone already said above: the people who need to know, know.
And I’ll add Cal (Berkeley) to that list.
@Lindagaf: “They all went to highly respected LACs.”
I mean. . . sure?
I doubt many people who are not in their immediate neighborhood or know about some famous alumni from there would have heard of Eureka or Whittier, however.
Regarding post #10- Forbes 10 Expensive Colleges Worth Every Penny.
4 http://www.smithgroupjjrblog.com/the-five-most-questionable-college-and-university-rankings-of-2015-that-arent-u-s-news-and-world-reports/
The linked Salon article is very interesting.
Curiously, Forbes doesn’t include Amherst, Colgate, Hamilton or Vassar on this list. However, Harvey Mudd, Claremont Mckenna and Williams are listed
Reality is most people outside of New England do not know about these small LACs.
Here in Texas, if you were to tell someone that you attended Amherst they would respond by telling you that they went to A&M… and you would both stare blankly at each other and have the same initial impression of each other. In fact, more people will be impressed by the A&M graduate because Amherst is unknown.
Mostly these small LACs are only recognizable to New Englanders and people like us who are studying/researching colleges. The same goes for Pomona, Reed, Swarthmore, Middlebury, even Harvey Mudd.
Outside of New England, for every person that is impressed by “Colgate” there will be 10 that will wonder if there is a “Crest University”.
That’s because the ranking is about return on investment, and the primary criterion is the amount of money the student will earn when they graduate. Harvey Mudd is a STEM college and STEM careers tend to be higher paying, and Claremont McKenna and Williams are both known for sending kids to high-paying careers of the consulting/investment banking/government type. Amherst, Colgate, and Hamilton have a wider range of majors and post-graduation plans, and thus a wider range of salaries.
Additionally, graduates who went to graduate school - including business or law school - are not counted. The ranking reasons that it is impossible to know how the graduate school affects their earning power, so they need to be excluded to isolate the effect of the undergrad college. (My own argument is that is absurd and the undergrad college may have had a lot to do with getting the alumni into graduate school, and it also unfairly penalizes colleges that send a lot of graduates to business, law, and medical school - who may end up making the highest salaries. But that’s a moot point.)
Annnnd most importantly, PayScale isn’t really the most reliable measure of salary data. It’s a convenience sample of people who choose to put their salary information into the website, not a representative sample of all jobs/salaries/alumni of different colleges. I checked out the sample sizes for the schools ranked highly and they all seem to have Ns of < 15. For example, the Webb Institute is ranked 8th…with just two salaries reported (both naval architects). Harvey Mudd only has salaries of male graduates. The United States Merchant Marine Academy (ranked #1) only has salaries reported for people with between 10 and 20 years of experience, and only 4 of them.
Compare that with Carnegie Mellon and Cal Poly SLO, both of which rank much lower on the list (both #29). I suspect that’s more because both have a more sizable number of alumni reporting - 74 for CMU and 109 for Cal Poly, both of which are still too low to draw any meaningful conclusions but are big enough to depress the mean salaries.
No surprise about Webb, since its only major is naval architecture. Of course, Harvey Mudd has mostly engineering and CS majors (and few of the lower paid biology majors).