@sheepskin00, agree as I have twin DD’s headed to Hamilton in the Fall to pursue STEM and Poli Sci/Econ, respectively, so I don’t need to be convinced.
That said as very, very few unhooked applicants are going to be accepted to either a top university or LAC in 2017-2018, it would be great to understand what’s realistic based on OP’s academic profile and then guide accordingly.
@TiggerDad, honestly, in most of the country, Dartmouth (and Brown) aren’t better known than Williams/Amherst/Pomona.
@PurpleTitan - Perhaps, but the OP mentioned Dartmouth, so…
The OP is clearly concerned about the name recognition of their college, with that in mind the OP should apply to Harvard, Stanford or Yale in that order. If admitted, the OP will get an excellent education at any of these schools with most people recognizing the name.
I’m sure that these LACs are known by those involved in east coast law, politics and by other colleges. But in the sciences not so much. I work in R&D and everyone has advanced degrees from a variety of colleges, our kids are college aged and looking. When dicussing colleges, I’ve been bringing up Swarthmore for about year. It is met usually by a chuckle… “where?” I haven’t met anyone that has heard of it.
Outside of Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Stanford, and MIT you are not going to initially impress anyone. Most people don’t know what Carnegie Mellon is or that Columbia, Penn, Brown, Dartmouth, Cornell are ivy league colleges.
The other nationally known colleges would be Cal, Texas, Mich, UCLA, Notre Dame, mainly for historical or athletic reasons… and their huge fan bases.
Outside of these, the students looking for top colleges will discover NW, Vandy, Rice, Georgetown, Duke.
But the college doesn’t matter. What you study does matter.
http://www.mymoneyblog.com/roi-brand-name-colleges.html
Colleges by brand recognition:
@Greymeer The above link for name recognition was from 2010. The latest ranking I could find was from 2014 which lists MIT and Harvard as #1 and #2.
More recent brand recognition… https://www.universitybusiness.com/trendtopper2013
"the mix of LAC and elite university feeders to top medical schools is consistent there as well "
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The brand rankings are interesting, but the massive volatility there makes them untrustworthy.
@VC25A2, we think alike. Prestige is important because it opens doors, and not just in a career.
If you want prestige among the general public, go to Harvard, Yale, Princeton, MIT, Duke, Stanford, etc. Say those names and the reaction you get will be (especially outside of the Northeast),“wow, you must be really smart.”
Amherst and Williams and the like are superb schools and, among grad school admissions staff, Wall Street banks, and highly-educated people, are very prestigious, and certainly peer schools to MIT, Duke, etc. However, if you mention them to the general public, or to people in parts of the US far away from those schools, you’ll probably get a blank stare.
I speak from experience:
I went to a LAC that is ranked near the top in US News, but even among the general public in the metropolitan area where it’s located, a lot of people hadn’t heard of it. I have to explain to people now (even other people with graduate degrees) where the school is and what it is. I almost always get a blank stare.
I also went to Harvard. I just say “Harvard” to anyone and everyone knows what it is and gives a reaction, particularly far away from Cambridge. Even when I worked in other countries, I simply said “Harvard” and consistently got the same reaction (“wow…”).
In my view, it makes no sense to go to a school that is unknown if you can go to a school that’s known. You’ll toil away under a lot of stress at either place, and both places will have pricetags.
The OP wrote: “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.”
The flipside of this most wonderful ego booster is the pressure to live up to people’s expectations. You want people to know you’re smart? Well, then, you’d also have to constantly be on guard to evidence that you’re smart – at all times. This is a common phenomenon among graduates of most prestigious schools, for which reason they don’t like to “show off” where they graduated from and why they intentionally withhold that information. It’s NOT from humility! In work places, too, the pressure is immense. When you do good, well, that’s expected, so what? But if you make an error, that error is less prone to be forgiven or forgotten that easily. Each error is magnified 10X. People do hold what Nietzsche called “ressentiment” and one may even very well encounter unexpected obstacles at work places. Depending on the industry, one may even find a hard time finding a job. The incessant joking tease even begins at home - mercilessly: "I don’t know how in the world you got into _______!! at the slightest sign of being human-all-too-human.
Prestige is a wonderful thing – but it can also come with a price.
Top LACs ideally attract discerning, but not prestige-seeking, students. Although discernment and prestige bear a relationship to each other, possessing the former seems substantive, while pursuing the latter seems superficial – and in no event would I pursue the latter at the expense of the former.
Also, OP, if you do go to a “name” school, as other posters state, be very careful and don’t flaunt it. Say the name of the school only when someone asks you directly. If you name-drop, people will think you’re a jerk.
This is in fact a major LAC advantage. By and large, the top LACs enroll students who are very smart and committed to learning – but who are not snobs, prestige whores, or Slytherins. They tend to have a more relaxed, down-to-earth attitude, which is reinforced whenever other people confuse their school with William & Mary or UMass-Amherst or Skidmore or Cal Poly Pomona. This means that they are, for the most part, nice folks to be around for four years.
This is not to suggest that everyone who opts to go to, say, an Ivy League institution is a snob, a prestige whore, or a Slytherin. This is not the case at all (except maybe at Wharton). However, people who do happen to be snobs, prestige whores, or Slytherins are attracted to the Ivies like moths to a flame. You will find far more of these people at, say, Ivies than you will at top LACs.
I’ve known several Harvard alum over the years, including one MacArthur fellow and they never speak in glowing terms about their Harvard undergraduate experience. They can wax quite poetically about all the friends they made in prep school. They can tell you exactly how much money they are making trading derivatives (or, whatever the hot new trading instrument is) or in the import/export business they have set up with the help of a backer (admittedly, found through Harvard connections.) But, no one ever talks about what they actually did during the four years leading up to their first job out of college. From what I can gather, it takes about three years for the sheer fact that they are at Harvard to wear off before they can really take their studies seriously and by that point it is often too late. They’ve hung out, celebrating their good luck, studying occasionally, but, really, for the most part, bided their time until they could get their diploma. And, once they had it, never looked back.
According to Harvard’s own records, only 33,000 alumni contributed to the annual fund last year. To put that into perspective, that’s only a few thousand people more than the entire Wesleyan alumni donor base:
https://hcf.harvard.edu/
Harvard may, of course, be a special case. The rates for Yale and Princeton are much closer to that of a traditional LAC. But, it does illustrate the significant degree to which people seem willing to discount a memorable college experience in favor of pure certification.
While I’m a big fan of small schools for undergrad, here in California people aren’t going to know enough about eastern LACs to be impressed. Once you get outside of the LA area, even the Claremont Colleges aren’t going to register much of a reaction.
@simba9, that’s very surprising as California is typically the 4th, 5th or 6th most represented State at many top ranked eastern LAC’s, and it’s not purely a function of State population as neither Texas nor Florida are typically far up the list.
Nice thought. In reality, a significant number of students who are attending top LACs are doing so because they were rejected from an Ivy or five, Duke, Stanford, etc. I have no doubt that some applied to elite universities because they believed that they were the ‘best fit’, or at least that’s what they led others to believe. But the truth is that for the majority of applicants, prestige was a significant determining factor they applied to one or more of US News’ top 10 universities.
It would also be foolish to believe that a not insignificant number of students apply to Williams, Amherst, Wesleyan, etc., because of the perceived prestige associated with the colleges.
@Chembiodad, the proportion of Californians that attend top-ranked eastern LAC’s when compared to the population of California is going to be extremely small.
@Crewdad, for some that’s the case, but as only Brown, Dartmouth and Princeton have undergraduate focused programs many of the other top-ranked universities are a pass for those looking for that experience.