@simba9, small relative to the total population in California, but a much higher percentage than from Texas so the lack of LAC’s in California is likely contributing to it.
@Corbett respectfully that would be Pomona, not Cal Poly Pomona 
And I agree with @simba9 observations. Californians have a vast array of good public universities that our LACs (and LACs in general) get overlooked. Plus who has the money (or wants to pay) the sticker price at say a school in the Claremont consortium when you can get a UC or CSU education for a whole lot less? For the same price of Claremont McKenna you can also go to USC or Pepperdine in Malibu. Californians for the most part don’t like to leave the west for college and most students don’t. If they leave CA it’s for a school most likely in AZ, UT, OR or WA. Another observation is that Californians are practical when it comes to college and seek a good ROI. Most go into pre professional majors or into business. My niece got her business degree from a CSU and ten years out she’s making $90k from a job she secured from her university connections.
@CALSmom, please read the post by @Corbett again. He was using Cal Poly Pomona in the right context of his post.
@CottonTales thanks I reread it!
@Corbett my apologies, and yes I agree about the school name confusion!
@Chembiodad: Eastern LACs aren’t well-known in TX either (pretty much no Eastern LAC will register at all with the vast majority of Texans), so CA sending more to Eastern LACs than TX does doesn’t say much. It certainly doesn’t show that many people in CA know about Eastern LACs.
@VC25A2 “Even if they aren’t as well known, is Williams as good as Princeton? Is Amherst as good as Yale? Is Middlebury as good as Harvard? This really matters to me because I don’t want to apply ED to a top liberal arts college if it is not as good as a top university. I really want to go to a good law school (Harvard, Yale or Stanford) so I can get a high paying job as a lawyer. I want to get a good, very prestigious undergrad education to prepare me for law school.”
I’d recommend you not apply to LACs at least ED, since you really don’t want to be second guessing yourself if you end up at a LAC. You’ll probably keep thinking what if I was at a prestigious national university and you don’t want to go through college like that. You got a lot of good advice here on where to apply - HYPS early action or if you want to increase your chances by going the ED route, one of the other five ivies. A lot of students chase prestige and don’t admit it (partly to not receive the excoriation you’ve received in this thread). You being honest about this is good, you know yourself a lot better than I did when I was eighteen. If you’re fortunate to get into a top LAC regular decision, you can think about it more then, for now, if national prestige and a smaller environment is important, choose a small ivy as others have said.
Every Yalie I’ve ever met loved the place.
The problem with this thread is that the OP is basically asking two different questions. One is, “Is there any reason I should not apply to Harvard?” The answer is, “No, by all means. Go ahead.” The other is, “Is there any reason to apply ED anywhere else?” The answer, in her particular case, is clearly, “No.”
Let’s face it, most knowledge about colleges is local. Ask even a well educated East Coaster (and I suspect a most of the rest of the country as well) to tell you the difference between UC Riverside and UC Davis and you’ll get the same blank stares as if you ask the average well educated Californian the difference between Williams and Amherst. People will nod and smile when you tell them you attended the University of Arizona when all they know about the school is that it’s in Arizona and outside of Kansas do people really know the difference between the University of Kansas and Kansas State? I doubt it.
People know:
A few top schools such as Stanford, Harvard, Yale, and MIT. Aside from being among the most select of our colleges these have made it into the public imagination due to their presence in the movies.
Big public state flagships (often with strong football programs) such as U Michigan, UCLA, 'Bama, LSU. Most people who don’t follow college football, and even those who do, couldn’t tell you anything about these schools other than the state they’re in.
Other schools with big football programs, such as Notre Dame, Auburn or Texas A&M. Again, ask someone to tell you what the strengths of Notre Dame are and most people won’t be able to tell you much beyond the fact that it’s home to the Fighting Irish.
“The Ivy League”. Pressed to tell you what schools are in the league I bet less than 5% of the public could answer accurately.
Their local schools. I live in Massachusetts where if you tell someone your kid attends Bowdoin or Wellesley you’ll usually get a “Wow!”. Grinnell? You’ll get a “Huh?” I have no doubt you’d get the opposite reaction from a Midwesterner.
Years ago I stayed with a family abroad, and as I was living in Cambridge MA I brought a couple of Harvard t-shirts among the gift for my host family. They looked at me quizzically as I explained it was the country’s preeminent university, then asked, “Is it as good as the University of Michigan?”
And, btw. Several posters have mentioned “status-anxiety” as a reason to apply ED to one of “the lesser ivies”. Um, no. Brown, Columbia, Dartmouth, Penn and Cornell grads are every bit as thin-skinned as the rest of us.
As a Native Californian who grew up not far from the Claremont Consortium, I can tell you that I NEVER knew the consortium and its colleges existed until I joined CC a few years ago. I knew of Cal Poly Pomona, because there were road signs. I knew of Whittier, because I lived near Whittier. Frankly, in So Cal, there are only two colleges in the Universe: USC and UCLA. And no one who is anyone likes UCLA because Trojans are a thousand times cooler. (Disclaimer, my parents graduated from USC.)
This topic has come up regularly over the years. I now live in the NE. I would say 95% of people have not heard of the LAC my D attends. I don’t care, neither does she. I would say the only two colleges that for sure have global recognition are Oxford and Harvard. So I suggest OP try to get into one of those two. Beyond that, most people know colleges within their region. Why would the general public know much more than beyond what’s in their back yard?
I read the study referenced in this article a while ago and think it’s relevant to this conversation. It is not only about college professors and their kids, they also correlate by other factors such as parental income.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/where-professors-send-their-children-to-college/
https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ecoedu/v25y2006i2p201-210.html
We are wasting our time until OP provides their academic profile; at this point we don’t have any reason to believe they could be admitted to either an Ivy or a top ranked LAC.
@Lindagaf: I daresay anyone who has heard of Oxford’s rep also knows of Cambridge. Likewise, it’s hard to think of people who would be impressed by Harvard who haven’t heard of Stanford or MIT (and Yale and Princeton). Though the Ivies and Stanford have the opposite problem among those who are too knowledgeable (and know that those schools let in athletes and famous progeny/developmental admits who are far from the baseline for unhooked applicants) and so would not automatically assume that a grad from there was smart.
So really, the OP is only left with Oxbridge and MIT.
That’s true, but note that another flipside will be encountered during the actual college experience.
Let’s say that you are a conceited high school senior. You decide to attend Big Name U (possibly but necessarily an Ivy) so that you can impress people in your hometown by name-dropping. The demonstration of your educational superiority gives you a pleasant ego boost.
But what happens when you actually get to Big Name U? You will suddenly discover that the standards for being awesome are much, much higher than they were in your hometown. Specifically, you will find that:
- Many other students outperform you academically. They get higher grades and more praise from profs.
- Many other students are wealthier than you. They have nicer clothes and do cooler things over breaks.
- Many other students are more socially adept than you. They go to better parties and join more exclusive clubs.
And a lot of these students (not necessarily all) will take pains to ensure that you are aware of their academic, financial, or social superiority. Why? Because they are conceited. They want other students (like you) to know how smart, rich, and cool they are. It gives them a pleasant ego boost.
Part of the karmic payback for being conceited about your college education is this: you have to spend four years surrounded by other people like you.
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Again, the OP made it very clear that status and prestige are the main reasons for him/her to apply to a university rather than to a college. And again, I say we’re wasting our time trying to convince him/her that colleges can be every bit as good as universities. Are you all really just trying to convince yourselves? Are you insecure about your own status as LAC alums or something? For the OP, LACs are probably NOT the way to go and throwing charts, articles, and stats at him/her to persuade otherwise is kind of silly. I really do believe, given what the OP wrote, that he/she would be most comfortable, and thus perform better, at a school whose name makes him/her feel good EVERY TIME he/she utters it. I went to a highly-ranked LAC and had my fair share of “Where is that? Is that a good school?” It can get annoying but it never made me feel inferior. I don’t think the OP would be quite so sanguine about it. The U.S. is home to many students who went to the Ivies simply for bragging rights. Regardless of their actual experiences at those schools, they certainly got what they paid for in this particular regard. So I say to the OP: Go to the most prestigious uni you get into and don’t look back. You will NOT be happy at a college. You will hate having to explain yourself and defend your school every time someone gives you a blank stare. This is not any kind of slam against LACs. This is just the vibe you’re giving off. You will be giving up something very important to you (instant name recognition) by going to an LAC, so why do it?
@Corbett , that was poetry. Should be required reading for every prestige-hunting student on CC.
I think a major benefit of going to a top university or LAC is to associate with ones as smart as or even smarter than I am.
@hzhao2004: Here’s the list: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/schifrin/2014/08/04/top-100-sat-scores-ranking-which-colleges-have-the-brightest-kids/amp/
But Olin and Webb don’t have much name recognition. Nor do Mudd or any other LAC among the general public.
@PurpleTitan, the general public doesn’t attend college. I don’t think the CC population has much in common with the general public - I’ll stick with the smartest schools, but will use a little more current list
^ Same list 
I wouldn’t base a decision based just on that but here is a newer one: