Hi. So I’m thinking of majoring in Econ, and i really like these 4 schools, esp Bates and Claremont Mckenna. I was wondering which of these 4 schools is the best for econ majors and has the best chances for internships, best alumni network, and best job opportunities out of college. Thanks!
Based on economics faculty publishing at liberal arts colleges:
- Williams
- Wellesley
- Middlebury
- Wesleyan
- Hamilton
- Claremont McKenna
- Bates
- Carleton
You can weigh this in accordance with the importance you assign to faculty scholarship. Even Carleton’s ranking, out of ~196 schools in the category, should be considered good. Read the original source, available online, for a discussion of the study’s limitations.
(IDEAS / “Economics Departments at Liberal Arts Colleges”)
If you can get into Claremont ( 9.76% acceptance rate, making it - along with Pomona - the most selective LAC
in the country, using that metric), that is - with the possible exception of Williams -the best overall undergraduate econ program, hands down.
CMC and Pomona do have different emphases in economics that are evident in their course offerings (CMC is more pre-professional with more courses in accounting and managerial economics, while Pomona is more liberal arts and pre-PhD). They do have convenient cross registration.
@stagalum please don’t make the common mistake of equating acceptance rate with selectivity. CMC’s low acceptance rate has more to do with its location and college application demographics. Because so many people live in the area within a 50 mile radius of Claremont, the school gets a ton of applications. Many of those applications are simply a waste of time and money because the applicant is applying hoping he/she has a chance. Because CMC is so small it can only accept a very small percentage of applicants. Not suggesting that CMC is not a selective school, but acceptance rate is not an indication of such selectivity. I can think of numerous schools with lower acceptance rates that are not as selective.
Only about half of CMC’s students come from California, and those from CA get no admissions preference. All the stats echo the college’s true selectivity, so urbanslaughter is wrong. Among these four, CMC is arguably in a class by itself. As in every case, jkauppila121 should visit each campus: the lifestyles of these are vastly different. (Cred: I was
VP for development at both Carleton at CMC.)
I have visited Claremont and Pomona and I feel like Claremont mckennas has a better atmosphere for analytical thinkers, which fits best for Econ majors.
On the same note, i was just wondering if bates was as reputable. Will I get the same opportunities as a CMC grad would
CMC’s acceptance rate is a fiction, just like the Ivy League and Stanford’s. There are very few tippy top LACs in California and the western states so CMC gets more applications and it is much smaller than than its eastern peers. Is it highly selective, yes of course but the acceptance rate is highly misleading.
The CMC student and the Bates student are virtually identical, so they are equally selective.
@jkauppila121 There is one thing you need to know about Bates and most of its NESCAC peers, they are jocky schools with about 40% of all students playing varsity sports. Most of these schools field 30 or more varsity teams. It is much harder for non-athletes to get in and it is much harder for females to get in.
If you are female and applying in regular decision you have a better shot getting in CMC. Are you from the Northeast???
Since Bates is in a cold climate with lots of competition, the RD acceptance rate of 17% and about 4-5 points lower for females is very real.
You have mentioned 4 equally good schools, where you will probably get in just one, or maybe none. If you are an average applicant for these schools, the odds are rather low.
This is really good for a state school. It means that CMC would rank among the top 10 state schools for percentage of out of state students. The leader in this category is University of Vermont at 66%. There are about seven other state schools with more than half of there students coming from out of state. CMC would rank just ahead of University of Wisconsin - Superior which has 46% of its students coming from out of state.
CMC is a private school.
By my calculation using stats from 2014, 37% of the CMC student body came from California. http://www.cmc.edu/sites/default/files/ir/enrollment/F14-Web-Stats.pdf. I understand and basically agree with @urbanslaughter that acceptance rate does not equal selectivity. But I also get the impression that there’s just a lot of resistance to the rise of upstart CMC in the LAC rankings among certain NESCAC fans. (Ex: @SadSeptember15 saying the CMC acceptance rate of 9.76% is “highly misleading” as compared to Bates at 17%)
Bates and CMC are both great schools. One question you may want to consider is where you may want to land after college. CMC is better known on the West Coast, Bates on the East.
@Mastadon why do you think CMC is a state school? CMC is a private school.
@Corinthian lots of factors go into acceptance rates like surrounding population, location, competition from other schools, etc.
The fact that CMC draws from outside the state doesn’t mean that it does not receive very large numbers of applications from instate residents. The numbers posted are the attending class not the applications. Given the fact that California does not have the same density of highly selective schools as the Northeast you would expect schools like CMC to receive lots more applications, many of which are low outliers. The average ACT score is 31, so its likely that the real acceptance rate is somewhere in the high teens low twenties after low outliers are removed.
I would take the published acceptance rate with a grain of salt. It is still very hard to get into.
Would you consider Notre Dame much less selective than CMC? It has a 22% acceptance rate but its actually harder to get in than CMC.
@ucbalumnus That is not good. That would put CMC pretty darn close to the absolute bottom in terms of percentage of out of state students.
@SadSeptember15 we don’t have much info on the “rejected” portion of the applicant pool, do we? If so, please point me to it. You assume that CMC’s applicant pool has a larger amount of “low outliers” than NE schools. As far as I can tell, you conclude this is so simply because you assume that CA must be supplying “low outliers.” This just seems to reflect an anti-California anti-West Coast bias that is not based on evidence.
In fact, @SadSeptember15, couldn’t you reach the opposite conclusion: that the shortage of highly selective schools on the West Coast means that MORE highly qualified CA high school students will apply to CMC than would be the case if they had more top LAC options.
This thread is pretty tangled, with comments from several who clearly know nothing about admissions at highly selective colleges. The 37%-from-California figure is correct; like Pomona, the college has long drawn highly qualified applicants from all over the country, and it draws far more from New England than Amherst (say) does from among California’s 40 million people. Geography has no impact on admissibility at CMC.
Only the very brightest will be admitted to any of these schools, and unless they’re really dumb they won’t apply if they think there’s no chance of being admitted. In other words, there aren’t many outliers applying to any of these schools. To answer one question, yes, it is much harder to get into CMC than into Notre Dame. While very strong athletes (of either sex) may have an advantage at CMC, women are admitted at about the same rate as men. CMC is one of the very few liberal arts colleges in the nation with more men than women.
Of the four institutions @jkauppila121 is looking at, only CMC is need-blind in admissions and offers full financial aid to all admitted students. Its percentage receiving aid is only around 50% because lots of its applicants need no assistance - as is true for most of the very top liberal arts colleges.
@CollegeBuff I think you need a lesson in college admissions. The point about Notre Dame was to show how demographics influence acceptance rates. Being a Catholic school, ND will naturally have a higher acceptance rate because of the demographic pool. Based on the profile of student, ND is more selective, AVG ACT is a 33 vs CMC at 31. The average CMC student will not get in ND.
Also, just three years ago CMC was caught counting partially completed applications in the acceptance figures, among other things. So again take such an anomoly of an acceptance rate with a grain of salt.
To answer one question, yes, it is much harder to get into CMC than into Notre Dame.
CMC is more selective, but Notre Dame has higher test scores. And considering how low many ND athletes’ test scores are, the non-athlete admits at ND probably score well above this class’s 2200 average.
But a 30-point difference in average SAT score is not enough to give ND students the edge – the students at CMC and ND are probably pretty equally capable.