Wrong thread
There’s value, if you can afford it, in a school like Bates v. Bing.
Beside peer quality (in those specific majors, not overall), it’ll be easier to find internships and experiences, and ultimately launch from Bates. People who say it’s the same must remember were not talking premed, engineering, or business - undecided/social science majors will find more support from a LAC, keeping in mind opportunities, careers and outcomes are often more complicated in “less obviously employable majors” that public universities may not have the means to invest into as fully as LACs with huge endowments and a mission toward them. (I’m sorry, I’m afraid it’s not very clear but I hope you get the gist. I’ll try to return and correct once I figurebout how to word it 
) .
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Bates shows notably wide ranges by some academic measures though. For example, its middle ACT range (27–33) covers double the span of Binghamton’s (29–32).
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Bates has been test optional on application for decades, but does require test scores at matriculation for those who have them. So no surprise that it has a wide test score range.
As a contrasting example, Bowdoin reports a fairly typical middle-range ACT span of 4 points (30–34).
Look at it this way. If your daughter is a social sciences major, she is going to likely want/need a graduate degree. Putting it another way, her undergraduate degree (other than econ) may not qualify her for gainful employment that would financially well support her and her family over the course of her life. And lastly, the stone cold reality is that Bates will cost you about TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND dollars MORE than SUNY Binghamton will cost you, assuming four years at either institution. About 110K total for 4 yrs at Binghamton. Over 300K for 4 yrs at Bates.
If you are so wealthy that 200K is chump change to you guys, then sure, send her to Bates. But if you think that your daughter might find other ways to use 200K in starting out in life (aside from the cost of graduate school, which she’s probably going to need in order to be able to earn a living after a social sciences undergrad degree), such as perhaps buying a house or condo someday, then it seems to me that the obvious choice is SUNY Binghamton, the flagship state U in NYS.
No, she won’t meet as many bottom half of the class graduates from prestigious prep schools there. Who she will meet is many top of the class graduates from public schools throughout NY State, whose families wanted proportional value for their educational dollar. Dimkin’s remark about students from Long Island was unfortunate and, frankly, snobbish. But truthfully, it appears that an advantage of Bates over Binghamton is that one might have the opportunity to meet other well-heeled kids, who come from families that have the resources to choose Bates, for 200K more, for their bottom half of the class kids from prestigious and even not-so-prestigious private schools.
Is Bates REALLY worth 200K more to you? Assuming she does well at either institution, she’d have the same shot at grad school, coming from Bates or Binghamton. Are you expecting some tremendous social advantage from Bates? This might indeed be the case, but I really thought that the days of sending young women to college for social reasons were in the rear view mirror. Perhaps I’m wrong.
For whatever reason, Bates maintains a high popularity among full-pay families, with 57% of its students not requiring need-based grants.
Or, full pay families are popular with Bates. With an endowment in the $300 million range (endowment per student $180,000) Bates has to be need aware, and makes no secret that it is.
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Which supports my point. The “social” advantage of Bates? The fact that 57% of the kids there come from families who can afford to pay 300K for college for their child.
In this example from the New York Times, Bates wasn’t forthcoming regarding its policies, however:
Well. I guess if I said nothing, people would wonder why, lol.
There’s truth in what you say. But as a person who has a kid at Bing, and one who graduated a year ago from Bates, to us, it was worth the money for our D to go to Bates. I already linked my post above which explains some of the reason why. We could afford it, and we and our daughter felt it was the best place for her to be educated and to grow, intellectually and socially. That seems to have been true so far.
To address your comments about a “social advantage,” I don’t know what you mean. My daughter worked her rear off to get her current job. She worked her rear off to win a national scholarship and to land not one but three career jobs, two of which she landed in 2020, well into the pandemic. Umpteen interviews, resumes, emails to professors and alumni, follow ups, and disappointments too. No one handed anything to her and she certainly didn’t get any of her jobs by calling a prep school friend. So yes, to,us, spending the money was worth it because we strongly feel that it was the right place for her to become the young woman she is now.
As far as prep school kids, we had heard of almost none of the colleges our kids applied to until we started looking at colleges in about 2014, and we had (have) less than zero interest in where prep school kids attend. If we did, I suppose we would have discouraged both of our kids from applying to such schools as Whitman, Penn State, SUNY Geneseo and Bing.
My son chose to attend Bing over other options, which, yes, were more costly. He said “I’m not going to be $25,000 happier if I go to another school.” It’s worked out well for him. Bates worked out well for our daughter. We are happy with how we chose to spend our money and believe it was worth every penny for both of our kids.
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Do you not think that your daughter would have been able to apply for and get the same jobs coming from a flagship state U such as Binghamton?
The “social” advantage that was obtained in the distant past by sending one’s daughter to the “right” school, was that she would meet the “right” mate there, either from a well-off family, or with excellent future earning potential. I think those days of MRS matriculations are largely gone, but it is true that many people wind up marrying people whom they met in college, or are introduced to by their friends from college, and with 57% of the students at Bates being full-pay at over 75K/yr now, it certainly does pre-select the socioeconomic status of the majority of the class.
Look, everyone has to make their own choices. For certain kids, under certain circumstances, a private small LAC ranked in the top 30 LACs in the country is worth 200K more than the flagship state U. In fact, for some kids, families choose to pay 300K for small non-selective private schools, vs a state college that would cost 200K less, because of their child’s specific needs and the family’s ability to pay. Only the parent and child can decide what is right for their child’s needs, and their wallet.
However, I would think that most people would consider that for the vast majority of students, it would be a tough choice between full pay at Bates, vs in-state at SUNY Binghamton. Nowadays, the question in this case is whether Bates is 50K/yr better than Binghamton. Unless one’s child has very specific needs that only Bates could fulfill, it seems that the answer for most families is no.
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On the other hand, there are perceived social advantages to attending colleges with “desirable” peer groups, for various definitions of “desirable” (not necessarily marriage related). These perceived social advantages are commonly mentioned in threads about which college is better, whether or not the perceived advantages are actual advantages.
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I’m on the Bates student profile page. It shows:
14% admission and a 33/34 ACT split.
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Bates’ settled information (i.e., as provided on its most recent CDS) appears quite different (27–33), however:
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Not that it will impact the decision but perhaps someone (who is curious) can call and ask. I’d assume their website is accurate. Anyway, I’m a believer in savings - they can have multiple years of grad school paid for going to suny b. …
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Note that early information for Bates, such as that you posted, includes score profiles based on only those students who submitted standardized testing as part of their applications. Bates’ more recent CDS reports information for nearly all matriculated students.
But if this were the case, how would they know. A TO student would not report it.
Example - my daughter just applied to Rice. She did not get in - but had she, they would not know they got a 32.
I see your point though - I’m not sure if the ratio of TO vs. test submit was reported - but in theory any school that is TO will have a higher score set than they’d have if all were included.
In th end, the person asking really needs to decide on cheaper, bigger Binghamton vs. the more “personal” and expensive Bates…so the ACT range probably isn’t a huge concern to them.
Bates College Catalog says that “Independent of the admission process and solely for the purpose of the college’s research, students who have taken the standardized tests must submit the results of these tests upon matriculation.”
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Good to know