<p>I'm looking to apply to smaller colleges. My main interests are social studies: politics, econ, and history. Out of college, I'd like to work for a while at an investment bank or consulting firm in NYC.</p>
<p>It seems that there's good concensus that the Top Small Colleges are: </p>
<p>Amherst
Williams
Swarthmore
Middlebury</p>
<p>But what other schools would you all recomend as being the next 5 Top Smaller Colleges?</p>
<p>Haverford?
Wesleyan?
Bowdoin?</p>
<p>I'm a guy so Wellesley/Smith/etc. are obviously out.</p>
<p>Although I'm not a big fan of US News & World Report... I'd say the schools that COlsen573 posted are the ones I'd pick as well, but I'd rank them a little differently...</p>
<p>Then of course, you have to think about location. I noticed that you mentioned that you'd like to work in NYC. Therefore, I'd say you might want to reconsider looking at Pomona, Carleton, Davidson, and Claremont McKenna and focus on the schools in the northeast and PA.</p>
<p>Definitely check out Claremont McKenna and Pomona. Both schools, particularly the former, seem very well-suited to your interests, and I know many grads who are working (and current students who are interning) on the east coast, including a CMC soph at Goldman Sachs (I think, but this is not my area...regardless, it's somewhere I've heard of, which says a lot), and a recent Pomona grad working veeery comfortably at a Manhattan hedge fund. Investment banking and related fields are fairly common goals among CMC students, in particular, and the campus really caters to these interests.</p>
<p>I have absolutely no basis for comparing opportunities coming from CA vs. the east coast, but both CMC and Pomona are sufficiently well-connected and well-respected to be worth, at the very least, further research.</p>
<p>heh, I'm going there next year, so I am clearly going to be biased, but Carleton is awesome</p>
<p>But otherwise, as much as the USNews is generally disliked, it is pretty spot on in its rankings there, IMO. To be honest, I would probably have Pomona above Carleton, and maybe Vassar a little lower, but otherwise, that seems like an accurate list.</p>
<p>there's a consensus that aws are the top three. there is no consensus that middlebury is included in that top category at the exclusion of its peer schools like bowdoin or pomona or carleton. unless you went to middlebury, i suppose.</p>
<p>I would personally not include Middlebury in your top tier, if for no other reason than the games they have been playing with admissions statistics in their USNEWS reporting. The top schools play it straight.</p>
<p>I would certainly include Pomona as the equal in every way of Williams, Swarthmore, and Amherst -- it has an even larger per student endowment.</p>
<p>Claremont McKenna is a fantastic specialty econ/government undergrad school. Almost a hybrid -- the size of a small LAC with university sized departments in the speciality fields.</p>
<p>TSpartan, The issue isn't ranking; the issue is fit. You're looking for a small liberal arts college in the Northeast that has a good connections with NYC IB and consulting firms and (I'm guessing) a good track record for getting its graduates into top MBA programs. </p>
<p>My list would look something like this: Williams, Amherst, Bowdoin, Hamilton, Colgate, Trinity, Bucknell. If you want to go a little further afield I'd look at Kenyon. Not strictly LACs but similar in feel: Tufts and Dartmouth.</p>
<p>
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I would personally not include Middlebury in your top tier, if for no other reason than the games they have been playing with admissions statistics in their USNEWS reporting.
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</p>
<p>I'm interested in hearing what games Middlebury played in the most recent U.S. News ranking? Please enlighten me.</p>
<p>Specifically with respect to your investment banking option, you may want to check how various contenders are actually doing currently.</p>
<p>When I was in the business we only routinely hired people at certain LACs; and the hiring preference didn't strictly follow what might be suggested by US News. Of the schools mentioned above, I only recall analysts (direct undergrad hires) at my firm from: Amherst, Wesleyan, Middlebury. Then, Wellesley, Smith & Barnard which you didn't list for obvious reasons. A greater preponderance by far were ivy League + MIT.</p>
<p>I'm not suggesting this is an accurate list currently, but just that you might check. Certain schools that, though excellent, do not traditionally have a lot of pro-business students might not attract as many recruiters as some other schools which seem likely to have more interested and qualified candidates to interview. Especially if they are in isolated locations. And not near another school that the firms are recruiting at anyway.</p>
<p>Unless there is an important connection via a powerful partner (MD or whatever), in which case all bets are off.</p>
<p>These firms are keenly aware that time is money, so they want to be able to get to the biggest pool of obviously great and interested candidates with the least amount of invested time.</p>
<p>at any event that was the case when I was there.</p>
<p>There will be protests from some people (like me) that there's no such thing as a one-size-fits-all best school. As an extreme example, if your goal is to get a PhD in Humanties or English Literature, the undergraduate school that produces the highest percentage of future PhDs is St. John's College, but even then, it might not be the right place for a given student.</p>
<p>So there's some evidence that St. John's is the best for these two fields, but St. John's does not appear on huskem's list at all, even though Humanities and English Literature are significant disciplines. This is the problem with giving such general rankings credence.</p>
<p>Actually, St. Johns is not the top PhD producer in those fields over the most recent 10 year period:</p>
<p>Number of PhDs per 1000 graduates </p>
<p>PhDs and Doctoral Degrees:
ten years (1994 to 2003) from NSF database</p>
<p>Number of Undergraduates:
ten years (1989 to 1998) from IPEDS database </p>
<p>Humanities
1 Oberlin College 50
2 Swarthmore College 43
3 St John's College (both campus) 41
4 Bryn Mawr College 40
5 Reed College 39
6 Amherst College 39
7 Yale University 38
8 Bennington College 36
9 Carleton College 33
10 Williams College 31
11 Pomona College 27
12 Haverford College 27
13 Wesleyan University 27
14 Harvard University 25
15 Wellesley College 24
16 Vassar College 23
17 Princeton University 23
18 University of the South 22
19 University of Chicago 22
20 Wheaton College (Wheaton, IL) 22
21 Grinnell College 22
22 Barnard College 22
23 Smith College 21
24 Kalamazoo College 20
25 Sarah Lawrence College 20
26 St Olaf College 20
27 Oklahoma Baptist University 20
28 Lawrence University 20
29 Columbia University in the City of New York 19
30 Hampshire College 19
31 Davidson College 18
32 Brown University 17
33 Agnes Scott College 17
34 Mount Holyoke College 17
35 University of Rochester 17
36 University of Dallas 16
37 Stanford University 16
38 Ouachita Baptist University 16
39 Earlham College 15
40 Bowdoin College 15
41 Furman University 15
42 Macalester College 15
43 Rice University 15
44 College of Wooster 15
45 Beloit College 14
46 Hardin-Simmons University 14
47 Bard College 14
48 Dartmouth College 14
49 Whitman College 14
50 Middlebury College 14
51 Kenyon College 14
**English**
1 Yale University 18
2 Swarthmore College 18
3 Amherst College 17
4 Bryn Mawr College 16
5 Bennington College 16
6 Reed College 15
7 Williams College 15
8 Oberlin College 13
9 Carleton College 13
10 Wesleyan University 13
11 St John's College (both campus) 12
12 Pomona College 12
13 University of the South 11
14 Barnard College 11
15 Vassar College 11
16 Haverford College 11
17 Princeton University 10
18 Harvard University 10
19 University of Chicago 9
20 Sarah Lawrence College 9
21 Wellesley College 9
22 Beloit College 9
23 Columbia University in the City of New York 9
24 Brown University 9
25 Agnes Scott College 9
26 Smith College 8
27 Kenyon College 8
28 Kalamazoo College 8
29 Mount Holyoke College 8
30 University of Dallas 8
31 Stanford University 8
32 Davidson College 7
33 Hendrix College 7
34 Bard College 7
35 Earlham College 7
36 Grinnell College 7
37 Goucher College 7
38 Hampshire College 6
39 Dartmouth College 6
40 Occidental College 6
41 College of the Holy Cross 6
42 Middlebury College 6
43 Trinity University 6
44 Scripps College 6
45 College of Wooster 6
46 Colby College 6
47 Bowdoin College 6
48 Hollins College 6
<p>dad, thanks, your data is newer than mine, and from a different source (mine is Weighted Baccalaureate Origins Study, Higher Education Data Sharing Consortium, 1992 to 2001), but I hope the point is still apparent.</p>
<p>Same source. Newer timeframe. I may be using a slightly different number of graduates. I'm using the actual number of gradutes from a ten year period offset five years earlier than the actual number of PhDs. This accounts for colleges that grew substantially over the time frame and it also doesn't penalize schools with very low graduation rates -- compared to using undergrad enrollment.</p>
<p>Your point is valid. Actually, I don't think that choosing undergrad colleges based on department rankings is particularly smart for most students. Heck, most students don't even end up majoring in what they thought they would when they were 17.</p>
<p>There are exceptions. For example, if you want to major in Engineering, you need to make sure there is an Engineering department! Same for potential language majors. By and large, most applicants should be more concerned about finding colleges that are strong across the board.</p>