How do the ‘Big Three’ LACs (Amherst, Williams, Swarthmore) really compare to those a notch lower (e.g. Grinell, Colgate, Davidson)? I’ve read that the top three have lower teaching requirements for their professors, and more allowance for research. And they have more faculty who are prominent internationally. But are the students on average noticeably brighter? Is it a more truly intellectual atmosphere? Coursework any more rigorous?
Yeah, the kids at the “big 3” are a little smarter, a little more accomplished, a little “better” on average than at the other schools mentioned.
But the difference is not enormous, in fact it’s pretty small. At any of those schools named, the individual student is going to be the single biggest factor in determining her overall college experience.
If you were to consider faculty scholarship in, for example, economics as an indicator of faculty prominence in this field, you would find overlap across categories of schools as you represented them.
By “a notch lower” I assume the OP is referring to US News or overall prestige. My take? For the schools in the top 50 (and even this is a somewhat arbitrary cutoff), there’s no significant difference among schools. Two years ago, Mount Holyoke dropped down to 41, but I never thought of it as some lesser version of Bryn Mawr or Barnard. Honestly, Pomona is “hot,” but Macalester not so much, but you’re going to have a tough time convincing me that those poor Macalester kids are getting a lesser education.
I don’t know. Do high school seniors in the LAC market really think in these terms? I mean, sure, I guess it would be a rare student who chooses, say, Juniata over Swarthmore, but don’t most LAC kids worry more about finding the right place? I’ve never met someone who says, “Gee, I love everything about Grinnell, but it’s lower than Amherst.” Or, “I really want to go to Bates, but Williams is supposedly #1.”
The traditional differences may shrink, and the more important difference may be how well each one handles distance / online education.
Hard to say. Judging solely by average HS GPAs, test scores, and admit rates, maybe.
Schools at the very top of the rankings tend to have more money; more money tends to buy more stuff (presumably stuff that students/parents/faculty want, more or less). However, one reason those schools have more money probably is that they focus on attracting and admitting many students with high earnings potential, who will make big alumni donations to sustain/grow the endowment. How do they recognize applicants with high earnings potential? Not necessarily by sheer intellectual brilliance (relative to other applicants).
There seems to be a lot of confusion in this regard. First of all, no one over the age of sixteen refers to the top LACs as the “Big Three”. That’s a term that historically has been reserved for Harvard, Yale and Princeton and for more reasons than the mere fact that they appear at the top of a magazine poll year after year. But, that is the universe most h/s students live in and that explains the various attempts over the years to capture what you mean when you want to say “The three LACs that appear at the top of the USNews poll every year.”
This is true. Or, to put it even more bluntly, the USNews tends to filter for money, specifically money spent per student, which accounts for about 7% of a college’s score.
Not necessarily. Sure, having generous donors over the years counts for a lot. But, all it takes is one or two high-rollers at strategic points in a college’s history for an endowment to take-off. After that, it’s all about careful management. Ask Harvard, they have one of the lowest alumni giving rates among wealthy universities in the country.
True. In fact, I would say the opposite: Sheer intellectual brilliance is probably a hindrance to becoming a high-rolling donor and there are rankings that tend to support this. Of the three LACs that habitually occupy the top three spots on the USNews poll, Swarthmore (#3), is probably the best known for its hot house intellectual atmosphere. But, according to collegescorecard, its alumni barely earn more than Wesleyan (currently #17 in the poll) grads six after graduation. Why? IMHO, because super smart kids tend to go into academia, the arts, and government service none of which are known for their high pay.
I’m only familiar with the Little Three, Wesleyan, Williams and Amherst which - like The Big Three - have been playing round-robin varsity athletics with each other for well over a century and share certain features with each other like colorful tail-gate parties, hilly campuses and snowy winters. The dirty little secret is that each one has a formula for attracting smart kids who excel in sports, will major in Economics and groom themselves for internships in i-banking and management.
Hope this helps.
For LACs I think fit is very important. We visited a number of LACs with my D and each one seemed to have its own personality/vibe. Some she felt very comfortable at in terms of the students, academic strengths etc. and a few she couldn’t wait to leave. Personally, I would value fit over perceived prestige.
I just came up with the term ‘Big Three’ since I always see those same three schools at the top of US News rankings. I suppose very few people have firsthand experience of one of those three as well as a lower ranked LAC. I actually graduated from an LAC that usually ranks around 15 to 20. While most kids were pretty bright, there were plenty who came across as mediocre or nothing special intellectually (though that’s relative, and I don’t mean to sound snobbish). A lot of legacy admits I guess (though I was a legacy myself 
).
“Do high school seniors in the LAC market really think in these terms?”
They definitely do, maybe not to adults, but to each other.
“I mean, sure, I guess it would be a rare student who chooses, say, Juniata over Swarthmore, but don’t most LAC kids worry more about finding the right place?”
LAC students are, not surprisingly, similar to non-LAC students in that they also consider prestige, maybe even more than fit. Here are Amherst college applications overlaps from Fiske:
Williams, Middlebury, Colby, Yale, Brown, Harvard, Princeton, & Stanford.
Those are the #1, 7 and 11 ranked in LACs, ivies and Stanford.
“Gee, I love everything about Grinnell, but it’s lower than Amherst.” Or, “I really want to go to Bates, but Williams is supposedly #1.”
I’m not sure it would even get to that, Grinnell and Bates don’t show up on the overlap lists for Amherst and Williams, at least in the most common schools. If you’re basing your applications on ranking then you’re not applying to Grinnell or Bates. Don’t the top-5 have the most applications among LACs? Maybe not causation, but correlation for sure.
On these forums, LAC-interested students do tend to chatter more about the higher USNWR-ranked LACs, just like how students looking at universities tend to chatter more about higher USNWR-ranked universities. Similar with parents.
While non-ranking/prestige fit factors are in reality more important for LACs (due to their small size, they are less likely to be able to offer “something [sufficiently good] for everyone”), it is not clear that LAC-interested students and parents necessarily consider such non-ranking/prestige fit factors more than those interested in larger schools.
Attending a highly ranked LAC should result in more & better job/career opportunities than attending a lower ranked LAC.
Why ? Because LACs educate students across a variety of disciplines without specialization in a profession so employers want the best & the brightest because they will need to be trained. (This is overly simplistic, however.)
Grinnell, Colgate University, and Davidson College are all highly ranked LACs. But for the most prestige conscious positions–such as consulting & IB–Amherst. Williams, & Swarthmore (the Little Ivies) are the best schools among all highly ranked LACs–at least for East Coast placement.
This does not seem to be unique to LACs, as opposed to being generalized to any type of college if the job is not strongly associated with a particular major and the employer is college-prestige-conscious.
However, some liberal arts majors at some LACs are somewhat pre-professional (e.g. economics (especially with “managerial economics” electives) for many “general business” jobs, or math and statistics for finance).
When it comes to endowment/resources, yes, it’s generally true that higher-ranked LACs have bigger endowments, but not universally true. Grinnell has a per capita endowment roughly equal to WASP, for instance.
Colgate and Davidson aren’t exactly poor either, as Colgate has a per capita endowment figure on par with Cornell and Wesleyan and Davidson isn’t far behind, with an endowment in the range of JHU.
Some of the discussion on earnings results seems anecdotal. Colgate grads earn more in their early careeers (according to U.S. News) than those from any of Williams, Amherst and Swarthmore; By the same standard, Hamilton grads earn more than those from any NESCAC LAC; etc.
Correction, #14: “more than those from any [other] NESCAC LAC.”
A lot of these posts are hypothesizing in the abstract: For example, “Attending a highly ranked LAC should result in more & better job/career opportunities than attending a lower ranked LAC” (emphasis added)
But irl…how much does it really? Compared to say, the difference between actual achievement / experiences? How meaningful / substantial are the differences in outcome between these schools really? Even setting aside grad schemes at IB & consultancies (who are known to value brand names), and individual ties to a school (ie, a hiring manager who is a fellow alum), do other posters believe that employers really differentiate substantially between these schools? That they pay a Williams grad more than a Colgate grad?
In my direct experience, no. In the companies where I have done hiring (which include a top 4 consulting firm and a Fortune 50 manufacturer) universities exist in broad bands- and even so, the college was never an important selection criteria. Experience - albeit in the form of internships at the entry levels- trumped everything else. School name might be seen as a plus, a validation, but I never saw a good CV from a no-name school put behind an ok CV from a top name. And between 2 strong candidates, where they went to college was never the decider. But: that is a random sample of 1. Anecdotal.
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@collegemom3717 : What are the top (4) consulting firms ? I know MBB, but what do you consider to be the fourth–Deloitte ?
@collegemom3717 : Again, regarding your post #16 above, no one has asserted that Williams College grads are paid more than Colgate grads, just that, as we agree, the Williams college name is more valued than almost all other LACs by IBs & the top 3 consulting firms.
Hiring managers are reputed to favor alums from their alma mater as reflected in actual hiring / placement stats.
With respect to OP’s post which started this thread, there is more job placement value & opportunity in a degree from Williams College, Amherst or Swarthmore than the other listed schools. Not a hypothosis, but based on actual placement stats. Of course, AWS have a regional recruiting advantage not enjoyed by Grinnell or Davidson.
re #13, @PurpleTitan, Colgate’s endowment per capita is not directly comparable to Cornell’s, because three of Cornell’s undergraduate colleges receive funding from New York State in lieu of funding from an endowment . As such they are called “Statutory colleges”. The other colleges there are called the “endowed colleges”.
Colgate does not receive funding of this sort from New York State.