<p>“The chair of the philosophy department at Princeton when I was a grad student there way back when had previously taught at Wellesley for many years; he was regarded as one of the most distinguished figures in the field. Currently on the Wellesley faculty is Karl Case, an economist who co-developed the widely used Case-Shiller real estate price index with Robert Schiller from Yale.”</p>
<p>Come on, we both know these are the exceptions. The VAST majority of extremely competent LAC profs are NOT big names in their fields and never make world-changing discoveries, yet they manage to provide world-class UNDERGRAD educations.</p>
<p>2008 - 57 total on-campus reports, 51 of which were property crimes. Six cases of forcible sexual assault - all in the residential facilities (one would assume student-student).</p>
<p>Similar situation for 06 and 07. More recent information is probably available if you look for it.</p>
<p>I can speak perfectly clear on this matter. Case used to be a much more respected school in academia, in fact once being UChicago’s greatest rival. Yet, the problem is that Cleveland has really deteriorated; no one wants to live here. Thus, what happens is that the infrastructure of its past prestige allows for a maintenance of a relatively high level of professorship, research, and facilities. What it does not allow for, however, is the desire for students to pick CWRU over any number of other well respected institutions. I would also suggest its high acceptence rate is similar to UChicago’s merely a decade ago. The main difference being that one can market Chicago much more successfully than Cleveland.</p>
<p>As a rule of thumb, I tell my kid to be skeptical about any schools likely to admit him; it indicates, in my mind, an absence of serious standards.</p>
<p>We were very impressed by Case, especially because although it was known for engineering etc., it had a wide range of social science and humanities offerings. The adminissions officer (this was 2010) was very candid, and what he said rang true: we know that so many brilliant students don’t get into “higher ranked” schools even though they are clearly qualified. We admit a lot of them and benefit when they come here.</p>
<p>Case was on our list due to their great reputation for merit aid for top students. Unfortunately, their program is changing, starting with the freshman class that will be entering in fall 2012. They plan to flatten it out; more students will receive merit, but the top awards will be smaller. Not good news, because only big merit would make Case competitive with the honors college of our state school. And Case’s academics are “good, not great.”</p>