<p>"How is it that it dropped to the 40's?"</p>
<p>No clue. Why does it matter? Perhaps it's because global warming has made Bowdoin, Bates, Middlebury and Colby hotter destinations. (sorry, couldn't resist)</p>
<p>Right -- but it may hurt them with USNWR. (Actually, it's hard to imagine that anything is hurting Middlebury with USNWR. It seems insanely popular.)</p>
<p>I see Conn College as right there in the mix with Hamilton, Colgate, Bard, the Maine colleges, Kenyon, Denison . . .</p>
<p>An excellent question. I asked <a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/community-forum-issues/633481-why-isn-t-usc-cc-top-university.html%5B/url%5D">http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/community-forum-issues/633481-why-isn-t-usc-cc-top-university.html</a>, and posted it on the College Admissions forum, and the mods instantly moved the thread to the oblivion of the Community & Forum Issues sub-forum. So be careful, if the mods are consistent, this thread too might be ushered off to C&FI.</p>
<p>The community and forum issues is sort of the appropriate place for questions like that though, isn't it? These boards are more for questions about colleges, not how the boards themselves work. BTW, good discussion down there about a parents only subforum where no students would be allowed.</p>
<p>there are two possible factors that might have had something to do with the outrageous drop in rankings (seriously, how can one school drop 20 spots in less than 10 years)
1. the drop in rankings seemed to occur right after a longtime president left the school. rumor was that she had made several poor financial decisions. the next president was pretty much useless, and only lasted a couple of years. Fortunately, the new president is very popular, and the college community seems to be very optimistic.
2. Admissions selectivity took a hit when the college became extremely active in increasing diversity on campus. Back when the college was ranked in the top 25, there was not nearly the level of diversity on campus that exists today. Personally I'd take the hit in the rankings for a few years to make sure the school is an attractive option for a wider range of the population. </p>
<p>(I also think that because Conn is a pretty moderate school in terms of demographics, it gets fewer applications than schools that scream out to a particular group of students. For example, on this site, if a student asks for liberal school suggestions, people will immediately mention Wesleyan, Oberlin, Bard, Skidmore, Vassar. More conservative minded students will be cited with schools like Colgate, Trinity, Davidson. This can be seen with other attributes such as people looking for a particularly artsy, athletic, outdoorsy, politicaly active, etc campus. Conn doesn't have any single generalization one can make about its student body. I hope that makes sense?)</p>
<p>Connecticut College also isn't located in a bonding-inducing rural location and doesn't have close access to a a major city. I wonder how many students travel home many weekends. Unbalanced gender ratio, as well.</p>
<p>I don't think it's a suitcase school at all. It certainly isn't for kids from this area. Its location is pretty good, though -- Eastern Connecticut has lots of good natural stuff, and water sports on the river and sound. Lots of sailors. And Indian casinos, too.</p>
<p>It really isn't much different from Wesleyan or Bates as regards nonrural/access to a major city. Providence is no more than an hour away; I bet kids go there a fair amount. (I know they do from Wesleyan, and that's farther.)</p>
<p>Thanks, huskem. Would you say the academics are about what they were when it was ranked higher?</p>
<p>I don't know if it's a suitcase school, but I never saw so many cars parked on campus in my life as when I visited that school with my daughter. The proportion of students who have cars must be relatively high, I would imagine.</p>
<p>She liked the school though.</p>
<p>
[quote]
The community and forum issues is sort of the appropriate place for questions like that though, isn't it?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I don't think so. If we were discussing what should be the criteria for a top college at College Confidential, maybe. Rather, we are generally assuming that the criteria are agreed upon, and we are discussing the extent to which Connecticut College (or USC in my thread) meets that criteria. There is no need to restrict such a broad discussion to the restricted scope (and audience) of the C&FI forum.</p>
<p>DEFINITELY not a suitcase school- 98% of students live on campus.</p>
<p>and i really can't imagine how or why there would be a change in academics since the rankings plummeted, especially in such a short time. there are many truly outstanding departments.</p>
<p>PA has gone down. And I still bet plenty of students don't hang around on weekends. I also wouldn't call Providence a major city. I can believe plenty of students have cars.
Of course most of this is subjective, including the PA.</p>
<p>I can compare the PA from the 1997 and 2007 editions of USN&WR. Don't have the 2008 or 2009 editions handy.
In the 1997 edition the school was ranked 26th among liberal arts colleges and 29th in PA, along with Hamilton, Trinity and Earlham.
In the 2007 edition the school was ranked 39th among LACs and 36th in PA along with Richmond, Franklin and Marshall, Rhodes, Sarah Lawrence, Pitzer, St. Olaf, Earlham and St. Johns (MD).
If Conn. Col. were given a rank in the middle its PA peers both years, its PA ranking fell from between 30th and 31st to 40th, or about 10 places over the period. The slip in PA played a role in its USN&WR fall, which was 13 places over the ten years.</p>
<p>i'd venture to guess that 90% of students stay on campus on the weekend. i'm not counting day trips to the beach, outlet malls, new haven or providence, etc as everyone comes back to hang out at night. but people rarely go away for the weekend.</p>
<p>Tufts is not among the schools listed as Top Liberal Arts Schools, and beyond whatever one wants to say about Connecticut College, Tufts is definitely selective and a nescac school as well.</p>
<p>^Tufts is not an LAC. However, I would say that Tufts is at least as selective as Northwestern, Emory, Vanderbilt, Carnagie Mellon, although it comes out worse on USNWR than all those other schools.</p>
<p>I always thought that Vassar and Conn College were similar, so it's interesting that one has held some much stronger in the rankings than the other.</p>
<p>History has a lot to do with this. Conn Coll was not a seven sister and did not have the cachet of Vassar back in the day.</p>
<p>When looking for a woman's college to merge with Yale chose Vassar, not CT College.</p>
<p>This says nothing about CT College's quality, of course.</p>
<p>CT College is a bit preppier, but then so is Colgate.</p>
<p>I will say that the woman I knew from CT College became a successful lawyer and produced an impressive Hollywood movie.</p>