Yeah, Bates is nice.
“Yale has the 2nd best environmental science program in the country”
That’s from niche and their rankings for majors pretty much matches their overall ranking because of using the same factors, so should be used with many grains of salt:
30% come from the overall Niche grade, which is why the top programs are the top colleges on their overall ranking and 20% from ES student’s SAT/ACT Scores, again correlated with their overall rankings.
The other 50% are pretty reasonable - percent of students majoring in ES, program demand, student surveys on the ES experience, research expenditures per student, percent of total E/S graduates that come from the college, total expenditures dedicated to research in ES.
“Overall, I think I’m a pretty strong applicant,”
You are, but being a Chinese male is a totally different demographic as you probably know. I know quite a few applicants similar to your profile as I live in the bay area. So you have to be a little strategic in how you approach. Usually these kids apply EA to MIT or Cal Tech and maybe their state flagship and RD another public for a safety, along with a few more reaches. I recommended Pomona and Harvey Mudd because of your preference for a LAC and I assumed you’re from the northeast, so have a good idea on the LACs out there.
@theloniusmonk I didn’t know that Niche rankings were that biased. Also, do you think I would have a good chance getting into Pomona ED?
Also is ES a very competitive field for admissions and is it popular among Asians?
And should I consider taking history as a minor/major even if I am not going into that field?
As an aspect to research further, it seems that Pomona emphasizes engineering options outside of its consortium:
@merc81 It’s seem like a really cool plan at first, but I have heard that most kids who are first interested in the program never follow through and only 1-2 kids go through this every year. Nonetheless, if I really want to do the program then maybe.
I’m wondering why Pomona doesn’t mention HMC with respect to engineering, though. If that’s a potential direction of interest for you, you may want to research this aspect of the consortium further.
College and university curricula differ in both their flexibility and accessibility. For example, colleges may require a set of core courses, which limits flexibility, or colleges may restrict access to certain areas of study through competitive entry processes, which limits accessibility. Universities are often divided by schools, which may limit accessibility in particular. Nonetheless, for choices that offer both flexibility and accessibility, look into, especially, Amherst, Hamilton, Brown and Grinnell.
I read somewhere that you can double major at two colleges so in my case I would want to do Environmental Analysis at Pomona and Engineering at HMC. I’ve heard that HMC engineering is tough though so I am not sure whether to pursue this path.
You were accepted to RSI for this summer, right? No engineering program should be overly challenging for you.
@Diaz42 ,
As an Asian, you might well be considered URM at many, if not all, of the LACs you are interested in. Yale, no, you will not be URM. You have very good stats so if you find an LAC where you feel comfortable applying ED, you might have a great shot, especially if you have good essays and show interest.
Lots of good advice on here already. One thing worth considering is Middlebury is pretty remote, do you feel that this is something you would be comfortable with? It must be very difficult for your age group to decide which colleges to target given you cannot, currently, visit campuses. If the location isn’t an issue, or turns out to be a major attraction, look for colleges offering the majors you are interested in in similar locations.
Williams Environmental Science looks pretty fantastic - they mange a 2600 acre forest close to campus and also offer a Concentration in Maritime Studies. Physics, they have a brand new science building recently opened (As do Amherst, also worthy of serious consideration and perhaps a little less remote)
When you find the one you love, you get one Early Decision chance, use it wisely. Even if you’re not an athlete or a child of an alum you’ll be telling them you are serious about attending their school. With your stats and extra curricular activities Admissions at some colleges mentioned already might wonder if you’d really attended if offered or sport or if you see them as some sort of safety.
Good luck.
@Jon234: Actually, many get 2 chances at ED. Lots of selective LACs offer ED I & EDII.
That’s true. I was trying to keep things simple. I would imagine, though I have no proof, that more spots are offered ED 1, generally speaking.
Niche ALWAYS ranks its favorite colleges (expensive popular private colleges, especially Ivies, Stanford and MIT) as being the best at everything, so long as that major exists in the college. Seeing Yale or Harvard having a rank of anything lower than 9 seems to cause them physical pain, and seeing a public university ranked the best at anything which is taught at a popular expensive private university seems to fill them with existential dread. For example, they rank Vanderbilt and WashU as being better at engineering than CMU, UIUC, UMichigan, or HMC. That’s the quality of Niche’s rankings in a nutshell.
If you are looking at the Claremont Colleges and want to study Environmental Science, Pitzer College may be a better choice than Pomona.
“Also, do you think I would have a good chance getting into Pomona ED?”
Hard to say how much better it would be for ED as the ED acceptance rate is 15.4% for the 19-20 class according to Pomona’s CDS, and the overall rate is 7.4% so a 2x difference. But the actual RD rate (when you take out the ED admits) is 5%. The one good thing for you is that males were admitted at a 9% and women, 6% in the overall numbers, but those are overall numbers, it’s possible that ED acceptance for males were around 20%.
" Also is ES a very competitive field for admissions and is it popular among Asians?"
It’s not a popular field in general at Pomona, but Pomona may not look very closely at the major when admitting, you’d have to do more research on that.
“That’s the quality of Niche’s rankings in a nutshell.”
A lot of their rankings are based on surveys, so there could be a lot of garbage in garbage out in their rankings.
Yes, some universities have undergraduate schools of business, engineering, architecture, nursing, journalism, etc., and access to those schools may or may not be readily available to those in the college of arts & sciences.
On the other hand, most liberal arts colleges do not have those programs at all, which makes accessibility a moot point.
Others have already questioned this ranking, so I’ll only add that my personal top three undergraduate programs among the top universities are Stanford, Cornell, and Duke, in no particular order. Quite a few of the other top universities, most notably Yale, Princeton, Wash U, Michigan, and Penn, are very good as well.
You won’t find a LAC with better environmental science offerings than Middlebury, but there are many other excellent options, some of which have been recommended already. I recommend considering some of the colleges in the Keck consortium in particular.
For ideas based on relationships that include Middlebury, scroll to Kenyon’s “The Company We Keep”: https://www.kenyon.edu/admissions-aid/admissions-statistics/.