<p>Q wants to choose the school with the greatest academic vigour (interested in humanities), but she's conflicted due to the varying strengths of college swim programs. Kenyon is a div 3 powerhouse, but does it measure up to the same academic standards as Williams?</p>
<p>She's also considering applying to other schools purely for academics (Brown, Duke etc.) How much does the "prestige"/name factor really matter, and should that affect her decision to go to Kenyon or not? </p>
<p>I would also have her consider Emory. The academics at Emory are top notch and they have won several D3 national championships in the recent past.</p>
<p>In my view, Williams is academically superior to Kenyon.</p>
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Williams in academically superior to pretty much every liberal arts college except perhaps Amherst. Kenyon is outstanding, and in no way lacks rigor, but Williams is amazing. However, students should also consider campus culture. Kenyon’s culture is rather non-competitive, with students who are very down to earth, polite, and welcoming.</p>
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This depends on the student’s goals and ambitions. Prestige will not help a student get into medical school, for example. On the other hand, Brown and Duke will have tons of students from very elite families and the networking opportunities at those schools will be almost unlimited. Many Kenyon students come from similar families but the small number of students limits the networking potential. Also, Kenyon students are less likely to already be on a career track, and more likely to be learning for the sake of learning. Kenyon is a very intellectual college.</p>
<p>Has she visited the schools and talked to the coaches? Is she being recruited by both? The impression of the campus is important too, as in will she be happy there for 4 years? The balance between academics and athletics can be a big factor in the final decision. My athlete (not a swimmer) was looking for good academics and a school that was NOT a powerhouse in her sport so she would get playing time. She found the best place for her, but it was a difficult decision. Kenyon is a fine school and she would get a good education there. They have a list on their website of prestigious graduate programs their students get into. </p>
<p>I guess the question is how much does prestige/name factor matter to you and why? When it comes to grad school, I don’t think it matters anywhere close to gpa and board scores. When it comes to jobs, it may matter marginally between two equally qualified candidates. Depending on the location where the student ends up, it may matter more with alumni connections. So there may be marginal benefits in choosing say Williams over Kenyon, but they may be far outweighed by the fit that Kenyon might have to offer over Williams. If a student is going to be miserable at Williams because she is used to a 4.0 and now has a 2.7, and she likes the students better at Kenyon, what’s the point of 4 years of misery? Kenyon is a great school, particularly for writing and swimming. Williams is a great school all the way around. Emory, Brown and Duke don’t fall into the slouch department either. If she is good enough to swim at or get in on academics to any of these places, she may as well go where she will be the happiest. After all, being happy is probably the most important ingredient for a successful college career.</p>
<p>***Q wants to choose the school with the greatest academic vigour (interested in humanities), but she’s conflicted due to the varying strengths of college swim programs. Kenyon is a div 3 powerhouse, but does it measure up to the same academic standards as Williams?</p>
<p>She’s also considering applying to other schools purely for academics (Brown, Duke etc.) How much does the “prestige”/name factor really matter, and should that affect her decision to go to Kenyon or not?***</p>
<p>This is a fairly typical dilemna with high achieving students/athletes. I’ve gone through it three times with my sons. From the outside the answer is clear. You pursue the school that is going to best help you launch a career in (fill-in the blank) or sustain a career in (fill-in the blank) The easy answer is a question…“What are you going to do when you graduate?” If it is humanities, find the best humanities program among these schools. If it is something else, then pursue that something else. If your son/daughter has an opportunity to attend any of these schools consider yourself blessed. In our house, the sport is secondary because they did want to be professional athletes nor did they have the ability to be professional athletes. The bank of Mom and Dad are there to provide an education. JMO.</p>
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<p>Wow, this is impressive. We know from lots of your previous posts that one of your sons chose Cornell (baseball) over multiple other D1 offers. What were the situations and schools involved with your other two sons in college? Maybe even Williams or Kenyon?</p>
<p>Fenwaypark,</p>
<p>Each of my sons is very different. My oldest is very driven. He picked Cornell for its engineering program and baseball…certainly not the weather! He had the talent & discipline to focus on two things he loves: engineering and baseball. It was a great experience for him as he quickly moved into his professional life. My middle son considered multiple D3s (Washington & Lee, Trinity, Case Western, Rose Holman, WPI, RPI and other engineering schools) with baseball but decided on engineering major at a large D1 where he knew he would not play baseball. This was a good choice for him, and he is excelling. My youngest (high school senior) is considering a few D3s & D2s with baseball as well but it looks like he wants to be an Army Officer at college graduation. So, we are trying to match him with the best ROTC program possible. He feels very strongly about college & the military but he loves baseball. Tough choices but each one made the decison on their own. </p>
<p>So, to tie this back to the earlier post…I think it is real important to have these discussions with your sons/daughters. We are there to help them, guide them but they will have to do the work and love it. Because if they don’t love what they are doing then they should be doing something else. Again, JMO.</p>
<p>You have three very accomplished sons.</p>
<p>The oldest son combined baseball and an Ivy education</p>
<p>The middle son passed up engineering and baseball at top engineering D3s such as Case, WPI, RPI to go for engineering without baseball at a D1.</p>
<p>The youngest son may be on track to pass up D2 or D3 baseball for a good ROTC program.</p>
<p>What is the lesson? I am oversimplifying of course, but it seems to be, to each his or her own.</p>
<p>As far as Kenyon vs Williams, those are both great schools. If the reputation of the swimming program is a tie-breaker and is really important to the student, then I would defer to what the student thinks will maximize “happiness”, “self-satisfaction”. Especially since both are D3s with no impact on the Bank of Mom and Dad as far as athletic money goes.</p>
<p>Seems like that is what you did with your sons too. (With your middle son, maybe the D1 without baseball was less expensive than the D3s who wanted him for baseball, and we can all respect that consideration)</p>
<p>fenwaypark,</p>
<p>Agree with your assessment but I think there is more. I think my two youngest sons realized (early senior year) they didn’t passionately love baseball the way my oldest did, and they are not willing to sacrifice “academic time” for something they didn’t love. They selected or will be selecting schools based on a future career in engineering or the military. As parents, we exposed them to many opportunities and career paths. These are the paths they selected. They know how time consuming & difficult it is to play any sport in college at any level. My sons have seen countless family friends, travel teammates and acquintances drop college sports because they can’t do it anymore, wont do it anymore, and it has become a either a part-time or a full time job. As a good friend put it…“i’ve seen the dark under-belly of college sports”.</p>
<p>For those considering Kenyon vs Williams, (again) I agree with your assessment. If swimming is the tiebreaker then go with the program that will maximize the recruits happiness. That swimming tiebreaker could be important, but the OP mentioned considering other schools without swimming. This led me to think that the OP could be thinking something along the lines as my younger sons. So, I’m thinking the OP is willing/considering to forego D3 swimming for access into Duke, Brown, etc…or other schools. This is why I tried to tie my experiences into this thread.</p>
<p>Frankly, I’d take Williams with swimming and see how it goes if that is the OPs thinking. If swimming doesn’t work out, you drop it and the OP is still enrolled at Williams. You win either way. Great school and the NESCAC way of college athletics is great.</p>
<p>Sounds to me that your younger two sons did not “sacrifice” college sports for academics. Sounds like they realized on their own that they didn’t have the passion for D3 sports period. Good for them!</p>
<p>This is a different scenario from those where the student is passionate about a college sport to the extent that a team’s winning legacy is an important component of school choice.</p>
<p>To provide an extreme example just to try to illustrate a point, I wouldn’t recommend that a student pass up a chance to go to Harvard without playing a sport, in favor of [fill in the blank with the name of a school you think is really the pits] with playing a sport.</p>
<p>But if you are talking Kenyon vs Williams, or even add in Brown and Duke…well I can’t say someone’s career would be adversely affected by any of those choices (assuming they all have the relevant major etc). And if competitive collegiate swimming really is important for a youngster, I think it should be given serious consideration</p>
<p>When it comes to liberal arts college prestige, Williams, Amherst and Swarthmore are the gold standard (fair or not), while Kenyon is not as well known. It’s still a great school, and has a really beautiful campus, but Williams has a better faculty-student ratio, smaller classes, ten times the endowment, and the other students there will be, on average, higher achievers. By the numbers, it has higher academic vigor (whatever that really means), and by all accounts the education people get there is equal to anywhere is the country. </p>
<p>It’s always a little dangerous to worry about “prestige” too much - prestige is not the same as quality of education, and “fit” is most important of all. Swimming is part of that fit. Nevertheless, all things being equal, Williams is likely to open more doors for her in the future than Kenyon. </p>
<p>But it is just as important to be happy, because success in college comes from there. My D visited Williams, felt it was too isolated, and knocked it off her list even though it had the academics she wanted and she liked the sports program. </p>
<p>Good academics are the most important thing, but overall fit and happiness is also really important. </p>
<p>@flabbergasted1 I’m a swimmer who just committed to Amherst. As a future Jeff, it’s nearly treacherous for me to support Williams, but between the two it’s the best option imo. Williams’s excellence in humanities is, well, excellent (second only to Amherst), and they have a history of dominating the NESCAC championships. I’m interested in being a neuroscience major with a premed track, so Amherst stood out for me because of its superiority in the sciences. However, I really do enjoy literature, arts, and humanities, which is why I chose the liberal arts education (even better, Amherst has open curriculum, meaning one isn’t required to take a class they strongly dislike). Also, a main reason I chose Amherst is because it isn’t secluded at all. Although Amherst boasts a 1000 acre campus, with a 500 acre Amherst student exclusive wildlife sanctuary, it has UMass literally 5 miles away from it, giving Amherst students the option of a diverse social life, and more people to meet (although knowing 10 people from Amherst can be overwhelming, in a good way) Amherst is known for having one of the most beautiful campuses in the world, it’s located on a valley, with a small forest of trees surrounding it, and a small mountain region behind it. If you like biking, there are many pristine trails around the area, many which wind up and down the mountains with absolutely beautiful views of the Connecticut River and the rest of the area. Anyway, enough blabbering about Amherst (although hopefully you can tell how much I love that place), and I’ll say that for swimming alone, Kenyon is ranked higher and its program is more rigorous and inflexible (good or bad?). Williams, academically is superior, period. But really, if I fell in love with a subpar college (which Kenyon is far from), I would still go in a heartbeat. However, they’re both secluded, and the 2,000 students and 250 professors (at Williams) will be the only people you see for four years, and socially, you will have a much more limited palate. Maybe I’ll say a little more about Amherst. I’ve already said that I’m a swimmer. I also spent two days with the team, and learned the culture and program of the swim team. Well, the culture at Amherst in general is ideal. There’s no exclusion whatsoever, no one talks down other people, no one tries to act “cool” like you’ll find some other places, and there’s no social divide based on status, looks, race, gender, intellectual capacity (lol) whatsoever. It’s the same for the team, and very different looking individuals call each other close friends (a wonderful surprise being from the vernacular region known as “The South”). There are 5 practices a day, so as to not get in the way of academic ventures (most people, if they don’t have a lab or something, tend to go to the same practice or practices depending on the day). There are 8 practices a week, mornings on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, afternoons M-F. The team does a great job supporting each other, so if you miss a practice, oftentimes it’s not the coach (who’s awesome and very competitive) that questions you but your teammates. There are some good swimmers on the team, and compared to Williams, we are nearly equal. There are also some not-so-fast swimmers, but everyone works hard and everyone enjoys being on the team. Williams has some fast recruits this year, but based off of current times I’m faster, hopefully we have a good freshman class next year. I also didn’t mention that I’m a pretty good swimmer, I was recruited to Northwestern, Princeton, Florida State, and a few other well known D1 powerhouses. My coach is actually pissed I’m going D3, but when I visited Amherst I fell in love with everything about it, and there was no hesitation in making my choice. So hopefully I convinced you to do a little bit of research on Amherst rather than just those two. Academically, we are equal to Williams. In terms of our swim team, well we’ve recently been losing to Williams at NESCACs by a small margin, but hopefully within 4 years that’ll change. </p>