Help in College Search (Eng. PS, Phlsphy.)

College Search & Selection
1

<p>Here's a litle background info; my questions are at the bottom.</p>

<p>My name is Matt. This is my first post on CC, although I have been a lurker for a while now.
white male
middle-class family
junior; public hs; Texas
2250 SAT (1510)
top 1.1%</p>

<p>I would like to double major in English and one of the following: Political Science, Philosophy, or American Studies, and also study Psychology and Spanish. I consider myself liberal, and I love to read literature and write all kinds of things. I would like to go to college somewhere in or fairly near an urban area. Although I would like to eventually get a Master's in English, I want to go to a school that focuses on UG.</p>

<p>Schools I am interested in (in no particular order):
Brown
Amherst
Middlebury
Yale
University of Texas (safety..?)</p>

<p>(I realize that not all of these schools meet all of the above criteria, but I am interested in them for various reasons.)</p>

<p>Which of these schools, as well as other "elite" LAC/U have good programs in English and the others that I listed. English is definitely my main priority. Also, are there any other schools that jump out at you as good matches for me? I have researched many, but it is hard to tell which are better than others in these specific areas, given that no college's website is going to say negative things about it. It is also hard for me to visit these east coast schools given that I live so far away.</p>

<p>btw, I have been unable to find any rankings of UG English departments.</p>

<p>Thanks for taking the time to read this; sorry about the length.</p>

2

<p>All of those schools have excelletn English departments. If you're sure you want to apply to one of those colleges since one of them may be your top choice, you can apply under ED to Brown, Amherst, and Middlebury. As you probably know, Yale is SCEA.</p>

<p>Some other excellent schools for English:
UC Berkeley
Cornell
Harvard
Stanford
University of Chicago
Duke
Princeton
Johns Hopkins
UPenn
Columbia</p>

3

<p>matt, just about any top college in America would provide an excellent education in the areas that your are interested in. I don't any elite school that DOESN'T have an excellent English department.</p>

<p>Having a broad range of interests is in fact the hallmark of a liberal arts education. In fact it's a good thing to be undecided at this point in your life as being exposed to new ideas is part of the whole college experience.</p>

<p>I'd recommend that you try to visit a range of colleges and decide the type and size that appeals to you. Be sure to add some less selectives to your list as admission to these top schools is not guaranteed, for anyone! UT is only a safety if you really want to go there. There are also LACs that could fall in the less selective category.</p>

<p>Lastly if you're interested in Amherst, then I'd take a look at Swarthmore and Williams as well. There's a lot of overlap between these schools and it's difficult to overcome the stereotyped perceptions unless you visit.</p>

4

<p>Amherst and Middlebury are not "in or near an urban area", are they?</p>

<p>There are a number of good liberal arts colleges that could be recommended if all they have to be is as "urban" as these two schools.</p>

5

<p>Based on your post and the schools you have already listed, you should definitely investigate these schools. . . </p>

<p>in an urban area: Pomona, Reed, Macalester; Washington University in St. Louis</p>

<p>near an urban area: Carleton, Haverford, Swarthmore</p>

<p>not that near to an urban area but you should check them out anyway: Oberlin, Vassar, Kenyon and Bard. If you visit and like them, the latter two schools would be excellent safeties for you.</p>

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<p>Oberlin is closer to Cleveland than Carleton is to Minneapolis/St. Paul.
source: Mapquest.</p>

7

<p>"Amherst and Middlebury are not "in or near an urban area", are they?"</p>

<p>Not at all. However, I like these schools for other reasons: "(I realize that not all of these schools meet all of the above criteria, but I am interested in them for various reasons.)"</p>

<p>momrath: I'm definitely aware that none of the colleges I listed are guarantees; they are obviously far from it !:) However, I wasn't sure which other LACs would be a bit more realistic. These replies have given me some more ideas.</p>

<p>Thanks to everyone for your help.</p>

8

<p>I recommend you look at the University of Michigan as a match/safety. Michigan has top ranked programs in Poli Sci, Philosophy, American Studies, Psych and Spanish and it is a relatively liberal campus and location.</p>

9

<p>Alexandre: Michigan was actually one of my top 5 or 6 schools, but then I was told that difference in academics between Michigan and Texas was not great enough to warrant the out of state tuition. I'll have to look at it some more.</p>

10

<p>I would definitely add Swarthmore to your list. Your "stats" look plausible for admission and it strongly fits all of your criteria, especially as one of the few top LACs that is located in an urban area (11 miles from downtown Phila. with a train station on campus). It's been ranked #1 among LACs in the USNEWS list in three of the last 8 years. I think it's currently tied with Amherst for #2, for what that's worth (not much). If you like to read, you'll get plenty of opportunity at Swarthmore!</p>

<p>It is impossible to rank undergrad departments. The departments you mention would be pretty good at most schools. However, one measure you can use is per capita PhD production. This obviously is a good measure for serious "academic" career oriented students -- i.e. college professors, etc.</p>

<p>The top five colleges and universities in the United States for per capita production of future PhDs in English are:</p>

<p>St. Johns
Yale
Amherst
Bryn Mawr
Swarthmore</p>

<p>(Williams is #10)</p>

<p>The top five in Political Science are:</p>

<p>Swarthmore
Haverford
Reed
Princeton
Chicago </p>

<p>(Amherst is #10)</p>

<p>I don't have the combined college and university ranks for Psych, however among the Liberal Arts Colleges, the top five in Psych from 86 - 95 were:</p>

<p>Barnard
Swarthmore
Pomona
Oberlin
Vassar</p>

<p>I don't have any data on Philosophy PhDs broken out separately.</p>

<p>Foreign Languages are relatively weak at Amherst, a specialty at Middlebury, and so-so at Swarthmore. (Weak and so so at this level of school would still be plenty challenging, just not big departments with huge numbers of courses). Probably not an issue if you are looking to study Spanish as a minor or an elective. Something you should look into if you are thinking that direction for a major.</p>

<p>Swarthmore does have a very strong Linguistics department, which could open up some options if you wanted to do something with both English and Spanish, also tying into social sciences. It's basically the study of how language impacts culture, national character, yadda yadda.</p>

11

<p>But Minny is much nicer than Cleveland--especially for a college student-- and the commute times are hardly any different.</p>

12

<p>Mattm, academics at Michigan are hard to match...but it is true that academics at Michigan are only slightly better than at UTA. But the same could be said of Brown, Amherst or Middlebury. UTA is a top 30 university. So no university, save H,M,P,S and Y are going to have much better academics. If you have to get into big time debt to leave the state, I would recommend you stick to UTA. But if money is not a major issue, Michigan does have stronger academics than UTA...especially in fields such as Political Science, Psychology and American Studies.</p>

13

<p>Might want to look at Duke.</p>

14

<p>matt, If you like Amherst and Middlebury, then you should consider Williams and Hamilton as well as there's a lot of overlap in ambience and student body. </p>

<p>All have excellent English departments (as I said I really don't know any LAC that has a bad English department). Williams also offers strength in Political Science, Philosophy, American Studies, Psychology. Spanish is not a strength, but definitely offered. Of course neither Williams nor Hamilton is remotely near an urban center, but then again neither is Middlebury.</p>

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<p>As far as general guidance on specific strong departments:</p>

<p>There is a guide book "Rugg's Recommendations on the Colleges" that identifies which departments are considered to be strong by the students themselves at the various colleges. You might look at that, if you haven't.</p>

<p>The complete baccalaureate origins data is here </p>

<p><a href="http://server1.fandm.edu/departments/CollegeRelations/BacOrigins/BacOrg98.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://server1.fandm.edu/departments/CollegeRelations/BacOrigins/BacOrg98.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>One can decide for themselves how useful this information is, and how best to use it. I used to think turning the PhD numbers into % of the student bodies was the most relevant. However I recently realized that this approach can inappropriately penalize schools that have large specialized colleges or programs (eg conservatories) that have very different missions and goals from their liberal arts components. And of course it doesn't address enrollment in professional schools.</p>

<p>barrons: of these two schools, reidm had listed the slightly further one as "near an urban area" and the other, slightly closer one as "not that near to an urban area". I was trying to point out that this labeling was not consistent. I would think that whether you consider them as "near" or "not that near", most people would have to put these two in the same category. They are virtually the same time away from their respective cities. I haven't lived in both of these cities and consequently I do not feel qualified to evaluate them. That wasn't my purpose here in any event.</p>

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<p>monydad is correct about the distance. . .the Northfield schools (Carleton and St. Olaf) and Oberlin should be in the same category.</p>

<p>I haven't been around that part of Ohio for quite a few years, but my distinction between Carleton and Oberlin was based on Carleton "seeming" to be more attached to a metro, given TwinCities sprawl, regular shuttle buses etc. But that may be the case for Oberlin now as well.</p>

17

<p>Thanks so much to everyone for all the help. I really appreciate all of the posts.</p>

18

<p>Other extremely fine English departments are UPenn, Vanderbilt, and U of Michigan. (I know Alexandre already mentioned Mich, but I wanted to emphasize the English dep't.)</p>