How do Midwest LACs compare to Northeast LACs?

College Search & Selection
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<p>Also, honestly, when it comes to LACs, prestige is kind of a moot point (except maybe if you want to go into certain kinds of banking and big business, in which case you might really need to focus on a select few NE LACs; but that that point, you’d probably be better served looking at some of the more LAC-like ivies anyway). </p>

<p>The thing is, many times the average person on the street isn’t going to know your LAC is awesome unless its local, and not necessarily even then. No, not even if its AWS. And grad schools, employers who inform themselves, etc. WILL know your LAC and understand how good it is, whether it is in the NE or MW, or the West Coast or South. </p>

<p>Maybe you’ll hit a bit of variation when it comes to random employers, but that will probably be regional.</p>

<p>If you are super concerned with layman prestige, going to an LAC will not help you.</p>

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<p>I started to try to read this thread and I can’t tell what it is about…</p>

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<p>Re Post # 49. HOW FUN to find ANYONE that has heard of that truly funny book, The Egg and I! It is on my bookshelf somewhere, introduced to me by my mom–thanks mom! A truly amazing group of people and breadth of experience populate these forums.</p>

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<p>As a side bar to this discussion, Business Week published a comparison of salaries based on head hunter queries from graduates (only those with baccalaureate degrees) of the Top 50 colleges and universities in the country and Wesleyan did quite well, tying the University of Virginia at 23rd place and just edging out Cornell. So, Weskid’s observation about the more “LAC-like” Ivies carries some validity. Interestingly, the Introduction to the piece states that certain smaller schools (e.g., Amherst, Williams, Bowdoin and Swarthmore) were omitted because their sample sizes would throw off the results.
[These</a> Sheepskins Will Make You the Most Cash - BusinessWeek](<a href=“http://images.businessweek.com/ss/08/08/0807_college_grads/1.htm]These”>http://images.businessweek.com/ss/08/08/0807_college_grads/1.htm)</p>

<p>Prodigalson - UChicago (#8) does pretty well, too, beating MIT, Columbia, and Brown.</p>

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<p>This is from the same magazine that ranks ND’s Mendoza over Wharton and BYU’s Marriott over MIT (Sloan).</p>

<p>Forgive my skepticism…</p>

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<p>^ This is called poisoning the well. In this case, we have not even established that the magazine’s ranking of Mendoza over Wharton is faulty, let alone that any fault in that ranking has a bearing on this salary comparison. </p>

<p>But sure, skepticism is fine. The payscale.com data (the basis for Business Week’s comparison) has been criticized on CC. At least 2 problems have been identified. First, the payscale data is self-reported. Alumni with better salary histories may be more motivated to respond to the surveys than those with average salary histories. Second, many of the best students do go on to obtain professional degrees (and the percentage presumably varies significantly from school to school). The payscale data deliberately excludes their salary histories.</p>

<p>Given the issues with the WSJ and payscale data, do they have any value in comparing the performance of LACs as a group against Ivies, engineering schools, etc., or in comparing NE vs. MW LACs? I think both sources are worth considering if you recognize the limitations and don’t take small performance differences too seriously. The WSJ study, for instance, makes me wonder why Carleton College (the most selective Midwestern LAC) is not even on the list .</p>

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<p>What is there to “establish”?</p>

<p>And I don’t even like Penn…</p>

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<p>^ Two things. One, that the Business Week ranking you cited is wrong (for instance, that their ranking criteria are inappropriate or their measurement data is faulty). Two, that the errors of that ranking have any bearing on the salary comparisons johnwesley cites.</p>

<p>If we simply think it is self-evidently true that Wharton is superior to Mendoza, or that NE LACs are superior to Midwestern LACs, and that any findings to the contrary make the source of the finding suspect in all matters (rather than an alternate view worth considering), well then there is not much point to these discussions. Just accept the conventional wisdom (or US News) and be done with it. For many people, that would be a perfectly reasonable basis for college decision-making.</p>

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<p>This should be fairly obvious…</p>

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<p>I am skeptical of conventional wisdom and US News as well.</p>

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<p>I think that the first problem is importantly only if you suppose people from different regions or colleges or universities lie or exaggerate at different rates. I’m not aware of any data that would support such a notion. Of course, <em>some</em> people will exaggerate their salaries, and, we can assume such people are randomly distributed throughout the sample.</p>

<p>As for the second criticism, well yea, if you really want to throw a monkey-wrench into the data, let’s include doctors and lawyers and astrophysicists into the mix! I thought one of the advantages of the Businessweek survey was its specific exclusion of graduate school alumni which would merely reflect the value added by further education and very little about the education offered by the specific institutions being surveyed.</p>

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<p>^ Yes, that is the rationale for including only the salaries of alumni with terminal Bachelor degrees in the payscale data. </p>

<p>According to payscale.com, by the way, the two LACs with the highest average mid-career salaries are Bucknell and Colgate. Salaries don’t appear to track admissions selectivity too well among self-reporting alumni with terminal Bachelors degrees (e.g. Colgate > Manhattan College > Brown > Dickinson > Carleton > Williams > Bates > Columbia >Middlebury > Pomona > Hopkins > Kenyon > Wellesley).</p>

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<p>^^^ Manhattan College is obviously better than Columbia University… <em>rolls eyes</em></p>

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<p>Well, no tongue in cheek, Robert Pace and Alexander Astin, both UCLA profs and the recognized preeminent experts in assessing institutional experience and quality, have often noted that many community colleges are doing far superior jobs in educating students relative to many name institutions including some Ivies. So prodigalson’s comment, while I’m confient attempting to make a point he deems obvious, is according to the experts, debatable. Highly, in fact. btw, Astin has authored the generally recognized premier study about this stuff, some 25 years ago or so …w/ K.P. Mortimer, then of Penn State. Check it out. </p>

<p>Guess they must not be discussing this @ Columbia. One might be inclined to conclude in light of our current, most well known Columbia alum, CU isn’t getting beyond Aulinsky’s freshman primer, and one can clearly graduate with some of th whackiest of ideas. And even more bizarre ideals.</p>

<p>Engaging these rankings and ratings to make these arguments really exposes their silliness. And the gullible ignorance of those who embrace them.</p>

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<p>Sorry, you lost me somewhere between “institutional experience and quality” and “community colleges”…</p>

<p>I did skip to the last paragraph (because it was the shortest). I don’t know if you were addressing me, but I hardly embrace rankings and ratings. In fact, I go out of my way to criticize some of them (e.g. the BusinessWeek rankings).</p>

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<p>Look, any kid would be lucky to go to a college like Macalester or Grinnell. I am sure they are fabulous colleges. But what’s with the East Coast bashing? It’s natural that students would prefer to stay in their own regions. Transportation costs less, it’s closer to mom and dad, and chances are, you’re going to stay in the region where you grew up so it makes sense to make your college connections in the region where you came from. If people DO go to other places, it’s most likely because they want an adventure or because they can get something from that other place that they can’t get from their own area–like better weather, more opportunities, or more prestige. Whether you get a better education at Williams College or St. Olafs is an open question. They each have great things about them. However, there’s no question that Williams, Swarthmore, and Amherst are more famous. Perhaps there are people who haven’t heard of these colleges–but top students around the country certainly know about them. According to this study, for instance, even in the states of Il, IN, MI, OH, OH, WI, students only picked three Midwestern schools as being among their top 30 (13, Notre Dame; 23, Northwestern; 29., U Chicago). The rest of the schools were out of their region, in the East (mostly), west, and south. These kids are voting with their feet–to Midwestern students, Eastern schools like Harvard, Amherst, Wellesley, Dartmouth etc., are considered the most desirable places to study. </p>

<p><a href=“http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=601105[/url]”>http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=601105&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>To add perspective on our daughter’s search for LAC’s. Her geographical choices include:</p>

<p>Florida
Maryland
Mass (actually our addition to the list, she thinks its too close to us in NJ)
Indiana
Iowa
California
Europe (France, Germany, UK, Holland)</p>

<p>She attends a highly competitive public school in an affluent area of NJ that sends large %'s of their graduates to Ivies, LAC’s, etc. What we noticed when speaking with the Guidance Counselors about potential schools they seemed to only have about a 350 mile radius of the schools that they were familiar with. In our case the Northeast LAC’s were broken down into:</p>

<p>Highly Selective:
Swarthmore, Haverford, Hamilton, Bowdoin, Tufts etc</p>

<p>Regionally close, getting more competitive:
Bucknell, Franklin & Marshall, Lafayette, Brandeis, Colgate, </p>

<p>Alternatives to the above:
Kenyon, Oberilin, Elon, Beloit, Bates, Colby</p>

<p>Others:
Gettysburgh, Dickinson, Skidmore, Muhlenberg, Union College, Hofstra</p>

<p>As you can see, not much geographical diversity. </p>

<p>From speaking with our daughter, there are many families that won’t allow (yes you read that correctly) their children to apply to schools that are very far away from home. Also transportation is also a factor. There seems to be this percieved notion that if you can drive there in a day, even if it takes 8 hours that they are somewhat closer than if they were a 3 hour plane ride. Also it seems plenty of families in our area vacation in the Northeast (Mass, VT, ME) so the drive to them is something they are familiar with.</p>

<p>In researching the mid-west and even west coast LAC’s we were pretty much on our own in terms of find out more information as there were very little stats from prior grads. It seemed that because no one had every went to these MW LAC’s meant that they were not on the list for other students to apply to. We find that some schools become “hot”. In recent years WashU, Emory, Elon, etc are all schools that seem to have created quite a bit of buzz from the students themselves so naturally the next year more people apply.</p>

<p>One of the biggest factors for us was distance to an airport that provides direct flights to NY (preferable EWR). This is where it got very tricky and very expensive.</p>

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<p>I think most guidance counselors in every region, to deal with the number of kids they have, or for other reasons, stick to The Usual Suspects. For example, I suspect a Kansas kid who wants a big state school but not KU is pointed towards Missouri much more often than Penn State.</p>

<p>Note, too, that on the East Coast, 350 miles can take you many states away, while in larger states, you may still be in your home state. For the NJ kid who wants to get away from home, that puts Canada to North Carolina in range, which is a large amount of diverse options, even though it excludes the many fine Midwestern, etc schools.</p>

<p>I think most guidance departments do not do much to help the kids with unusual preferences–such as small schools outside driving range or knowing what, if any, differences there are among Ohio State; Florida; Kansas; Arizona; and Penn State. </p>

<p>You are absolutely right about the influence of buzz and the preference for driving range over flying range (perhaps parents are thinking that moving in or out of a dorm involves more baggage than flight can handle; or a midnight call to come to the rescue where they can just jump in a car and go, rather than hope to get on the next flight).</p>

<p>Best of luck.</p>

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<p>We are actually very very lucky in that my daughter’s Guidance Counselor is the best. She’s stuck with us through every incarnation of big school, small school, ivy league, and lac’s. My daughter applied to a few schools abroad that ask for unusual information to be submitted in a variety of formats and her GC was just fantastic. However, it was us that came up with all these schools outside the normal suspects. Our school’s Guidance department as a whole is extremely well versed on the types of kids that get into and do well in a certain set of schools but Keyon and Oberlin seem to be as far West as people go!! For some reason University of Arizona seems to pick up a few of the more modest students. I’m not at all sure how the school is on the radar but i chalk it up to the year over year buzz from graduating students</p>

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<p>Kenyon and Oberlin have always drawn well from the East–I have not checked their stats, but they may have as many from the East as the Midwest. Arizona gets a few kids from our high school like the ones you mention–perhaps it is kids who have been to Scottsdale? Or kids who want warm weather but not the Deep South and can’t get into Tulane or Miami?</p>

<p>Elon is popular in our school, too, and I have to confess I never heard of it until seeing it on a car window decal here, because it is not a prominent sports school nor a school that anyone I ever met mentioned. James Madison is now getting some buzz, too, for those seeking warmer weather.</p>

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<p>Yabeyabew,</p>

<p>You make a wonderful point. Our sons guidance counselor(one of four in a school of about 2k kids) has been very open and wonderful. We live in California and she has tried to tell kids to also look at schools in different geographical areas. I would venture to guess that 90% of the kids if not more in California go to the UC schools or the Cal. State schools or local JC’s. She is one of the only GC that recommends that kids look outside of California. Our guidance counselor is a rarity. </p>

<p>We looked at Williams, Swarthmore, Weslyan, Oberlin, Carelton, Grinnell, Pomona, Whitman, Claremont Mckenna and Occidental.</p>

<p>We were pleasantly surprised at how well if not better some of the mid-west schools compared to their counterparts in the NE. </p>

<p>Our son was accepted at Grinnell(his number one choice). We like the others, but really felt like Grinnell was the place for him, not to mention that he got a nice merit scholarship. If I remember correctly, Williams, Swat, & Wesleyan did not offer any merit aid & Pomona and Claremont Mc only had very small merit awards.</p>

<p>Our guidance counselor is very excited and wants us to keep in close contact as she really likes to tell other upcoming kids about schools like Grinnell. </p>

<p>I like Swat and Williams and Pomona, but I just can’t put my finger on it, other than to say that Grinnell felt more like coming home. I told my husband that I wanted to go back to school and go there. My husband went to Princeton and MIT and he used to be a school snob. He was quite impressed with Grinnell and said he would join me and go back too.</p>

<p>Carelton, St. Olaf, Oberlin, Macalester & Grinnell along with some others from the mid-west have so very much to offer. I now tell people if you put those mid-west schools in the NE, I think Grinnell and Carleton especially would be ranked even higher than some of their NE peers(although the rankings were never really all that important to me).</p>