<p>Is there a downside to attending a top liberal arts college as opposed to an Ivy League school?
I'm very interested in Williams and Middlebury, and seriously considering applying ED to one of them. My parents, however, are pressing me to look at Ivy League schools instead. They know academics are just as good in LAC's but fear for their reputation.
My mother used to visit colleges to recruit students (for the BCG), and said the BCG was only interested in Ivy League undergrads. Not even all of them, seeing as both Dartmouth and Cornell students were out of the equation. So she recruited college students for 3 years, but had never heard of Williams, Middlebury, or any other top LAC for that matter.</p>
<p>Is this true? Are LAC diplomas not as "acclaimed" as Ivy League diplomas? Will it be harder for me to find a job if I'm right out of a LAC?</p>
<p>The top LACs are much smaller than most Ivys so the name recognition is without a doubt not as great. That said I think what you will see is that the top LACs are in most ways comparable to the Ivys with the exception of research opportunities.</p>
<p>Well, if BCG is indeed the Boston Consulting Group, it is plausible that your mother never heard of Middlebury or Williams in the context of college recruiting. According to the BCG’s website, there are only a few colleges that have recruiting coordinators. In the case of LACs, the list is remarkably short, even when adding Dartmouth, which according to some is a quasi-LAC: </p>
<p>Amherst College
Barnard College
Claremont Colleges
Dartmouth College: All Undergraduates and Amos Tuck School of Business</p>
<p>Could it be that BCG just needed one A, one B, one C, and one D? And no other LAC? </p>
<p>PS As far as LACs go, the consensus is that people who are in the know or are in position to have to know, DO recognize the positive attributes of the colleges.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>It depends on the major sometimes.</p></li>
<li><p>If your mother feels in such a way about the Ivies, then why not give it a try and take the time to apply to the Ivies, then compare the Ivies that have admitted you to the LAC admits…</p></li>
</ol>
<p>While the top LACs are not as well known as the Ivies, my impression is that the best LACs have alumni networks that are, if anything, tighter and more loyal than the Ivies. Their graduates tend to do very, very well in the job market, as well as in gaining admission to top graduate and professional programs.</p>
<p>And even the much-vaunted fame of the Ivies is, IMO, pretty overrated once you get beyond Harvard-Yale-Princeton. I’ll bet easily 9 of 10 people here in Minnesota, having never heard of the University of Pennsylvania, would just assume it’s a public university because it sounds like one; and further, they’d probably assume it’s a second-tier public, because everyone here has heard of Penn State, a Big Ten rival of the University of Minnesota. And if you tell them you have a degree from Brown? Well, many would assume you’re talking about Brown College, a local, non-selective, and not particularly highly regarded technical/vocational college: [Radio</a> Broadcasting School, Criminal Justice, Interior, Game Design Schools, Minnesota](<a href=“http://www.browncollege.edu/]Radio”>http://www.browncollege.edu/). Most of the rest would either have never heard of, or have no opinion of, either school. So that Ivy “fame” won’t carry you very far around here. And I actually think in many ways Minnesota is less provincial, better educated, more literate, and better-informed than most parts of the country.</p>
<p>BCG has definitely heard of Wesleyan:
Walter B. Gerken <code>48 - senior advisor
James van B. Dresser '63—Former senior vice president and chief administrative officer (retired)
John Rose ’78, senior partner and managing director (media practice)
Clay Leighton</code>80 - former consultant (strategy)
Mary Wisserman <code>82 - former consultant (growth strategies)
David E. Williams</code>89 - former consultant (health care practice)
Jayanthi Raja Segaran '99 - former associate
Ernest Hartner <code>02 - former consultant
Aussie Haryono</code>06 - associate in Southeast Asia Bureau</p>
<p>What the heck is BCG? I’ve never heard of it so it must not be very acclaimed. But the fact that it gets all those nice Wesleyan people is a good sign.</p>
<p>Boston Consulting Group (BCG) is one of the top 3 strategy consulting firms (along with Mckinsey and Bain) that hire undergraduates. Jobs out of college from these 3 consulting firms are some of the most sought after and highest paying, as with those out of Business School (MBA).</p>
<p>I was faced with a similar decision and chose Pomona. I think if you go to any top school, it depends more on the individual than on the school. If you’re successful at Williams or Middlebury, you’ll get wherever you want to go.</p>
<p>Camille, I can only speak personally to Williams, but I assume the same would apply to any of the academically rigorous LACs. </p>
<p>If by BCG you mean Boston Consulting Group, then somebody’s sure misinformed as Williams alums are well represented at that organization and at just about every consulting and/or financial institution. I’d suggest that you (and your parents) contact John Noble at Williams Office of Career Counseling and get some clarity on the type of opportunities a Williams degree can offer.</p>
<p>The reputation of selective LACs is relative. Admissions committees of top graduate and professional schools recognize and appreciate LACs, as do the HR departments of Fortune 500 companies and Wall Street. However, if you ask the average man/woman on the street, many of them would never have heard of even the top ranked LACs. So you have to decide how important universal brand recognition is to you.</p>
<p>My son is an 07 graduate of Williams and is now getting a masters at an Ivy League university. Many of his classmates are doing the same. Williams connections and academic recommendations helped them enormously in summer jobs, internships, first jobs after graduation, and the graduate school application process.</p>
<p>In our family, D made a decision to only apply to LACs, despite feeling confident she would be admitted to an Ivy. She wanted the more intimate intellectual and social environment a LAC offers. Despite what some posters say, research opportunities are plentiful at a LAC as the graduate students aren’t taking the research positions. Also, in our case, a Williams connection allows her to do research at other universities. I do agree that those who are most impressed by an elite LAC degree are graduate schools. Beyond that, it is hard to get name recognition but the connections are excellent.</p>
<p>My two Ds went to Harvard and my 11th-grade son, with stats similar to his sisters’, is limiting his college search to universities at which he can continue in a competitive marching band. My only regret on their college choices is not having succeeded in getting any of them to consider Williams (though I did manage to help influence a CC acquaintance’s choice of Williams over an Ivy ).</p>
<p>“Will it be harder for me to find a job if I’m right out of a LAC?”</p>
<p>Compared to an Ivy, probably yes, but a top LAC diploma can make getting into grad school easier, especially if you were required to write a research thesis.</p>
<p>Of course, there is some self-selection to this pattern. As many as 40% of recent Harvard College graduates have sought jobs in investment banking and business consulting. Despite bad press in the past couple years, Wall Street still sings a very sweet siren song.</p>
<p>But if you want a career in medicine, law, or academia, you do need an advanced degree. A top LAC can prepare you for that at least as well as any Ivy.</p>
<p>Originally posted by Gadad:
“My only regret on their college choices is not having succeeded in getting any of them to consider Williams (though I did manage to help influence a CC acquaintance’s choice of Williams over an Ivy ).”</p>
<p>Yes, you did, Gadad, and I thank you yet again. :)</p>
<p>re#7:
“BCG has definitely heard of Wesleyan:”</p>
<p>To be clear: Of those people you listed, which ones came to BCG directly out of Wesleyan undergrad? Because I looked up the first one, he got a graduate degree from Yale first and came laterally to BCG from another firm. He was not recruited to BCG out of Wesleyan undergrad. </p>
<p>His Wesleyan education may still be relevant to his current position, as he had to attain that graduate school, and subsequent positions. But that is different than saying BCG recruits at Wesleyan, which was the stated concern of OPs parents.</p>
<p>Does BCG recruit at Welseyan, currently, or not?</p>
<p>It’s just one firm, which only a teeny amount of people will ever work for anyway, so I don’t think people should get that worked up about it. But still, if a specific firm is brought up specifically, one shouldn’t be making assertions about it that can easily be misconstrued, in the context it was raised.</p>
<p>A cousin-in-law worked for BCG and they recruited more widely than your mom stated…including outside of the Ivies…including elite publics like UMich, UVA, and Berkeley. </p>
<p>There’s much less recruiting at top LACs, but that doesn’t mean they don’t get hired right out of undergrad. One of her colleagues was hired right out of Middlebury and after a few years…BCG funded his MBA at Wharton and he returned as a full fledged consultant in one of their overseas offices. Granted, he admitted he had to be a more aggressive go-getter because of the pro-Ivy/pro-university bias, but he said if you can get past the GPA cutoff(3.5+) and the multiple round of interviews, it is possible to get hired from a top LAC.</p>
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).</p>