<p>I know college confidential hates college ranking services, but I am curious how Williams kills the rankings each year. </p>
<p>I would have thought Williams would be similar to Bowdoin or Middlebury (the two have nicer campuses, too, in my opinion), but US News rates those two schools 92/100 while giving Williams 100/000. what is setting this school apart so much, in your opinion, to the point that US news considers the school perfect? </p>
<p>Williams and Amherst are both practitioners of the"high tuition/high aid" business model which basically allows a college to charge huge amounts of tuition to an increasingly narrow base of families who can afford to pay the full price. Everyone else - anyone not in fact paying “full freight” - gets counted as a financial aid recipient. Lately, that can even include families making upwards of $200K a year. USNews, logically, defines financial aid as an expense or, in its words, an “expenditure”. Thus, by raising tuition far more than the rate of inflation every year Amherst and Williams - and quite a few other “high tuition-/big financial aid” schools - actually increase their “expenditures per student” metric as measured by the magazine.</p>
<p>that’s interesting but doesn’t seem at all unique to Williams or Amherst. just a cursory glance at the same US news rankings shows that Williams is just as expensive as every other liberal arts school 1-20 and they have similar percentages of students on financial aid. </p>
<p>In the case of Middlebury, one could argue that the lag is based on prestige and financial resources. </p>
<p>The prestige element is difficult to quantify, as prestige is very subjective and based entirely on perceptions of quality. For most of the 20th Century, Williams and Amherst were the schools where the rich and influential sent their sons (in addition to the Ivy League schools). Up until the late 60s/early 70s, many thought that young men received a better education at all-male schools, while overachieving women went to one of the Seven Sisters. Schools like Middlebury, which went co-ed in 1883, were seen as inferior because they admitted women. Toward the end of the civil rights era (late 60s), many formerly all-male schools decided to admit women for the first time. </p>
<p>Williams became coeducational in 1970, and Amherst first admitted women in 1975. (for a look at the years that many prestigious schools became coeducational, see: <a href=“Years that Men's Colleges Became Co-ed | CollegeXpress”>http://www.■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/lists/list/years-that-mens-colleges-became-co-ed/366/</a>). Perceptions of prestige are slow to change, especially when the older generation (those with the most money, power, and influence) still holds biases that were developed in their formative years. Prestige is rarely based on our own experience, but rather the experience of those who came before us and elevated the brand.</p>
<p>Financial resources can be explained with similar logic. Wealthy people sent their wealthy kids to all-male schools for most of the 20th Century, and these already-advantaged kids excelled in their careers. They contributed more money in greater numbers to their alma maters, thereby creating a positive feedback loop that made the rich richer. Amherst and Williams have very large endowments as a result (they also benefit from sound financial management and good investments). </p>
<p>Now that most top schools are co-ed, perceptions of quality are changing–but slowly. In the 1980s, Middlebury was seen as a top 20 LAC. Now it’s seen as a top 5 LAC. The playing field is leveling, and the next generation is taking over–the generation that has only known these schools as co-ed. The Middleburys of the world are slowly catching up, but it will take some time and more money for them to draw more kids from wealthier Amherst and Williams than they lose. Check back in ten years and you might see a very different landscape. </p>
<p>Now this doesn’t account for differences in prestige among all schools (for instance, Bowdoin became co-ed in 1971), and there are many other factors at play. But it’s something to think about. </p>
<p>The US News rankings are based upon objective measures. Whether what they measure is significant is another question. Williams gets such a high ranking because it is at the top in the six year graduation rate, class size, peer assessment, financial resources, etc. Is a 96% graduation rate over six years better than a 95% rate at Bowdoin? I think that’s hard to say, but it scores more points for Williams. Is a 7-1 student to faculty ratio a lot better than a 9-1 ratio at Bowdoin? It could be, but it definitely scores more points for Williams in the US News rankings. </p>
<p>^^^The one non-objective measure is peer assessment, which accounts for 22.5 percent of scores.</p>
<p>You are right that it’s based on the opinions of peers, so it’s not really an objective measure. And 2/3 of that 22.5% is from top academics at peer institutions and the other 1/3 is from high school counselors. Interestingly Williams actually loses out to the US Military and Naval Academies in the high school counselor ratings.</p>
<p>I would argue with the conclusion that Williams campus is less pleasing than Bowdoin’s or Middlebury’s. Those are subjective measure, and surely a matter of preference, although all three schools are very pleasing.</p>
<p>Apart of the objective measures stated, I would argue that Williams provides more professional opportunities for students in the arts and sciences. Summer funding for research in sciences in unmatched at peer-institutions and the Williamstown Theater Festival provides opportunities for Theater Students. Two local museums, The Clark and MassMoca provide employment opportunities (The Clark launched my son’s Art History career) and the Berkshire Symphony is a semi-professional orchestra and not a student orchestra.</p>
<p>Therefore, Williams demands a very high level of performance from its students. I can see this as a negative too, because with very strict rules for pass-fail, I think there is less room for experimentation and falling on one’s face at Williams than at many of its peer institutions.</p>
<p>However, the mandatory Winter Study program does provide some breathing space. The tutorial program also allows feedback that moves beyond the traditional classroom format.</p>
<p>Therefore, I would suggest that Williams does earn its top spot with programs that do set it apart and are not just statistical manipulations. However, I don’t think that it offers the best programs or best outcomes for all students.
For many, Bowdoin, Amherst, Middlebury, Wesleyan, et al, would be better choices for a variety of reasons.</p>
<p>Indeed, although I have been shouted down for saying this, Barnard provided by daughter a better preparation for graduate level academic work than Williams did my son because it emphasized the conventions of academic work more than Williams did. However, that does not mean that her education had more scope or foundation. On the contrary, he was stretched more.</p>
<p>Individual student goals vary. Unfortunately, our ratings system does not encourage a descriptive understanding of the difference in pedagogy of these peer institutions. Descriptive assessments would mean more than normative or hierarchical ones. Instead, because differences in goals and curriculum styles are not defined students cannot make truly informed decisions which is the real drawback of a reductionistic ratings system.</p>
<p>Williams and Amherst have been regarded as the top two liberal arts colleges for a long time–at least since the early 1980s. Amherst had a stronger academic reputation until the 1960s. The next group of schools (other than Swarthmore and Pomona) are still a step down in prestige and in general do not enroll the same concentration of the 'best" students. The US News “qualitative” ranking is a good barometer of how colleges are viewed in the market, but you an also look at other objective measurs, from the number of admissions to the most selective professional schools, to fellowships received, number of national merit scholars, or even the share of students in the 75th percentile of SAT scores. </p>
<p>“general do not enroll the same concentration of the 'best” students."</p>
<p>How can you make a statement like this? Pomona and Swarthmore enroll students with similar SAT standards, produce more PhD students, tend to have more students in the top 10%, and rank just as highly for winners of competitive fellowships. At this point and time, the difference between these schools is minimal.</p>
<p>Let’s look:</p>
<p>W/A/S/P</p>
<p>Acceptance Rates: 17.5/14.28/14.31/13.9
CR Range: 670-770, 670-760, 680-760, 690-760
M Range: 660-770, 680-770, 670-770, 690-790
W Range: 690-780, 670-760, 670-760, 690-780
ACT Range: 30-34, 30-34, 31-34, 31-34
% Ranking in top Decile: 88, 86, 89, 92</p>
<h1>of National Merit Scholars in first year class: 30/11/10/27 (6 of whom were sponsored by the school)</h1>
<p>% White, non-international in freshman class: 55.51%, 42.27%, 41.24%, 42.56%
% International in freshman class: 6.8%, 9.4%, 8.2%, 8.3%
% Pell Grant Recipients: 19/21/15/17
Fellowship Ranking per capita: 6/?//7/8 (using Newsweek’s calculation)
Science PhD (2002-2012) Ranking per capita: 15/26/5/12
All PhD (1997-2006) Ranking per capita: 18/19/4/15</p>
<p>What really helps Williams out is the peer ranking, in which I think it scores 4.7, compared to Pomona’s 4.3. </p>
<p>“other than Swarthmore and Pomona”</p>
<p>If you would have read the post more carefully, you would have saved a lot of time and effort</p>
<p>I can’t read. To be fair though, the post above was a carbon copy from what I wrote for another student, so it wasn’t a huge time waste :P</p>
<p>Besides this- I don’t think there is a significant difference between Williams and Bowdoin/Middlebury/Carleton/Vassar/etc. in terms of the objective measures US News uses. 92 overall score vs 100 overall score just tells me that these are both the top tier of their peer groups. In sheer numbers Williams might do better, but a high achieving student wouldn’t be able to see that minute difference whether or not they attend Williams or a school that does “worse” (can a 7:1 vs 8:1 ratio be readily seen?). US News is a good source to identify tiers, not bests, and I would wager that the top 10-15 LACs are all in the same tier. These schools do differ vastly in their campus climate and personalities, and that should be the primary driving force in deciding between them, not their absolute number. </p>
<p>I don’t dispute the notion that the top 10-15 LACs are all excellent schools, but I stand by my point that there really is a top echelon within this group–2-4 schools that rise above the others. (As a matter of fact, some of schools below the top five do not enroll ANY national merit scholars, or only a handful.) Amherst and Williams, Swarthmore and Pomona, are really competing primarily with each other, the top Ivy’s, and a few others like Stanford, Chicago, MIT and Duke, for the students they admit. That’s the difference in mind on the selectivity dimension. Most students who get into Williams or Amherst are also very competitive for the Ivy’s and often only look at Williams and Amherst (or Pomona or Swarthmore) as small college options. As for outcomes, there is simply a higher probability that a student from AWSP will get into a top professional school or graduate program ro a win a prestigious fellowshp. Having worked in graduate admissions, these students really stand out in the selection process, not just because of the halo of their alma mater, but because they present stronger qualifications overall. We saw strong students from Colby and Davidson and Haverford etc. but not nearly as many. AW and S and P are the tail end of the distribution and it shows. </p>
<p>Collegepro5000
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<p>The problem with that statement is that there’s almost no evidence that it’s true. Not when you get right down to the trenches of CC Forum discussions. The only comparisons I see consistently on these boards are threads involving the northern New England colleges (usually, Williams and Middlebury) with Dartmouth and ones comparing Brown and Wesleyan. Starting with the first published USNews polls and continuing to the latest CC website design, research universities, and most especially the Ivys, have been placed on their own pedestals. And each year the spread in public perception gets wider and wider. Small colleges are increasingly discounted in part because Americans no longer recognize them as the hardy native species they once were. A hundred and fifty years of a system imported from Germany and planted wholesale like experimental seed across the prairies, and now everyone thinks large, impersonal educational gesellschafts are the gold standard for higher education in America. Today, there is not a single NESCAC college with an admissions rate in the single digits while five of the eight Ivys do. The last NESCAC college graduate to be elected president was Calvin Coolidge. The last Supreme Court Justice was Harlan F. Stone, Amherst Class of 1894. So, threads like this one ring a little hollw to me because they seem to be saying, "“Yes, we know we’re members of an endangered species, BUT, we’re a little less endangered than the rest”). To me, that just reads like a form of exceptionalism.</p>
<p>A Williams graduate just won an Academy Award for best song. A Middlebury graduate just finished competing in the Winter Olympics. This year, two Wesleyan graduates will be celebrating the end of a long-running and popular television series that satirized the post-graduate lives of three idealistic liberal arts grads (and their friends) as they made their way through jobs, marraige and parenthood. Collectively, they have raised the profile of small colleges to new heights. We should all be celebrating them because no one knows better how hard it is to make a dent in public perception than a fellow small college grad. </p>
<p>The pattern is pretty pretty clear–all you have to do is look at the list of colleges to which SAW consistently lose the . greatest number of students. it’s the universities and colleges above. I have seen such lists but admittedly they are not easy to find. Williams actually used to publish an annual report with this data. If you go below the top few, the picture changes. But you don’t even need to look at the data–just ask guidance counselors. I’m ont sure what your point is.</p>
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<p>Or, even more remarkable, a Middlebury graduate just won the Superbowl.</p>
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<p>Statements like this confuse me. I always thought it was the team that won the Superbowl and not just the coach, the quarterback, or the punter.</p>
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<p>I agree with mythmom. Not only Williams has restrictive rules for pass/fail (and Gaudino), but also for withdrawing from a course. Hence, a student who are surprised mid semester in a course that is not adequate for him/her may have very limited recourse to protect his/her academic records from a ugly scar. </p>
<p>One should be very careful about choosing Williams. My impression is that Williams is less supportive to experimentation and to non-traditional students than some of the other LACs are. More than that, even some State Schools, who one would expect to go “by the book” are more flexible at accommodating students needs and explorations than Williams is.</p>
<p>If Williams was truly a place where students could not experiment, or if it was not supportive of its students, it would not have the highest four-year graduation rate in the country. That rate signals (1) students are overwhelmingly happy at Williams, and rarely drop out and (2) the school is as good as any other school at ensuring that the students it enrolls succeed academically. So the statistics simply don’t square with those sort of claims. Now of course, there will always be exceptions, but there are exceptions everywhere, and Williams simply has fewer of them. </p>
<p>While it may be difficult to withdraw from a class, when you compare Williams to a larger school (and certainly most state schools), the unbelievable accessibility of and deep interest in their students exhibited by the vast majority of Williams professors provides some built in flexibility, since most profs want their students to succeed and indeed are invested in making that happen, even if that involves some individualized accommodations. </p>
<p>Also, I note that Williams has, in addition to the Gaudino option (which certainly allows for experimentation), Winter Study, which provides four opportunities over the course of your time in college to experiment as much as you want, and explore any subject you want outside your comfort zone, with no impact at all on your academic record. </p>
<p>Truly amazing school, why anyone admitted to Williams would choose otherwise I do not really understand, the best of everything can be found at Williams, best LAC by far? but close</p>