<p>Where do you think the top 10 LACs fit into the national university rankings in terms of prestige, job placement, etc.?</p>
<p>I think the best way to place LACs and universities on the same scale is with SAT scores. This is imperfect because LACs should actually be compared only with the Arts and Sciences colleges at universities, not the entire university.</p>
<p>Based on 2007 US News. Roughly as follows:</p>
<ol>
<li>Caltech 1470-1580</li>
<li>MIT 1430-1570</li>
<li>Harvard 1400-1580</li>
<li>Yale 1400-1580</li>
<li>Princeton 1380-1560</li>
<li>Harvey Mudd 1380-1560</li>
<li>Amherst 1350-1560</li>
<li>Stanford 1360-1550</li>
<li>Pomona 1380-1530</li>
<li>Duke 1360-1540</li>
<li>Dartmouth 1350-1550</li>
<li>Columbia 1340-1540</li>
<li>Chicago 1350-1530</li>
<li>Swarthmore 1350-1530</li>
<li>Washington U St Louis 1360-1520</li>
<li>Brown 1330-1540</li>
<li>Rice 1330-1540</li>
<li>Williams 1340-1530</li>
<li>Penn 1340-1520</li>
<li>Northwestern 1320-1500</li>
<li>Carleton 1320-1500</li>
<li>Tufts 1330-1480</li>
<li>Claremont McKenna 1310-1490</li>
<li>Johns Hopkins 1290-1500</li>
<li>Vassar 1340-1450</li>
<li>Wesleyan 1300-1490</li>
<li>Bowdoin 1320-1470</li>
<li>Georgetown 1290-1490</li>
<li>Cornell 1290-1480</li>
<li>Emory 1300-1470</li>
<li>Notre Dame 1290-1470</li>
<li>Haverford 1290-1470</li>
<li>Grinnell 1280-1480</li>
<li>Middlebury 1280-1475</li>
<li>Washington and Lee 1300-1450</li>
<li>Barnard 1290-1450</li>
<li>Vanderbilt 1280-1460</li>
<li>Davidson 1280-1440</li>
<li>Scripps 1270-1450</li>
<li>Hamilton 1270-1440</li>
<li>Colgate 1280-1430</li>
<li>Colby 1280-1430</li>
<li>Macalester 1260-1450</li>
<li>Bates 1280-1410</li>
<li>Kenyon 1240-1420</li>
</ol>
<p>^That seems about right.</p>
<p>I should have included more universities on the low end...
Here is a corrected list.</p>
<p>I think the best way to place LACs and universities on the same scale is with SAT scores. This is imperfect because LACs should actually be compared only with the Arts and Sciences colleges at universities, not the entire university.</p>
<p>Based on 2007 US News. Roughly as follows:</p>
<ol>
<li>Caltech 1470-1580</li>
<li>MIT 1430-1570</li>
<li>Harvard 1400-1580</li>
<li>Yale 1400-1580</li>
<li>Princeton 1380-1560</li>
<li>Harvey Mudd 1380-1560</li>
<li>Amherst 1350-1560</li>
<li>Stanford 1360-1550</li>
<li>Pomona 1380-1530</li>
<li>Duke 1360-1540</li>
<li>Dartmouth 1350-1550</li>
<li>Columbia 1340-1540</li>
<li>Chicago 1350-1530</li>
<li>Swarthmore 1350-1530</li>
<li>Washington U St Louis 1360-1520</li>
<li>Brown 1330-1540</li>
<li>Rice 1330-1540</li>
<li>Williams 1340-1530</li>
<li>Penn 1340-1520</li>
<li>Northwestern 1320-1500</li>
<li>Carleton 1320-1500</li>
<li>Tufts 1330-1480</li>
<li>Claremont McKenna 1310-1490</li>
<li>Johns Hopkins 1290-1500</li>
<li>Vassar 1340-1450</li>
<li>Wesleyan 1300-1490</li>
<li>Bowdoin 1320-1470</li>
<li>Georgetown 1290-1490</li>
<li>Cornell 1290-1480</li>
<li>Emory 1300-1470</li>
<li>Notre Dame 1290-1470</li>
<li>Haverford 1290-1470</li>
<li>Grinnell 1280-1480</li>
<li>Middlebury 1280-1475</li>
<li>Washington and Lee 1300-1450</li>
<li>Barnard 1290-1450</li>
<li>Vanderbilt 1280-1460</li>
<li>Davidson 1280-1440</li>
<li>Scripps 1270-1450</li>
<li>USC 1270-1440</li>
<li>Brandeis 1270-1440</li>
<li>Hamilton 1270-1440</li>
<li>Colgate 1280-1430</li>
<li>Colby 1280-1430</li>
<li>Macalester 1260-1450</li>
<li>Wm and Mary 1260-1440</li>
<li>Georgia Tech 1250-1440</li>
<li>Bates 1280-1410</li>
<li>Whitman College 1240-1450</li>
<li>Case Western 1240-1440</li>
<li>Bard College 1240-1440</li>
<li>Wake Forest 1260-1410</li>
<li>Boston College 1250-1420</li>
<li>U of Rochester 1250-1420</li>
<li>NYU 1240-1420</li>
<li>Kenyon 1240-1420</li>
</ol>
<p>That is an interesting way to do it. If you were to rank them all on the basis of prestige within academia, PA would be a good, solid measure:</p>
<p>4.9
Princeton
Harvard
Yale
Stanford
MIT </p>
<p>4.7
CIT
Chicago
Berkeley
Williams
Amherst </p>
<p>4.6
Columbia
Cornell
JHU
Swarthmore </p>
<p>4.5
Penn
Duke
Michigan
Wellesley </p>
<p>4.4
Dartmouth
Northwestern
Brown
Carleton </p>
<p>4.3
Virginia
UCLA
Middlebury
Pomona
Bowdoin
Wesleyan
Smith </p>
<p>4.2
Carnegie Mellon
UNC
Uwisconsin
Haverford
Grinnell
Byrn Mawr
Oberlin</p>
<p>4.1
WashU
Rice
Vanderbilt
Georgetown
UT-Austin
Davidson
Vassar
Harvey Mudd </p>
<p>4.0
Emory
GIT
UIUC
Claremont Mckenna
Colgate
Colby
Bates
Mount Holyoke
Macalester</p>
<p>It's hard to say. Alot of LACs use unique methods of admissions, so their class profile may not represent the quality of the school very accurately. </p>
<p>But hey, I'm going to Bard and your ranked it 50. That's fine by me.</p>
<p>list in post#5 omits Oberlin at #37, 1270-1460</p>
<p>Also agree with the prior comment to the effect that, within multi-college universities, individual colleges which have separate admissions, with varying selectivity, should be broken out individually on a list like this.</p>
<p>i dont understand how you can rank schools that you have no experience with... it would be like picking your favorite pieces of cake without tasting any of them.</p>
<p>collegehelp, you also left Wellesley off of your lists...gotta stick up for one of my schools!</p>
<p>Plus, perhaps needless to say, this is an odd and not particularly useful exercise, though I admit to wondering myself once or twice.</p>
<p>
[quote]
i dont understand how you can rank schools that you have no experience with
[/quote]
</p>
<p>No experience is required to rank schools based on numbers - in this case, SAT scores or Peer Assessment Rating.</p>
<p>Peer assessment can;t be transferred between universities and liberal arts colleges. Peer assessment from other LACs is very different than peer assessment from Universities.</p>
<p>I am curious as to why that would be the case. Either way, top LACs seem to be doing fine with regards to PA when compared to other universities.</p>
<p>I think brand_182's ranking are pretty accurate.</p>
<p>I don't think so at all. Whitman is going to give Amherst a 5.0 rating because Amherst is the Harvard of the LACs. Michigan State University would give it 4.0 because it has no strong research/ grad programs. If you put amherst in the University category it would have a 4.3 rating at best. Dartmouth or Brown in the LAC category would get 4.9s. You just can't mix peer assessments.</p>
<p>Ah I see your point then. Still, the order in which these schools turned out does not seem like an awful grouping, does it? It is no stranger a ranking than doing so by SAT scores, which are certainly not the end-all of a college's worth.</p>
<p>From a business person's perspective, I believe that collegehelp's list is closer. I did a similar list recently off the top of my head and was surprised to see later that my "rankings" were heavily correlated with SAT scores. I've never understood the relevance of PA to a business setting. For academics, maybe, I just don't know. But in the for-profit world, why should I care how many papers some professor has written or how many prizes he/she may have won? That is, even if the PA is based on such measures, which we don't know because every academic seems to have their own method for scoring another college and some may even score without any or very little knowledge of the other schools. PA comparisons have a lot more problems than SAT comparisons. At least you know what a SAT comparison is and it is fully transparent.</p>
<p>True, but the OPs question included
[quote]
in terms of prestige/quote]</p>
<p>PA is likely one of the best measures of prestige, particularly with regards to the opinions of those in the academic community.</p>
<p>right, but how in the world is the president of a little known college in arizona supposed to be familiar enough with a little known college in ohio to make a fair and balanced rating?</p>
<p>PA is helpful for those considering graduate study. Admission to grad schools is often by department (rather than admissions office), so faculty opinion of the quality of the undergraduate school is important.</p>