Interested in learning about LACs. Chances?

Colleges and Universities A-Z Pomona College
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<p>Well, we’re certainly much closer.</p>

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<p>Stupid really was not the right word. I couldn’t come up with the word I was looking for, and I was a bit ****ed off at you at the time, so I grabbed the nearest possible offensive word. That was wrong of me.</p>

<p>The hyperbole thing was just to point out that you were deliberately misinterpreting my post to make me sound less credible.</p>

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<p>Again with the personal attacks and baseless assumptions. What I’m not used to, is have people disagree with me, then refuse to talk about why they disagree with me, all the while belittling me. Now that you’ve actually addressed the issue, I think we can move past that stage.</p>

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<p>Okay, maybe I wasn’t being very clear, or maybe you’re just interpreting my posts differently than I meant them, or maybe you’re deliberately misinterpreting them. I’m not sure, but I’ll try to clarify.</p>

<p>The OP asked people to compare all these different LACs to each other. I did so in the three most common ways: academics, reputation, and culture. In order to do this, I drew upon my limited pool of knowledge: mostly information from this site, various college rankings, and a tiny bit of personal experience with a few of the schools. </p>

<p>I’ll be the first to come out and say that it’s impossible to rank colleges in any meaningful way, and any attempt to do so is necessarily subjective, but the OP asked a question, and I did my best to answer it.</p>

<p>After that, I pointed out that it was nothing worth considering. I wasn’t hiding behind qualifying statements, I was trying to show the OP why those things didn’t matter, while still answering his question so that he could make an informed decision.</p>

<p>Those acronyms are meaningless. Like I said, I was doing my best to answer his question, which involved comparisons like those.</p>

<p>And you’re right, saying that they were “generally considered” to be the top 4 was poor wording on my part.</p>

<p>I fail to see where at any point during this I was hypocritical. Less than perfectly clear, maybe, but not hypocritical.</p>

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<p>This argument isn’t even about which colleges are better, and aside from my first post, there were very few statements regarding that at all. It’s about misunderstandings and semantics and bad feelings which compound upon themselves.</p>

<p>I’d like to think that the Pomona admission committee had a lot more information on the type of person I am and the type of people they wanted to admit than you do.</p>

<p>By the way, making a personal attack, then saying that it’s not a personal attack doesn’t make it not a personal attack. It’s like calling someone a worthless piece of garbage, followed by “no offense”. It doesn’t actually make it not offensive.</p>

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<p>“I drew upon my limited pool of knowledge: mostly information from this site, various college rankings, and a tiny bit of personal experience with a few of the schools.”</p>

<p>Manarius, in case you didn’t know, it isn’t always necessary to answer someone’s question if you don’t know the answer.</p>

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<p>Seriously? If everyone abstained from talking about things because they didn’t know every little bit of information about it, then no one would ever talk about anything. This whole website would be reduced to 4 posts a day about nothing at all.</p>

<p>Besides, from the fact that no one has had any complaints about anything I’ve said besides a few very specific things, I’d say I answered the question reasonably well on the whole.</p>

<p>And I tried not to say anything I didn’t have a reasonable amount of knowledge about. Obviously, I failed on that count once, but why on earth should that mean that I shouldn’t have said anything at all?</p>

<p>Honestly, I’m very open to being told that I’m wrong. What I’m not open to is being told I’m wrong by someone who isn’t willing to talk about why they think I’m wrong and certainly not the idea that only “experts” should talk about things.</p>

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<p>There is a whale of difference between having a tiny bit of personal experience and a reasonable amount of knowledge. Yes, it is a problem how some posters offer their uninformed opinions about schools on which they have never set foot and with which they have no personal experience. As to not telling you why I think you are wrong, I find it is a waste of time to have this useless debate about the relative prestige of various schools. </p>

<p>I am a little bit older than you and although you may not want to take advice from anyone, you do not need to offer your opinion on subjects with which you have little experience. As you get older, you will better understand what I am saying.</p>

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<p>That depends entirely on how you define the two.</p>

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<p>I fail to see where I did that. I offered general impressions that I had gotten from other posters, many of whom do have personal experience with these schools, and aside from that one instance, they were presented as such.</p>

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<p>Maybe you should go back and read again. This debate was not about prestige. In fact, I stated more than once my thoughts on the uselessness of prestige. It was about one person taking offense to something, and responding with something that in turn offended the other person and resulted in an unfortunate snowball effect. It’s actually a bit like our current debate.</p>

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<p>I’ve never understood why people think that being older than someone else automatically makes them right. Or how it somehow exempts them from legitimately defending their statements.</p>

<p>Also, I’m surprised you haven’t learned this already, what with your vast life experience and all, but condescension and uninformed, offensive assumptions about people are generally not a good way to go about persuading them. I find that it more often ends up convincing them that you’re an ******* who shouldn’t be taken seriously.</p>

<p>Ironically, now that I think about it, pretty much the only area where my actual personal experience with these schools entered into my post was the part about Pomona being more highly regarded than Middlebury.</p>

<p>When I was at Middlebury, and students asked me where else I was considering, I of course said Pomona. About 50% of them responded by saying to go to Pomona. A few cited weather as the reason, a few cited cultural reasons, and several cited better academics as the reason. At Pomona, not a single person said I should go to Middlebury.</p>

<p>There could be any number of reasons for this: Pomona students are arrogant, Middlebury students are modest, coincidence, etc., but it no doubt contributed in part to my impression of their relative reputations, possibly even more than the other reasons I mentioned.</p>

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<p>General impressions from other posters would hardly constitute a reasonable amount of knowledge, and nowhere in your first post did you label it as such. It is self-defeating continuing this discussion; however, if you are going to compare schools it might be nice to have a little bit more information to base your opinion than general impressions from other posters. As to who is the *******, I will let others decide that.</p>

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<p>The reputation of a college is entirely based off of opinions. Thus, an aggregate of opinions (“general impressions of other posters”) represents all of the information available and may in fact be a “reasonable amount of knowledge”. There is nothing more than opinion to base such comparisons off of.</p>

<p>I agreed that the first statement which caused the original trouble was not said properly. I thought we were past that. In the rest of the post, it was either implied or unnecessary. I don’t see why it’s necessary to explicitly state things that are obvious.</p>

<p>You entered into an argument, apparently without even understanding what it was about, by insulting both participants and calling it absurd. You followed that up with condescension, baseless assumption, and yet more insults. If responding in kind makes me an *******, then so be it.</p>

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<p>This is my last post; I hope. No, many posters only offer opinions about schools with which they have either have first-hand experience or have considerable personal knowledge. General impressions generally do not suffice, particularly when you do not label it as such. I had less problem with the other poster, as he seemed to be questioning your lack of back-up as well. As for your last sentence: yes, so be it.</p>

<p>Edit: The part I found absurd is your need to list the four best liberal arts schools in the country, as if you knew what you were talking about.</p>

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<p>I should quit, but here is a statement from your first post that exemplifies what I am talking about:</p>

<p>“Where the real differences lie are in location and culture. Middlebury, Amherst, Williams, and Bowdoin are all very rural and tend to have similar cultures. Preppy “bros” and athletes abound and drinking seems to be a predominant social event, due in no small part to the weather.”</p>

<p>How many of these schools have you visited and do you know anybody who attends or attended these schools. I guess your knowledge of their cultures and predominate social events comes from general impressions of other posters. Can you list a few posters who have provided you with these opinions of each of the schools. I will be awaiting specific examples, rather than some general impressions based on nothing more than your imagination.</p>

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<p>Delete Delete</p>

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<p>^^I think in the interest of full disclosure we should should all identify our college allegiances; I’m a Wesleyan alum (if that wasn’t already obvious) and Parent57 is a Claremont-McKenna parent. :p</p>

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<p>Okay? I’m not sure when I mentioned that at all.</p>

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<p>Like I said, with regards to reputation, deep personal experience with a school actually has nothing to do with it. General impressions and opinions do.</p>

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<p>I’m really starting to think that you’re not even reading these posts. I’ve already addressed this numerous times in numerous different ways. Yes, I was wrong. No, I don’t think it even matters, nor did I in the beginning. Why are you still on this?</p>

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<p>I’ve spent several days at two of them. I know students at three of them.</p>

<p>School specific sources:</p>

<p>Amherst:</p>

<p>Know a student
Student Blog: inthecac
CC poster/student: kwu
CC poster/student: Catfish</p>

<p>I could add tons more. Similar for other colleges.</p>

<p>Really, what I don’t get is why you think that first hand knowledge is the only acceptable source of information. I wasn’t in the Civil War. Does that mean that I don’t know that the Battle of Gettysburg happened? I haven’t been to Darfur. Does that mean I don’t know about the horrible, gruesome things that happened there?</p>

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<p>“Where the real differences lie are in location and culture. Middlebury, Amherst, Williams, and Bowdoin are all very rural and tend to have similar cultures. Preppy “bros” and athletes abound and drinking seems to be a predominant social event, due in no small part to the weather.”</p>

<p>I didn’t ask you to give me the names of some posters only. I would like you to give me the names of posters who went to these schools and think your description is appropriate for their schools. Please provide me with examples.</p>

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<p>^^I think you can carry that requirement to an extreme; I mean, what stakeholder (alum, current student, parent) doesn’t want their college to sound as well-rounded, diverse, and “normal” as possible? No one wants to be the outlier. The question isn’t whether the stereotypes are absolutely accurate (we know they’re bound to be overdrawn to an extent), the question is where are they wrong and why?</p>

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<p>Since Manarius has stereotyped these 4 institutions and indicated he learned this primarily from posters who had attended these schools, I am asking for his sources and examples. I am not interested in hearsay and innuendo.</p>

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<p>^^wait, so you’re sayiing what people read on the CC forums, ISN’T hearsay and innuendo?</p>

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<p>Unfortunately, much of it is.</p>

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<p>^^I think anyone who isn’t interested in what a 17 y/o, actively engaged in making his or her own college list, thinks of a school, probably has his head buried in the sand.</p>

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<p>I am not sure I understand your last comment. Here is my point: if a high school student is interested in Wesleyan and asks other posters their opinion of the school, and a few posters, who have never been to the school or have no personal acquaintances at the school, say that most Wesleyan students are nerdy and weird, I think it would be a disservice to the high school student trying to learn more about Wesleyan. I don’t think it is incumbent on the people who are really familiar with Wesleyan to have to rebut these outlandish remarks. So, I don’t think it is unreasonable to have Manarius substantiate his remarks regarding these schools.</p>

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<p>^^Oh please, by that standard no one would ever be able to quote a USNews ranking because I’m pretty sure no one has visited all one hundred elite colleges listed there. And, let’s face it, 90% of what passes for opinion on this site is really some iteration of that poll. Do I agree with the rankings? Obviously not. But, people have a right to their opinions.</p>