<p>Compared to places like Swarthmore and Middlebury, is Amherst considered better/ more prestigious? </p>
<p>(Just curious, not basing my application decisions off of this)</p>
<p>Within the same set (i.e., East Coast people who are education savvy) Amherst/Swarthmore/Williams are equally prestigous. I believe Wellesley too, but I'm not sure. When you get out of the immediate circle of East Coast educated people, East coast employers, graduate and professional school admissions committee all over the country, then none of these colleges has much name recognition. Same goes for Pomona on the West Coast. Carleton in the middle.</p>
<p>People who follow education think very highly of the slightly less selective: Middlebury, Bowdoin, Wesleyan, Grinnell, Davidson -- there are others -- but these have even lower name recognition across the country and internationally. </p>
<p>aranyria, my comments are not meant to discourage you from applying to any LAC. I believe you would get an astonishing education at any of those you mention and that with a degree, doors would open up for you for whatever career path you choose. However, don't expect the same reaction from your relatives and neighbors to AWS as you'd get to HYP.</p>
<p>Amherst, Williams, Swarthmore, and Wellesley are indeed more prestigious than the other LACs. But, not by much.</p>
<p>I'm curious as to why you would single out Amherst, though.</p>
<p>I'm not the original poster, but regarding your question, kwu, one answer might be that Amherst has always had a slightly higher peer assessment score among the top LACs, as measured on questionnaires to college presidents and other officers familiar with these schools. The difference is negligible, however.</p>
<p>it also begins with the letter "a". you're kidding yourself if you don't think being at the top of every alphabetical list isn't a help in name recognition (ask, any company named Acme, AAA, Alpha, etcetera.)</p>
<p>Also, I think it depends. In New York and Los Angeles, Wesleyan is on an equal footing with Amherst and Williams in terms of "prestige".</p>
<p>ya, i've just heard more about amherst.</p>
<p>On prestige terms, for the folks who care about that, I would have put Amherst and Williams at the top with Swarthmore, Haverford, Wesleyan, Pomona, Claremont Mckenna etc. a rung down. I think the perception is that Williams and Amherst might be thought of as Ivy for kids who wanted LACs and Swarthmore, Haverford et al. for folks who didn't get into Ivies. Wesleyan has definitely been rising. I don't know that this is reflected in student quality or faculty quality, but I would not be surprised if it were reflected in job placement in the Northeast. There folks on CC who have their hands on the data and can tell you about the differences in average SAT scores and interquartile ranges for the schools and use that as a measure of student quality.</p>
<p>Nailing down hard data on something as evanescent as prestige is extremely difficult. All I know is that some twenty years of distance in USNews rankings between Amherst and Williams on the one hand, and Wesleyan on the other hasn't stopped talented city kids from finding their way to the latter:
<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/21/magazine/21*****-t.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/21/magazine/21*****-t.html</a>
<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/22/arts/television/22emmys.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/22/arts/television/22emmys.html</a>
<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/22/business/media/22politico.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/22/business/media/22politico.html</a></p>
<p>Honestly, I think Amherst has always had higher name recognition because it is a place name -- i.e. the school and town have the same name.</p>
<p>The prez and faculty of Amherst broke away from Williams to start a school because they thought Williams' location too remote. So, yes, they chose a place with more visibility. Nothing wrong with that.</p>
<p>The womens colleges are also prestigious, not just Wellesley, and have many illustrious alumnae and I would argue that Vassar deserves a place alongside the previously mentioned LAC's.</p>
<p>john, hats off to your beloved Wesleyan. I must say I heard of it before Williams, which has almost a stealth profile in some ways.</p>
<p>So, to answer the OP's question, no Amherst is not singled out for special and unique recognition as "a step above."</p>
<p>And peer assessment scores of Amherst and Williams are identical. The person on the street is, however, somewhat more likely to recognize the name "Amherst." </p>
<p>Oh, and Pomona, Grinnell, Reed and Davidson also belong up there with top LAC's.</p>
<p>And there are others, too.</p>
<p>What about the creator and producer of the award winning play, "In the Heights" and the latest articley in the NYTimes Magazine Section featuring two Wesleyan students. One created a great internet service for college bound students and the other was the creator and producer of "In The Heights."</p>
<p>For what it's worth, a Harvard administrator/professor who also was on H's admissions committee told me once he thought Amherst offered possibly the finest undergraduate education in the US, arguably better than H's.</p>
<p>meadesport - that was the article about Jordan Goldman and, ***** which apparently is getting so much traffic even the url for NYTimes article is getting frozen:
<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/21/magazine/21*****-t.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/21/magazine/21*****-t.html</a></p>
<p>LOL, I should have known that would get censored. :D</p>
<p>shawbridge,
I usually let ridiculous statements pass. But, I have to make an exception in this case. You obviously know NOTHING about Swarthmore. Swarthmore is for "folks who didn't get into Ivies?" I was told by the director of college counseling at one of the most well-known independent high schools in the country that a kid going to Swarthmore would not get a finer undergraduate education ANYWHERE else in the country. And, this is a high school which sends 50+ students a year to the Ivies out of a class of ~175. I am sure that the director's statement would also be applicable to Amherst and Williams.</p>
<p>People are WAY too focused on the name recognition and believe that their anecdotal evidence transcends their own region. </p>
<p>Spend enough time on CC and you'll read stories of graduates of Williams being confused with Whitman (read Mini) or graduates of Amherst being corrected to add UM in from of the august name. </p>
<p>The reality is that people who are SUPPOSED to know the value of LACs typically do. On the other hand, the Joe Six-Packs of the world really do. </p>
<p>This is small test I offer every once in a while: Ask people if they heard of Amherst, Williams, or [fill with your favorite LAC] and you'll have many positive answers. Then ask in which state the school is located and you'll have nothing but blank stares. </p>
<p>PS Do not try this with Wesleyan ... the name is all over the place! :)</p>
<p>
[quote]
PS Do not try this with Wesleyan ... the name is all over the place!
[/quote]
</p>
<p>So true! I find that I get a lot more nods than say, my friend who goes to Carleton, but much of the time it turns out people are thinking of the WRONG Wesleyan (or they think it's an all girl's school...) :P</p>
<p>FWIW, US News top ten LACs in</p>
<p>PA Score
1. Amherst 4.7
2. (tie) Williams 4.6
2. (tie) Swarthmore 4.6
4. Wellesley 4.4
5. (tie) Bowdoin 4.3
5. (tie) Carleton 4.3
5. (tie) Grinnell 4.3
8. (tie) Middlebury 4.2
8. (tie) Pomona 4.2
8. (tie) Davidson 4.2
8. (tie) Vassar 4.2
8. (tie) Wesleyan 4.2
8. (tie) Smith 4.2</p>
<p>tied at 4.1: Haverford, Harvey Mudd, Oberlin
tied at 4.0: Claremont McKenna, US Naval Academy, Bryn Mawr, Macalester, Mt Holyoke, </p>
<p>Highest middle 50% SAT scores (ranked by highest 25th percentile score):
1. Harvey Mudd 1430-1560
2. Pomona 1380-1520
3. Swarthmore 1360-1540
4. Williams 1340-1520
5. Amherst 1330-1530
6. Carleton 1310-1490
6. Claremont McKenna 1310-1490
6. Vassar 1310-1460
6. Washington & Lee 1310-1460
10. Middlebury 1300-1490
10. Wesleyan 1300-1490
10. Wellesley 1300-1480
10. Bowdoin 1300-1470</p>
<p>Freshmen in top 10% of HS class:
1. Harvey Mudd 93%
2. Swarthmore 91%
3. Williams 89%
3. Haverford 89%
5. Pomona 87%
6. Amherst 85%
6. Bowdoin 85%
8. Claremont McKenna 84%
9. Davidson 83%
10. Middlebury 82%</p>
<p>Clearly Amherst is a very good school, but by these indicators Williams and Swarthmore are right there with it, as is, by some indicators, Harvey Mudd. But a bunch more LACs are bunched up in a pack, very, very close to the leaders. To suggest Amherst somehow stands out in this crowd is, IMO, nonsense.</p>
<p>
[quote]
The reality is that people who are SUPPOSED to know the value of LACs typically do. On the other hand, the Joe Six-Packs of the world really do.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Obviously, I meant to write: The reality is that people who are SUPPOSED to know the value of LACs typically do. On the other hand, the Joe Six-Packs of the world **rarely **do. </p>
<p>:D</p>
<p>Bclintonk, it would have been nice to use the entire selectivity index and not leave the admission percentage off. </p>
<p>Not that it would make much difference in your position, except for showing the variance between selectivity and peer assessment more clearly.</p>
<p>Some people don't necessarily realize that there prestige and quality aren't directly proportional.</p>
<p>Yes, Amherst, Williams, and Wellesley are the most prestigious LACs, but I would argue that Swarthmore and Middlebury are better in many important respects. In the same vein, I am of the opinion that Princeton and Yale are better overall institutions of undergraduate learning than Harvard, even though the latter is more prestigious--but again, not by much.</p>
<p>For the Class of 2012, Amherst had the lowest acceptance rate of the best-known LACs, at 12.5 percent (RD). Our SAT range for this year may be slightly lower, because of the College's best attempts to promote genuine socioeconomic diversity.</p>
<p>On another note, I'm not sure top 10 percent means much. 98.9 percent of Penn's Class of 2012 had been ranked top 10, which would make it, what, the most uber university in the U.S.?</p>