<p>Also, I'll take your Michael Bay and raise you a Dan Brown.</p>
<p>LOL.</p>
<p>Can we forget about Dan Brown and replace him with David Foster Wallace instead?</p>
<p>^^that would be a start. but, you'd still need about 29 more to call Wesleyan's bluff:
<a href="http://roth.blogs.wesleyan.edu/files/2008/09/wesleyanvanityfair.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://roth.blogs.wesleyan.edu/files/2008/09/wesleyanvanityfair.pdf</a>
:D</p>
<p>I thinking this is parsing hairs. The quality of the education is going to rest on an amazing teaching sparking an interest in something new or something old and others who can sustain that interest.</p>
<p>That, and the friendships made.</p>
<p>I think many of the top LAC's offer equal opportunities for this to happen, just as anyone can miss for a particular student.</p>
<p>D has to write a thesis at Barnard. S doesn't at Williams. D has met an amazing teacher in her department who has changed her life. S hasn't yet, but is just a soph. Am hoping he will.</p>
<p>I had an amazing (sorry, I'm using that word too much) teacher at a state u, a SUNY, so not a flagship, who insisted I go to grad school. My diss won a national award from a department that is not renowned. My reasons for attending were complex.</p>
<p>Ratings, reputation, etc. are all a guide, certainly. And prestige is nice, no doubt about it. But many other factors come into play, and I'm pretty sure that the "quality of the education" is not something that varies as much as posters think.</p>
<p>People graduating from the same department I did teach at institutions all over the prestige scale, and the people who did best in grad school and had the best ideas are not always the ones who end up at the most prestigious institutions, and vice versa. Trust me.</p>
<p>So much of this is a brand name obsession. Like a coach purse.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>You're right, US News includes acceptance rate as an element in its selectivity ranking. I don't put much stock in this number, however, which IMO is a pure popularity contest, reflecting how many people apply relative to the number of available seats, and how many of those offered a place actually enroll (yield). This does not necessarily correlate well with PA---a rating of how the school is viewed by its peer institutions. But then, it doesn't correlate particularly well with student quality, either, as measured by SAT scores and HS class rank, the only proxies US News uses for student quality. Some schools are just popular for being popular. Some are popular for their location (Pitzer), or their affordability (Berea is free to all who are accepted, though you've got to work; it ranks #20 in popularity despite being pretty far down the list on every measure of quality), or other reasons entirely. Can anyone explain why Bard, the #37 LAC in US News, is all the way up at #11 in popularity?</p>
<p>Some other examples: Pitzer is #10 in popularity (acceptance rate) but no other category. This is an extreme case: #49 overall LAC, so-so 3.5 PA score, so-so SAT scores (1120-1330), a weak 32% of enrollees in the top 10% of their HS class, by far the weakest of the Claremont Colleges in every category, but still among the most popular LACs in the country. Harvey Mudd, on the other hand, has by far the highest SAT scores as well as the highest percentage in the top 10% of HS class, but comes in a somewhat lackluster 15th in popularity (acceptance rate). </p>
<p>Wellesley is an even more extreme case: #4 overall LAC in US News, #4 in PA, #10 in SAT scores, just outside the top 10 in HS class rank (78% in top 10), but all the way down at #34 in acceptance rate. Obviously Wellesley gets extremely high quality students, I don't think anyone would question the caliber of its faculty, its facilities are first-rate, and it's extremely highly regarded among its peer institutions; but as a women's school it automatically cuts its eligibility pool in half, and among that half, a lot of women just don't want to be at a women's college, so Wellesley's got to fight like hell to get quality students. It gets them, but it won't win any popularity contests. </p>
<p>LACs ranked by acceptance rate:</p>
<ol>
<li>Claremont McKenna 16.2%</li>
<li>Pomona 16.3%</li>
<li>Amherst 17.6%</li>
<li>Swarthmore 17.7%</li>
<li>Williams 18.4%</li>
<li>Bowdoin 19.0%</li>
<li>Middlebury 20.6%</li>
<li>Haverford 25.1%</li>
<li>Colgate 25.6%</li>
<li>Pitzer 26.2%</li>
<li>Bard 27.1%</li>
<li>Wesleyan 27.4%</li>
<li>Washington & Lee 27.4%</li>
<li>Hamilton 27.7%</li>
<li>Harvey Mudd 28.1%</li>
<li>Davidson 28.2%</li>
<li>Vassar 28.6%</li>
<li>Barnard 28.8%</li>
<li>Kenyon 29.2%</li>
<li>Berea 29.3%</li>
<li>Bates 29.6%</li>
<li>Carleton 29.8%</li>
<li>Bucknell 29.9%</li>
<li>Oberlin 31.3%</li>
<li>Colby 31.8%</li>
<li>Colorado College 31.9%</li>
<li>Holy Cross 33.0%</li>
<li>Spelman 33.0%</li>
<li>Trinity 34.2%</li>
<li>Reed 34.3%</li>
<li>Connecticut College 34.5%</li>
<li>Lafayette 35.0%</li>
<li>Gettysburg 35.6%</li>
<li>Wellesley 35.7%</li>
</ol>
<p>^ By the way, as with other measures, Amherst clearly is right up there in the top tier, but basically indistinguishable from Williams and Swarthmore.</p>
<p>
[quote]
^ By the way, as with other measures, Amherst clearly is right up there in the top tier, but basically indistinguishable from Williams and Swarthmore.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I know and agree. That is why I wrote that it should not change your earlier position at all. </p>
<p>
[quote]
This does not necessarily correlate well with PA---a rating of how the school is viewed by its peer institutions. But then, it doesn't correlate particularly well with student quality, either, as measured by SAT scores and HS class rank, the only proxies US News uses for student quality.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Yes and no! Trying to establish a correlation between peer assessment and selectivity is an exercise in futility. The PA only correlates to .. itself and to a smaller extent to the overall ranking it influences so deeply. If you're looking for a yardstick that is 100% based on popularity and cronyism, you do not need to look farther than the PA! </p>
<p>As far as the admission rate reflecting popularity, it's important to recognize the trends. For example, the example of Pitzer might change when looking at the fast five years. </p>
<p>And, no matter how we slice it, selectivity does have an impact on the quality and caliber of the applicants' pool. For instance, schools that are known to accept over 50% --let alone close to 75%-- of the students who make that school their first and sole choice set the tone for the rest of their pool. I believe that a few of the non-coed schools fall in that category.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I'm not quite sure I understand your point. Take Wellesley as an example. According to US News, Wellesley accepted 66% of its ED applicants for the Fall 2007 entering class. Yet the SAT scores of that entering class were extremely competitive, essentially tied for 10th among all LACs with Middlebury, Wesleyan, and Bowdoin---some of the very top schools in the country. So what are we to make of this? You say their ED acceptance rate "sets the tone for the rest of their pool." OK, so their ED pool is among the most well qualified in the country, they apparently accept a large fraction of them, and they land some of the best students in the country through their ED process. And that "tone" then carries over to the rest of their applicant pool, which must also be of extremely high quality. I'll buy that, but so what? Wellesley apparently has an exceptionally well-qualified applicant pool, both ED and RD; it's just not very big. So they should be punished for this in the US News rankings? I don't get it.</p>
<p>
[quote]
US News includes acceptance rate as an element in its selectivity ranking
[/quote]
But even US News doesn't attach a great deal of significance to it. Acceptance rate is 10% of the "Student Selectivity" ranking, which in turn represents 15% of the total score. So acceptance rate represents 1.5% of a school's total score, which makes it one of the least significant single factors that they consider.</p>
<p>Just to confirm what Xiggi wrote, my mother-in-law, born and raised in Massachusetts, had never heard of Williams before my daughter started considering it. Now Bridgewater State, that's a good school.</p>
<p>
[quote]
OK, so their ED pool is among the most well qualified in the country, they apparently accept a large fraction of them, and they land some of the best students in the country through their ED process.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>You have your theory and I have mine about the strength of the ED pool at Wellesley. It seems that our theories are not one and the same. I maintain than an admit rate of higher than 50% is not selective. Obviously, you are entitled to your definition of ... selectivity. </p>
<p>Now, would you like to apply your theory to the next highly "peer assessed" non-coed college, namely Smith? How do the SAT scores and other selectivity indexes correlate to the Peer Assessment? How high do you believe the ED applicants SAT scores are? Higher than RD or lower than RD?</p>
<p>I think that Wellesley and Smith are fine schools. I'm guessing that xiggi does, too.
It's just that their "Stuff Doesn't Stink" rankings (the PA) are wildly out-of-whack with reality.<br>
4.5 Wellesley vs. 4.2 Pomona?
4.3 Smith vs. 4.0 Claremont McKenna ? How about 4.1 for Harvey Mudd?
Forgive me if my numbers may be dated. I haven't ponied up for the latest USN&WR yet.</p>
<p>momof3sons, sorry to make you unhappy. I was not reporting my perception of Swarthmore, but what I thought the perception was. Whatever prestige is, it is in the eyes of whatever community the original poster had in mind. That is my sense of people's perceptions. My own understanding, while limited, comes from kids who go to school there now and have done so in years past: It seems to be a very strong school with strong students that prides itself on giving tremendous workloads.</p>
<p>To echo electronblue, I went to high school and undergrad in the Boston area, and I never heard anybody mention Williams. I had a relative on the staff at Williams, so I was aware of it. But others were oblivious to it. It was quite fashionable to go to the LACs in Maine, however, so it seemed like Bates, Colby, and Bowdoin were known by at least a few people. If you look at the states represented at these colleges, I think you'll find that the LACs in Maine are dominated by New Englanders, while Williams and Amherst are dominated by students from the Middle Atlantic states, California, and the Wash. D.C. area. And yeah, EVERYBODY seemed to know about Bridgewater State.</p>
<p>Whoa...
What about U Mass, Dartmouth?</p>
<p>Wentworth, Westfield State, etc.</p>