<p>GoBlueAlumMom,</p>
<p>I applied early action and they notified me via email since i live internationally. Nope, i have not visited, have you or your soon?? What does "In/OOS" mean...and no, unfortunately i dont know any students there.</p>
<p>I'm going to Davidson next year, and people either have never heard of it (oh, where is that again?), confuse it with Dickinson, or are extremely extremely impressed.</p>
<p>In my experience with Williams, name recognition depends on what school the recognizer attended. People who attended HYP, Dartmouth, Brown or a NESCAC school will have heard of Williams. Virtually no one who attended a school other than the aforementioned ones will have heard of Williams (and this includes people who attended other fine LACS such as Reed, Colgate, Bucknell, Macalester etc...). Believe it or not, most people don't spend their lives memorizing US News and World Report. In fact, many folks in nearby Pittsfield will not have heard of Williams.</p>
<p>calz--Shorthand for in-state or out-of-state, but that obviously doesn't apply to you. Where are you from and how did you hear about Kalamazoo? Son will be visiting the campus after the holidays. Everyone that we've spoken to, whether a current or former student or parent, has had only great things to say about the school.</p>
<p>My limited experience has been that even the most prestigious LACs still are pretty regional in terms of name recognition amongst the general public. So here in New Jersey, the only one that gets modest name recognition is Swarthmore, with some for Haverford.</p>
<p>Bowdoin should be placed in Tier 1.</p>
<p>If anyone is a sports fan they have heard of Colgate, Holy Cross,or Bucknell as they have played Ivies in major sports for over 100 years especially HC and the 'Gate.</p>
<p>"(the latter two, depending whether the person you're talking to has heard of either Amherst or Swarthmore, in the first place. In general, I would say that if they've heard of one eastern LAC, they've probably heard of all of them -- if not, then pay them for your Happy Meal and move on."</p>
<p>LOL.</p>
<p>i'm from the south and only 2 people i've talked to had ever head of williams before i told them i was going there. :( but it was 2 more than the people who had heard of all the others. </p>
<p>to the best of my knowledge, the LACs with the most recognizable name are amherst, swarthmore, and williams.</p>
<p>Is it possible to have an LAC's equivalence? For example... </p>
<p>Williams = Harvard and Amherst = Princeton and Swarthmore = Yale???</p>
<p>How about Kenyon then? No one in my country (Singapore/Malaysia) seems to have heard about it... and it's pretty erm hard for me to explain to them that I am not attending a community college or something... because they will ask things like "Oh... is your college accredited?"
And so I thought that by linking an LAC will a big name school, my explaination will be easier... So what do you think is Kenyon's equivalence? Some of the answers I've gotten so far are Madison, UIUC...</p>
<p>I think Pomona is among at least Tier 2, probably Tier 1, as far as name recognition goes.</p>
<p>And if we consider Harvey Mudd a LAC, then for the math, science, and engineering community, it is a Tier 1. For everyone else, it is a Tier...nonexistent.</p>
<p>"if not, then pay them for your Happy Meal and move on."</p>
<p>LOLOL</p>
<p>In terms of impressing adults, friends of parents and parents, remember you are dealing with people who are 20 - 30 years your senior and who know the names of schools that were big when they graduated HS.</p>
<p>In terms of prestige for jobs etc. you are dealing with people who recall what the top schools were 15 -20 years ago.</p>
<p>In terms of grad school you are dealing with people who are more attuned to current estimations of schools.</p>
<p>Your views will be just as skewed by the time your kids are applying. There will be schools you never heard of or whose reputation has gone way up. Some whose rep has gone down.</p>
<p>Currently schools like Amherst, Swathmore, Bryn Mawr, Colgate, Barnard, Vassar etc. have a big up on schools like Grinnell and Carelton just because of the name recognition for years or even generations going back.</p>
<p>Middlebury is a tier 1 school, as seen on this website. <a href="http://www.******.com/rankings.asp%5B/url%5D">http://www.******.com/rankings.asp</a> I think CC censors the name mentioned in the URL, which is supposed to say g o 4 i v y without any spaces.
Tier I
Amherst College
Brown University
Cal Tech
Columbia University
Cornell University
Dartmouth College
Duke University
Emory University
Harvard College
Harvey Mudd
Johns Hopkins University
Middlebury College
MIT
Northwestern University
Pomona College
Princeton University
Rice University
Stanford University
Swarthmore College
University of Chicago
University of Pennsylvania
Washington University: STL
Wesleyan University
Williams College
Yale University</p>
<p>Tier II
Bard College
Bates College
Bowdoin College
Brandeis University
Carleton College
Carnegie Mellon
Claremont McKenna
Colby College
College of William & Mary
Cooper Union
Davidson College
Georgetown University
Georgia Tech
Grinnell College
Haverford College
Macalester College
New YOrk University
Oberlin College
Reed College
Tufts College
University of Notre Dame
Vanderbilt University
Vassar College
Washington and Lee
Wellesley College</p>
<p>Tier III
Barnard College
California: Berkeley
Boston College
Boston University
Bucknell University
Case Western Reserve
Colgate University
Connecticut College
Hamilton College
Kenyon College
Lehigh University
Rhodes College
Rose-Hulman Institute of Tech
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI)
Scripps College
Trinity College
Tulane University
University of Michigan
University of Richmond
University of Rochester
University of Virginia
US Air Force
USC
Wake Forest University
Whitman College</p>
<p>Tier IV
Colorado College
Colorado School of Mines
Franklin & Marshall College
Furman University
George Washington University
Grove City College
Illinois Wesleyan University
Kalamazoo College
Lafayette College
Lewis & Clark College
Mt. Holyoke College
North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Puget Sound
Sarah Lawrence
Smith College
St. Olaf College
Stevens Institute of Technology
Trinity University
UCLA
University of Maryland
University of Wisconsin
US Coast Guard
US Military Academy - West Point
Villanova University
Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) </p>
<p>Yeah, Carleton and the majority of the LAC's that you said are in lesser tiers. So instead of listening to fallible affirmations, why don't you all go back your claims. This rankings on this site are legitimate considering the fact that it was supported by The Dallas Morning News, Newsday, The Chicago Tribune, The New York Times, and NBC.</p>
<p>the ranking above is ridiculous! BU two tiers higher than UCLA, Rhodes College above Smith? Total BS. Where is UIUC?</p>
<p>^^^ wow that list has so many errors, just skimming down it there are at least 20 schools that are in the wrong tier.</p>
<p>"Services & expertise featured in The Dallas Morning News, Newsday, The Chicago Tribune, The New York Times, and NBC" = we paid to put our advertisments there.</p>
<p>You truly, truly take this week's prize for bombastic naivitee.</p>
<p>The ****** ratings are, by their own admission:" based on one criterion: the academic quality of the freshman class."</p>
<p>Not quality of education, not quality of teaching, quality of student life, percentage of 4-5 yr graduates, chances of acceptance at graduate schools, quality of education as viewed for post college employment, on and on and on the kinds of things most people would want to know.</p>
<p>In other words, their ratings are based solely on criteria which enable them to give you a percentage range of your chances of acceptance at the school.</p>
<p>As to what "academic quality of the freshman class" means....who knows ~ Grades? SATs? does it factor in HS quality? well roundedness of the students? )</p>
<p>If you are worried about name recognition, you shouldn't even consider and LAC...you should pick a Big 10 school. You could go to the most remote hunting lodge in northern Maine, and the guy in the back washing the dishes, his autistic 12-year-old son has heard of all eleven of the Big 10 schools. That doesn't make them any better or worse than a good LAC, but it sure as hell solves the name-recognition problem.</p>
<p>Tier 1: Williams, Amherst, Swarthmore
Tier 2: Carleton, Bowdoin, Wellesly, Middlebury, Wesleyan
Tier 3: Davidson, Bates, Colby, Haverford
Tier 4: Kenyon, Grinnell, Gettysburg</p>
<p>???</p>
<p>haverford has a 23% acceptance rate and has been between #5-10 on us news since the 1980's... davidson, bates and colby, and wesleyan have not. that silly wsj ranking that occasionally pops up on cc ranks haverford 18th among all colleges that "feed students to top professional schools"... more so than every lac except for williams, amherst, swat, wellseley and pomona. </p>
<p>i think the person who posted this thread is trolling for a debate... simple as that. most people who choose the top lacs could have gone to more "brand name" universities but realized the limits of name-recognition and the value of a personal, intellectual and intimate education. i don't think a lot of the people who get into top lacs REALLY care about this kind of stuff. also, the top lacs, pound for pound, may have better name recognition among the people who count... national employers, professional schools, academic circles.</p>
<p>... and yes, i'm going to haverford next year and chose it over pomona, bowdoin, wesleyan, ucla and berkeley... not a better school, just better for me. i think that if you go to any school that's in the "top 50", how you wind up in life "depends on what you did and not where you did it at"... as my pop says.</p>