LAC Name Rec

Applying to College
41

<p>There are probably a thousand different ways to allay your lust for rankings and comparisons. My favorite is to simply surf the individual CC sites and see which threads compete for the most viewers. An extremely random sample just among the top LACs reveals the following:</p>

<p>Carleton vs. Grinnell - 2000+ viewers, followed closely by
Carleton vs. Bowdoin - 1400+ viewers
Haverford vs Amherst - 1000+ viewers
Amherst vs Middlebury - 1000+ viewers
Williams vs. Bowdoin - 1000+ viewers
Film: Brown, Vassar, or Wesleyan - 900+ viewers
Wesleyan vs. Vassar - 800+ viewers, followed closely by
Wesleyan vs. Chicago - 700+ viewers
Pomona vs. Berkeley - 700+ viewers
Swat vs. Amherst - 700+ viewers, followed closely by
Swat vs. Harvard - 700+ viewers
Bowdoin vs. Dartmouth - 700+ viewers</p>

<p>With a handful of exceptions (Wesleyan vs. Chicago; Carleton vs. Bowdoin) the biggest factor in reputation would seem to be GEOGRAPHY.</p>

42

<p>Pomana accepts 16% of its students and has a large number of future PhD students. It is tier 1 to the likes of graduate schools and employees just not known to the neighbors as are most of the LACs</p>

43

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<p>I once tried to track the number of views or posts in the various fora. However, you must realized that CC is very self selecting. People here are far more concerned about college acceptances in general. And then the where and which of college selection (and yes, of course, prestige). Also the majority are either students contemplating college in the near future or their parents. The schools we are interested in or debating about are not likely to be the same ones as people out of college or the college hunt for 20 -30 years. </p>

<p>Until my daughter was starting to apply last year I hadn't thought about the subject seriously (except to put away money) for years. My notions of which colleges were highly ranked were decades old and geographically limited. I hadn't even heard about a number of school I now know to be both excellent and prestigious.</p>

44

<p>About approx right... for tiers in OVERALL educational quality/academic reputation. Wouldn't say though that pomona provides twice the opportunities/prestige of bowdoin or haverford though. Have to factor in factors like economies of scale, consortiums, location, AND MOST IMPORTANTLY... personal fit. Do believe that this list is incomplete without grinnell as they are loaded.</p>

<p>Finally, in terms of "prestige/ name recognition" (different from academic reputation), wellseley beats all LACs hands down thanks to hillary and the lay press.</p>

<p><a href="http://72.14.207.104/search?q=cache:4xdOyIc5DcAJ:www.middlebury.edu/NR/rdonlyres/79F8DD42-66AE-40ED-986A-F3F4416F0EA2/0/endowmt05.pdf+haverford+endowment+2006&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=8%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://72.14.207.104/search?q=cache:4xdOyIc5DcAJ:www.middlebury.edu/NR/rdonlyres/79F8DD42-66AE-40ED-986A-F3F4416F0EA2/0/endowmt05.pdf+haverford+endowment+2006&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=8&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Middlebury College Fact Book2005-2006
endowment/FTE student</p>

<p>Colleges 2004 2005 change$ %<br>
Pomona $751,942 $843,266 91,323 12.1%Swarthmore$723,878 $792,423 68,545 9.5%
Amherst $613,978 $704,006 90,028 14.7%
Williams $593,396 $665,207 71,811 12.1%
Wellesley $523,044 $573,787 50,743 9.7%
Bowdoin $312,990 $345,817 32,827 10.5%
Haverford $299,675 $336,788 37,113 12.4%
Smith $296,873 $332,437 35,564 12.0%
Middlebury $275,957 $308,346 32,389 11.7%
Bryn Mawr $292,372 $307,327 14,955 5.1%
Hamilton $272,689 $298,259 25,570 9.4%
Carleton $264,870 $278,802 13,931 5.3%
Vassar $251,972 $275,640 23,668 9.4%
Oberlin $207,457 $251,636 44,179 21.3%
WashLee $223,655 $245,045 21,389 9.6%
Colby $202,020 $232,952 30,932 15.3%
Mt Holy $187,837 $213,049 25,212 13.4%
Wesleyan $171,174 $184,180 13,005 7.6%
Trinity $176,104 $177,232 1,129 0.6%
Bates $106,258 $119,055 12,796 12.0%
Conn $84,733 $88,506 3,773 4.5%</p>

<p>Average $325,375 $360,655 $35,280 11%</p>

45

<p>LAC's have such different cultures that it is often difficult to compare them without taking region into account, so I would do the following:</p>

<p>Northeast:
Tier 1: Amherst Williams Swarthmore
Tier 2: Middlebury, Wellesley, Bowdoin, Haverford (maybe tier 3)
Tier 3: Wesleyan (maybe tier 2), Colby, Vassar</p>

<p>South:
Tier 1: Davidson, Washington and Lee
Tier 2: Sewanee, Centre, Furman, Richmond
Tier 3: Rhodes, Agnes Scott</p>

<p>Midwest:
Tier 1: Carleton, Grinell
Tier 2: Kenyon
Tier 3: Wabash, Kalamazoo, Denison</p>

<p>West Coast:
Tier 1: Pomona, Claremont McKenna
Tier 2: Harvey Mudd, Scripps
Tier 3: Occidental, Whitman</p>

<p>Note the superior name recognition of NE schools - the Tier 2 NE schools have the same name recognition as the Tier 1 schools in every other region.</p>

46

<p>just out of curiousity before i make more accurate lists, are you people ranking these schools solely in terms of name recognition, as the title would suggest? or difficulty of getting into? or academic quality?</p>

47

<p>Dima343, any student at the Claremont Colleges would disagree with your CMC vs HMC placement. But you're joking so then it's okay.</p>

48

<p>Let me try to end this futile discussion... like someone else said, if you are concerned about "name recognition", don't apply to the LACs. You have to ask yourself what's really important, having a townie know your school or the head of selection at Yale Law School, Mckinsey or Harvard Med,... If it's the former (and only if you luck out and meet a reasonably well read individual), the only LAC (at a national random sample) people will have familiarity with will be Wellesley... all else will be regional. However, if you want name recognition from the latter, then any of the top 10-15 in US news will be great, with maybe Amherst, Williams, and Swat a little better known. The fact that, and I'm being generous here, an erudite selection of individuals can't decide on "tiers" on this thread, demonstrates that these schools are more similar than different. In terms of general name recognition, we are really discussing the difference of... for example... 5% US population knowing Wellesley to 2% Amherst to 1.75% knowing Middlebury (or something to that effect).</p>

<p>So, "prestige/name recognition" can't be ranked. As well, student selectivity rankings have biases (some schools favor SATs/GPAs over extracurriculars, ect... who's to say what's better?), WSJ "elite feeder school" rankings are methodologically flawed... the only ranking I am familiar with that is straight out unbiased numbers is endowment/ student. But of course, location/ consortium/ economies of scale/ diversity/ personal preferences come in to play when truly determining OVERALL educational quality and it's also a combination of what resources the school provides + what the student engages as well.</p>

<p>so, here's my rough break down of "endowment size>> resources/ quality>> selectivity/academic reputation> prestige" with no real difference in "tiers" and only MINIMAL differences between "tiers".</p>

<p>Colleges 2005</p>

<p>Amherst $704,006/Williams $665,207/Swat $792,423/
Pomona $843,266</p>

<p>Wellesley $573,787/
Bowdoin $345,817/H'ford $336,788/Carleton $278,802/M'bury $308,346/
Smith $332,437</p>

<p>Vassar $275,640/ Wesleyan $184,180/ Bryn Mawr $307,327/ Oberlin $251,636/ WashLee $245,045/ Hamilton $298,259/ Colby $232,952/
Mt Holy $213,049</p>

<p>Trinity $177,232/ Bates $119,055/ Conn $88,506</p>

49

<p>Swarthmore is, indeed, very well recognized by those "in the know" However, even the middle/upper class, well-educated people in my town (Boston suburb) will ask where my sister goes, hear the name, and then say, "that's an all-girls school, right?" or "isn't that in New York?" And then they'll come up to me a month later and ask how she's liking Skidmore. </p>

<p>Part of this is probably regional, and part of it due to the very definition of a LAC. Either way, keep in mind that we're talking about name recognition among an extremely select group of people.</p>

50

<p>Swarthmore is not well known outside of academia. People in Boston will be familiar with Williams (primarily because many Bostonians head out to the Berkshires during the summer); however, outside of Boston, Williams fares as well as Swarthmore in the name recognition department. Amherst... You mean UMASS Amherst???</p>

51

<ol>
<li>rocketDA: you're probably right - never having been west of Chicago, I made the West Coast list purely on how much I've heard about those schools here on the East Coast. As it is a name recognition list and I've heard a bit more about CMC than HMC, I put CMC up a tier. Again, I know very little about the schools themselves as I am East Coast through and through.</li>
</ol>

52

<p>Dima343:

[quote]
Midwest:
Tier 1: Carleton, Grinell
Tier 2: Kenyon
Tier 3: Wabash, Kalamazoo, Denison

[/quote]
</p>

<p>You forgot abut Oberlin and Macalester. IMO, they belong on tier 2.</p>

53

<p>The people who need to know about your school know about it. HMC and other LAC's may not be well known to the general public, but they're very well known for the students they produce to employers and schools.</p>

54

<p>Having grown up internationally, the only LACs I've heard of were: Swarthmore, Amherst, Wellesley, Colgate, Pomona and Wesleyan. Never ever heard of Williams, Haverford, Bucknell, Colby, etc. None of them!</p>

55

<p>the reality is, that out of more than 3,000 colleges in the US, only 10 or so are recognizable to most people. part of this is regional, part of this is due to sports teams. for example, even though i am from a very cutthroat town where everyone is obsessed with getting into top schools, i had no clue about colleges such as rice and caltech- i thought that cal tech was some vocation school. i'd say the only schools that people nationwide are familiar with are harvard, yale, princeton, duke, nyu, ucla, and a couple of others. if people are picking schools based solely on its national reputation, i feel sorry for you.</p>

56

<p>You can't do a comparison of endowment size/student and leave out Grinnell. It has the largest endowment of any LAC in the country (about 1.4 billion dollars) and only 1500 students. In terms of funding that's absolutely incredible. But it's in Iowa, so isn't as well known.
I guess that's another example of how a lack of prestige doesn't necessarily mean low quality.</p>

57

<p>Amherst has a big lead over Williams in name recognition among the general public. It's higher in prestige than Cornell, Penn and possibly Columbia, which are Ivies/ Among elite groups, Amherst, Williams and Swarthmore have equal clout.</p>

58

<p>When I tell people where I'm going to college in the fall (Kenyon) some have never heard of it. Some think I'm going to Kenya for community service. And a decent portion has actually heard of it. Of course, the people that have are generally all over the age of 20 (and mostly the administration/faculty in my school...) so my peers still have no idea where I'm going. </p>

<p>Overall I think its a crapshoot in terms name recognition. My friends have gotten blank stares when they've mentioned Grinnell and Macalester. Even Williams! Swarthmore is sometimes even overlooked. People just focus on big name universities, and you know what? I'm ok with that because as people have said, the admissions committees at grad schools are what matter.</p>

59

<p>Colgate, Bucknell, Holy Cross, Lafayette, and Davidson are well known for good academics, strong alumni networks, and some of the few selective LAC's that play Div1 sports.</p>

60

<p>^^par- very few people realize that. i grew up about an hour from holy cross, in a very competitive community, as a fanatical college bball/fball fan, with older siblings looking at schools, and as a voracious reader of everything, and i always thought that holy cross was comparable to a school like fairfield u. i never even heard of davidson, lafayette, and bucknell until one of my friends randomly drove through on a separate college tour. if i, coming from the background that i do, hadnt heard of these, do you honestly expect that the average person would?</p>