<p>
[quote]
If you are going for a "name brand" college, I would advise avoiding LACs because even the best ranked and best regarded ones simply can't compete with larger universities in that area. Its mostly a matter of size.
[/quote]
By compete with you must mean for fame, or publicity, or sports. If you look at the top 10 schools for Grad school admission (percentage-wise by the amount of students) you will see that ~4 are LAC's. That hardly looks like a lack of competition to me.</p>
<p>From the Grad school forums:
The best schools (by percentage) for getting students into Harvard Law School:</p>
<p>1.) Harvard University
2.) Yale University
3.) Princeton University
4.) Amherst College
5.) Duke University
6.) Stanford University
7.) Williams College
8.) Brown University
9.) Swarthmore College
10.) Dartmouth College</p>
<p>Followed closely by Rice,Columbia and Pomona.</p>
<p>UPenn isn't even on this list, which is an ivy in virtually the same area as Swarthmore, which was ranked #9.</p>
<p>Once again (like Colgate) Bowdoin isn't at the same level Dartmouth and Brown when it comes to placing grads into top schools. The average student cailber is lower and grad placement on every list isn't even close. I read somewhere that only 10% of students getting into Midd and Dartmouth choose Middlebury, I would assume similar numbers for Bowdoin. Look at the matriculation list at any top grad school, even when size is accounted for Bowdoin is lower than Brown or Dartmouth. Dartmouth/ Brown /Columbia/ Penn are on par with the top lacs (AWS).</p>
<p>slipper, could you site a source for your assertions about Bowdoin vs. Brown and grad placement? Also, Barron's college guide talks about Wellesley students being competitive with all but the top-3 ivies. Is this then just bs?</p>
<p>Revealed preference study, WSJ report on graduate placement, published list from Columbia Business, Wharton, and Harvard Law on their undergrad sources, princeton review, usnews, pretty much everything I have ever read. </p>
<p>Bowdoin is a good school. Its not Dartmouth, Brown, Columbia, or Penn.</p>
<p>i guess something to keep in mind as a student choosing schools, is that I'm going to be the same person whether I'd go to Bowdoin or Brown, and that I'm not going to be close to valedictorian in any case, so I might end up in the same place for grad no matter where I go for undergrad as long as its an "elite school"</p>
<p>Certain elite schools place better than others though. I know many many 3.2-3.4 GPA kids from Dartmouth at places like UChicago and Northwestern business, I would think a Bowdoin student with a similar GPA would have a tougher time both when applying and in initial recruitment. Same goes for grad school. A top student will shine anywhere but the top top schools have an edge. Its the same type of edge Harvard has over Bowdoin.</p>
<p>So would a student with a 3.2-3.3 at UChi be able to get into grad programs that say on their website they expect a 3.5? What about Brown, where half of students probably have a 3.5?</p>
<p>And also, the same student who would get a 3.3 at UChi would probably get at least a 3.5-3.6 at Bowdoin, don't you think? So that's what I mean by asking if a student would wind up in the same place...</p>
<p>I think one of the points in mentioning Reed is to show rankings really aren't everything. Reed is nowhere near the top schools on the ranking list. People on the street have often only heard bits and pieces about it (and that's coming from the Pacific Northwest) but it still sends its grads to top schools. You can argue that a person may not get an elite job coming out of Reed, but its a matter of preference. I want to go to grad school, and Reed gets people into grad school. If I wanted an elite job I probably wouldn't be going here. <em>shrugs</em></p>
<p>I graduated from UVa's graduate business school. A friend flunked out and went to Kellogg (Northwestern) and got straight Bs and As. What does it mean? probably Northwestern was a better fit for him.</p>
<p>I have friends at Cornell's graduate business school and certain investment banks don't recruit at the school. Go figure? They all drove to NYC and interviewed and most got jobs. </p>
<p>someone posted..."The top 25% of Harvard's population will blow the top 15 LACs out of the water" - good, but consider if you attend Harvard will you ever get to interact with that top 25%? doubtful! - but you will if you attend Swat</p>
<p>I know 3 CEOs and heads of trading desks that attended Bowdoin</p>
<p>Summary - Its not who the school is, its who YOU ARE! If you are going for the top jobs, grad schools, etc. that's going to come out in the weeding out process. Try to visit your schools at least once, possibly twice. Talk to everyone you can there (even the guys that pick up leaves). Pick a school that you know feels right and if everything works out, go to that school. I promise you everything will work out!</p>
<p>I know. I'm not talking about business schools. I'm talking about undergraduates here, and I'm interested in grad school or non-profit work. My exact point is that whether we're talking UChicago or Harvard, I'm probably not going to be in that top 25% that gets attention from faculty and internships. So it probably doesn't matter where I go. At a LAC like Bowdoin I might be top 25%, at Smith I'm currently something like top 5-10%. At UChicago, I'd only be slightly above average. But I'll be the same person no matter where I go, so it might even be better going to a LAC where I'll be a better student and have an easier time getting positions to work with faculty.</p>
<p>You'd be best to go to Brown and get the 3.5. The best school with the best GPA is the best way to go. You don't discount a brown 3.5 or a stanford 3.6, it IS better than a bowdoin 3.6 regardless of inflation. </p>
<p>Its a sad truth but I know for a fact most grad schools don't compensate enough for grade inflation/ deflation. It leaves the Chicago/ Swat/ Cornell kids a little in the cold.</p>
<p>By the time you leave undergrad, no one but you will remember your SAT score, and if you cite it in either casual conversation or in a job interview, people will look at you wierdly. They will want to do know what you did with it - what kind of internships you had, what kind of research you conducted (and with whom), what you did with the opportunities afforded to you. They will see the benefits of good mentoring and advising, and whether you learned from it.</p>
<p>(And, if seeking I-Banking, they might want to know "who's your daddy?" And if you want to go to B-school, they'll want you to have taken several years off, worked in the business world, and see what you've done with it.)</p>
<p>that's fine to say, slipper, but where the heck do you get that information? A guy in charge of the Biology dept at UChi told me that top grad schools expect UChi grads to have GPAs >3.0 or preferably >3.3 Granted, I don't know if I could get a 3.4 at somewhere like Chicago, but for the sake of argument, I think grad schools at least in some disciplines take into account differences in grading... I was never talking about Stanford 3.6 vs. Bowdoin 3.6 anyway, I was talking about Chicago 3.3 vs. Bowdoin 3.6. I don't know anything about Stanford's rigor...</p>
<p>there was a "probably" in that actual sentence to indicate that I was speculating. I know that you do in fact have to be more impressive academically and extracurricularly to get into Harvard than anywhere else. I know harvard grads get into top grad and professional programs far more than any other college, and they do well in those programs. I also know that the people I know who went to Harvard hella earned it. So I was speculating.</p>
<p>there was a "probably" in that actual sentence to indicate that I was speculating. I know that you do in fact have to be more impressive academically and extracurricularly to get into Harvard than anywhere else. I know harvard grads get into top grad and professional programs far more than any other college, and they do fine in those programs. I also know that the people I know who went to Harvard hella earned it. So I was speculating.</p>
<p>Slipper1234, what are you talking about... you made the following statements "I would think a Bowdoin student with a similar GPA would have a tougher time both when applying and in initial recruitment. Same goes for grad school," and "The average student cailber is lower". The student caliber is NOT lower in any way. Maybe you didn't read my previous post but when I listed schools where Bowdoin grads matriculated at for med school (schools included: Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Cornell, Mayo, UCSF, Stanford, Washington U, Dartmouth, Brown, Dartmouth-Brown program, etc) and for law schools (Harvard, Columbia, Georgetown, Northwestern, U Michigan, Upenn, Yale, Vanderbilt etc), how does that in any way reflect a LOWER student caliber?</p>
<p>I believe that Slipper's statement reflected a composite of the students who attend each of these schools. On average, students at Dartmouth are stronger than students at Bowdoin. I think this fact is fairly well-accepted, regardless of people's willingness to verbalize this perception. Of course, there are students at Bowdoin who are smarter than students at Dartmouth. </p>
<p>Perhaps a 3.6 at Dartmouth is looked upon more favorably than a 3.6 at Bowdoin. However, it is possible that a 3.6 Dartmouth student would have had a 3.8 if he/she attended Bowdoin. The question then becomes whether a 3.6 at Dartmouth looked upon more favorably than a 3.8 at Bowdoin.</p>