Middlebury Or Carleton? [undecided, interested in economics]

College Search & Selection
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It’s true that economics is a more popular major at Midd. An earlier post mentioned the Niche ranking. It may be worth noting that Niche’s rankings by major take into account the relative popularity of a major on a given campus. While interesting, it’s debatable whether everyone using Niche rankings would in fact agree that metric should count towards 17.5% of rank. It’s also interesting that while having four times the number of majors (most recent year I found) Midd has only double the Econ faculty. More interesting still, Carleton actually has double the raw Econ PhD count of Midd for 2011-20 (see the NSF’s site) despite being the smaller school with, again, far fewer majors.

Dissecting methodologies of various rankings can be informative if it helps you figure out what you want, but I would advise using them as a starting a point rather than the ultimate decision making criteria (not claiming the previous poster said otherwise). There are legitimate reasons for going to a school with 2x more Econ profs and 4x more Econ students; there are also legitimate reasons to going to a school with an 8x track record (per capita rate) placing into PhD Econ programs.

I think my best advice would be to read the faculty CVs/bios, read the detailed course descriptions, read whatever is on the college’s institutional research pages, and- if possible- visit both schools! The campus or location might very well end up being the thing that sways you most between schools with many similarities.

They are both fantastic colleges, so congratulations on some amazing choices!

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For a generally lightly enrolled major, such as, say, classics, this makes sense. For a generally very popular major such as economics, for which a department may exceed the scale from which benefits are obtained, the effect may be counter-informative.

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There are many rankings for many things - and they all should be used for information and directionally which is why I used it - but in the end, someone needs to go to the right school, not one that a magazine or website says is best.

There are few undergrad major rankings and Niche puts all schools in there.

It’s not to say you should go to Midd…it was just to say if you were doing a comparison… Just another piece of info.

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We toured Middlebury on a Tuesday and had a similar experience. He only met 2 students, who were very friendly, but really didn’t get a good feel for the school as a whole. Hamilton’s tour was also similar, but at least he was able to arrange to meet a couple more students he met through social media. All the other schools we toured offered more opportunities to socialize with current students, have lunch in the dining hall, attend student panels, sit in on classes, etc. I assume it’s COVID related since both Midd and Hamilton have relatively high case counts currently.

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