We did perceive Middlebury to have a strong sports culture, certainly more so than the other two. But again, I don’t think a non-sporty kid would be miserable or uncomfortable there.
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Williams actually placed third among the included colleges. This makes sense for a ROI-type analysis in that Williams graduates report the second highest early career salaries among the nine NESCAC LACs for which this information is available. Whether the entirety of the ten inclusions have been firmly established remains a matter of either opinion or further analysis. Nonetheless, for a student who may be leaning towards a school such as Vassar based upon general impressions, the article can lend support to that direction.
Thanks for your detailed input. A question about CSS@Wes - a bit premature, since we will only visit Wes in August, but since you firsthand knowledge of it…
I read that CSS grads don’t get letter grades on their transcript. How does that work out for applications to Law/Grad schools (especially for grad schools in Europe) ? From my understanding, grad (and professional) schools tend to be very undergrad GPA focused ?
Not quite. Go to the Weslyan website: there is a pretty good explanation of how it works. Sophomore year only, all grades are based on year-end comprehensive exams. Those exams are graded hi distinction, distinction, commendable, satisfactory, unsatisfactory, fail. Those are the only grades that appear on the transcript for sophomore year. Freshman junior and senior year, grades are recorded in a normal manner. Sophomore year IS tough. Recognize that I only experience this through my daughter’s room mate’s experience, so I don’t want to hold myself out as really understanding the program more than I do. But I wound up getting to know this kid pretty well, because she and I share a common academic interest, and I speak to her quite a bit about it. In any event, the rigor, and the reading and writing load, are considerable. I went to law school, and while that generally played to my academic strengths, it was a long haul. I’ve walked away from the roommate’s experience in CSS with the strong impression that those kids would not be phased by law school. It’s that heavy.
One other thing. You mentioned that your daughter is not sporty. Although my daughter is a varsity athlete, she is decidedly not a kid who would fit into that stereo typical preppy sporty exclusive crowd and is very happy where she is at. I have attended more Wesleyan baseball and football games than she has - for real. Compare and contrast with Skidmore, where my other daughter attends. There, while sports are also not a big deal, there seems to be a more clear a divide between the athletes and the non-athletes. I really like that school; but what people write on CC about that divide in the student body seems very real to me based on our observations.
While Wesleyan has become much more athletically competitive across the board (they were proudly the conference doormat for years), it is not something that permeates the campus at all. There are plenty of students there who could not care less about what’s going on with the sports teams. It’s there for those who care about it; and for those who don’t, it is easily ignored.
Good luck!
@merc81 , normally I agree with your posts. Here, I respectfully disagree. Unless the list is offered in the “oh by the way here are 10 of many schools that are worth the price”, I think it’s just a random collection. You’re going to have a hard time convincing me that Hamilton is worth the money, but somehow Pomona is not. That Dartmouth is, but Penn and Harvard and Yale and Stanford are not. Those would be absurd contentions and not ones I would want to have to find a way to support. And I promise this is not a matter of my favorite school or schools not being on the list. I see when people on CC do that and it drives me nuts.
Starting with the basic question, how do you really evaluate with any degree of intellectual rigor whether an education at a school at which a kid fits well and gets a great education was “worth” it? Money? If it’s money, it would seem that the list would look a lot different. It’s just click bait in my view.
I think the sporty outdoorsy type of kid would love midd. Much more so than wes or much more than vassar. These are broad generalizations so individual results may vary.
And please forgive the typos everyone. I’m on a phone.
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@worleyclan: Well, I’d tossed in the Forbes article as possibly of “interest” for a student who might be inclined towards Vassar. I kept it separate from my own opinion, which I based on the totality of the original post, and which I stated earlier as follows:
Regarding your criticism of the article specifically, I agree on many points, particularly with respect to the dichotomy you observed between actual experience and financial considerations, and how neither, indeed, seems to have been meaningfully examined for the article.
^And. like many such magazine polls, it can change drastically from one year to the next:
https://www.forbes.com/value-colleges/list/#tab:rank
Forbes rankings seem to be based more on where it needs to increase circulation than on any clear cut standard.
But great to quote if your favorite school beats its US News ranking ! 
@Publisher: You made this observation on another thread as well. Why would a reader want an article that favors a particular geographical area, or that shows any bias for that matter? By definition, this would represent substandard information, and therefore would seem to be a good reason not to trust the publication. I’d be more inclined to think that Forbes might produce college rankings in general to increase circulation, then to associate them with a strong geographical bias. However, if you were to have suggested that Forbes favors the Triangular League, you would perhaps have had a stronger case.
Midd definitely is a more sporty vibe than Wesleyan or Vassar. Of all the LAC’s we visited (and where my kids did overnights, accepted student days, etc.), Midd was the most pronounced in the students acknowledging a culture of athletes vs. everyone else. My son encountered numerous people and groups on both sides who self defined themselves as “Bros” vs. “NARP’s” (Non-Athletic Regular People). Even after he returned from the accepted student days and overnight, we connected him with a couple current and recent students there who we knew through their parents and they all reinforced the existence of this athlete/non-athlete culture, even when they were talking about how much they liked it. It’s what ultimately turned my son off Midd. Not dissing the school – I thought it was great and had a lot to offer – just stating our experience. It’s interesting too because it’s not really a factor of what percentage of the student body is on a team. Midd was about 35% and Bowdoin was over 40% yet that culture is much less pronounced at Bowdoin.
If the ED option doesn’t work out, she should take a look at Macalester and Dickinson with those interests.
Dickinson offers EA, so she could apply EA there and ED elsewhere. Kalamazoo is another very good EA action.
When you visit the schools, it might be good to get a sense of how easy/difficult it is to participate in theater as a non-major. That was important to my D. The arts are pretty competitive at Vassar but she was able to get involved first through doing the props for a play in the fall. Then she made it into a cast for a spring play. I think there are numerous performances throughout the year and lots of opportunities but it is not as easy as one might think to get involved.
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elena13 - Great point. It is very important for my daughter to get involved in Theater. She has been in Theater all years of high school (both on- and off-stage - acting/directing/stage managing etc). Your D’s experience at Vassar is valuable as input - that if one puts in the effort and starts in Year 1, it is possible to get involved. We will try to get a sense for this when we visit the other 2 colleges.
warblersrule - We have only heard great things about Macalester, but ruled out colleges in MN. D won’t be able to deal with the MN cold (a few notches worse than the east coast). She has a sibling at a different MN college, who somehow has been able to deal with the winter weather, but this past winter was a brutal one. The only college D is applying to in the midwest is Oberlin.
All have great academics. Wes and Vassar are far closer in their dominant culture, with Midd being “not like the others”. At most schools, someone who is outside the dominant culture will find friends, but it can be isolating, especially at a small, out of the way school. Tufts might also be worth a look - a bit bigger and tons of opportunities for non-theater majors to participate in theater (although I understand your goal here is to choose the ED school, not build an extensive list. And it is very strong in those subject areas.) I’ve known a number of kids who were attracted to Wes and Vassar to really like the vibe there as well.
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Is your daughter my daughter? The only difference I can see is you live in N. California, while we live in the Pacific NW.
You mentioned applying to Oberlin. If climate is a big concern for your daughter, you should know that winters in NE Ohio get very cold. Perhaps not Minnesota or Maine cold, but pretty cold nonetheless. FWIW, I actually think it’s a positive for my daughter to try living in a climate she’s never experienced before. Otherwise, she may just stay in her PNW cocoon forever.
I’m finding it hard to understand how it is possible to consider applying to ANY school ED without having spent a decent amount of time on campus – ideally having sat in on classes, having done an overnight visit, and having experienced winter weather in the Northeast and/or Midwest. Frankly, it seems a bit premature for your daughter to be thinking about picking an ED school (summer visits are not ideal as they don’t provide as clear of a picture of the student body, campus culture, etc. that an in-session visit would). Given that both you and your daughter were unaware of one of the signature programs in her area of interest at one of the three top schools you are considering is suggests to me that picking an ED school at this point is not a good plan. Remember ED is BINDING.
Has your daughter looked at the Claremont colleges? Both Pomona and Claremont McKenna have highly regarded PPE programs (Poli Sci/Philosophy/Economics), and having the consortium is a huge plus in my opinion. While you are at it, Scripps might be worth looking at as well. Needless to say, winter weather would not be an issue for the Claremont Colleges. The theatre program and productions are centered at Pomona, but they are open to students from all colleges and all majors.
Personally, I think Pomona would likely be a better intellectual and social fit than CMC, but CMC’s PPE program is modeled after Oxford’s and is very highly ranked (that said, like Wes’ CSS – and unlike Pomona’s PPE program, which is more like declaring a major – getting into the PPE program at CMC is highly competitive).
UChicago is another school with an interesting Law, Letters, and Society program, but given weather concerns, it’s certainly not the best choice. (It’s also competitive to get into LLS).
This suggestion might seem like it’s coming out of left field, but Social Sciences at Rice University (a school typically lauded for its STEM programs) are quite good. Rice has a few programs that might be of interest to your daughter: it has a Social Policy Analysis major as well as a minor in Politics, Law, and Social Thought – a joint program between its School of Social Sciences and School of Humanities. Rice has both a student run theatre group (Rice Players) as well as a theatre program open to non-majors through their Dept. of Visual and Dramatic Arts.
How does or doesn’t cost factor into your decision? (Yet another reason why ED might not be the best choice until you have done A LOT more research with boots on and off the ground).
Sorry for being so blunt, but I really think that you need to think this through a bit more before deciding to apply ED. One of my D’s close friends applied but did not get into Wesleyan ED I; by the time ED II came around, she found what was, for her, a much better fit academic and social fit in and area she liked. In the end, she applied – and was accepted – to Haverford in their ED II round.
There are a number of other LACs in gentler climates and/or easy access to airports and availability of non-stop flights that might be worth considering.
Were you to be keeping to the original three schools that you inquired about, I would say that Wesleyan sounds like the best fit both socially (probably the least sporty/most artsy crowd among them) and academically (assuming your D were to get into the CSS program, which one can’t assume).
In finding the elusive “fit” there are many factors to consider – academic programs, cost, campus culture, geographic location/weather/time and cost of travel. Middlebury is a rural campus nestled in the mountains of Vermont with a more sport-centered culture. Both Wesleyan and Vassar might be considered more suburban than rural, but neither is close enough to NYC to make it easy to visit and all three schools present some logistical challenges in terms of travel from the west coast.