Most Known LAC?

College Search & Selection
41

<p>
[quote]
xiggi,</p>

<p>well, i am not surprised at all. i'd think it's easier for them to have low admit rates because of their small size. they don't even need to have decent yield to achieve theat (if i am not mistaken, their yield is nowhere comparable to ivies). but how about their mid-50% SAT ranges?

[/quote]
</p>

<p>I am not certain why it's easier to have a low admit rate at a smaller school. Outside of school administrators and enrollment managers, yield has little relevance. It is because yield is so easily manipulated by different early admission policies and wait list uses that it was dropped from US News selectivity index. Schools that fill one half of their class through Early Decision and go deep in their deferred and wait listed pool are hard to compare to others. </p>

<p>Since you asked, here are the SAT scores that go with the list I posted previously. Please note that the mid-50% is only a crude division of the 25-75% percentiles and is not necessarily exact. While the admission rates were for the Class of 2011, the SAT are for the Class of 2010. </p>

<p>School 25% 75% +/- 50%
Harvard 1390 1590 1490
Princeton 1370 1590 1480
Yale 1390 1580 1485
Stanford 1340 1540 1440
Columbia 1330 1540 1435
MIT 1380 1560 1470
Brown 1350 1530 1440
Dartmouth 1350 1540 1445
Penn 1330 1530 1430
CMC 1310 1490 1400
Pomona 1370 1520 1445
Caltech 1470 1570 1520
Swarthmore 1320 1530 1425
Amherst 1330 1530 1430
Williams 1320 1520 1420
Bowdoin 1300 1480 1390</p>

42

<p>These were the lac colleges i knew of
Amherst- My RA at a camp was a student there. He was tight
Harvey Mudd- I am into engineering and math, and its like this is one of the only lac's with engineering
Reed- i live near reed</p>

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<p>xiggi, </p>

<p>yield and admit rate are inversely proportional. for a given class size, the higher the yield, the lower the admit rate. but because of their small size, LACs can have low admit rate even without high yield.</p>

<p>it may look like us news dropped the yield but as long as they include admit rate, yield is indirectly incorporated and certain colleges will continue to have a reason to manipulate that. </p>

<p>they should just drop the yield AND admit rate if they want to stop that kind of manipulation. i honestly don't see how admit rate matters to the quality of education. after all, it's the caliber of the students (assuming SAT range and % in the top-tenth in HS are good indicators) that provides the substance, not how many get in out of how many apply.</p>

44

<p>above poster said--</p>

<p>How come nobody mentioned Swarthmore?
It's the best LAC I know</p>

<p>A reminder that this thread is about the best known LACs, not 'the best' LACs. Huge difference. And, in answering this question, one needs to ask, 'best known' to whom?</p>

<p>*man on the street?
*employers
*graduate committees?</p>

<p>In general, LACs name recognition seem to be related to their local geographic region.</p>

<p>I could not believe that my Oxford educated cousin whose child goes to Swarthmore, never heard of Carleton, and she is from Chicago and had her kid in private college prep schools all her child's life. Carleton is a 6.5 hour drive from Chicago. Also, the son of my friend at work - a professional - was admitted for a FULL tuition to Carleton after winning a posse scholarship contest, and he (my friend) also never heard of Carleton. I had to convince him that it was a great school. I only knew of Carleton due to all my research here and everywhere else for this c search.</p>

<p>I was also surprised that my other cousin, a professor at another Mn LAC, never heard of Earlham. He is not the typical man in the street.</p>

<p>All that money the big Uni's pay for Div 1 sports and allocated for research, keeps the schools' names in the national consciousness, in the papers and the popular media, of Joe and Josephine Citizen..</p>

<p>Where I am from (Chicago), there seems to be some recognition of 'Knox College'. No one+ has heard of 'Amherst' and the NE's LACs.</p>

<p>+typical man on the street. I am sure the U of C and NU graduate committees have heard of Carleton, Amherst, Smith, Holyoke etc</p>

45

<p>Reed, Harvey Mudd, Amherst, Wellesley, Mount Holyoke, Scripps...</p>

<p>Never heard of Pomona until we actually visited Claremont and walked onto their campus.</p>

<p>Of course, here in the Pacific Northwest, Lewis and Clark, Whitman and UPS are some very familiar names.</p>

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<p>joecollegedad, you have an oxford educated cousin whose child goes to Swarthmore? I need your advice! My son has an offer from Oxford and an excellent LAC in the US (I won't name it for the sake of anonymity) -- he is having a hard time choosing between the two. He's into sciences. Help!</p>

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<p>I live in the southwest (Arizona) and I don't think anyone knows about LACs here, generally. We don't have any regional LACs, so I'd say that probably Williams, Amherst, and Pomona would be the best known among people who are moderately familiar with colleges in general.</p>

48

<p>Amherst, Williams, Wellesley, Harvey Mudd.</p>

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<p>goldust, is there a recognition of Colorado College out your way?</p>

50

<p>People don't talk much about LACs here either. (i make it sound taboo, hah!) Besides Colorado College...'cause I'm from Colorado.</p>

<p>If I had to say others, Dartmouth if it counts and Vassar definitely.
A lot of my friends hadn't even heard of Amherst until junior/senior year, then quickly realized it's kind of a big deal.</p>

51

<p>Getting back to the original question, which are the best KNOWN LACs:</p>

<p>In Southern NJ. Believe it or not, I don't think the average person on the street has heard of Swarthmore, Haverford or Bryn Mawr. And these are only an hour from here! I'm talking the typical guy on the street if that was the OP's intent.</p>

<p>More "well known" here are Lafayette, Bucknell, Colgate, Gettysburg. </p>

<p>Williams, Wesleyan, Bowdoin, Hamilton, Pomona, Claremont McKenna?...forget it, not a chance. Better known in north Jersey most likely. And this is hardly the sticks, just how it is in my experience around here. Maybe Amherst, probably Vassar for some reason.</p>

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<p>Well, LACs are best known in educated communities and in academic circles. For those of us who like LACs, why should it matter that Joe Six-Pack doesn't know the difference between Swarthmore and Skidmore?</p>

53

<p>Wait, I was so caught up in rambling that I forgot to answer the OP's question.</p>

<p>Ans: Amherst and Williams. Amherst (reputation) and Williams (reputation and also the fact the one of Singapore's former prime ministers received an honorary doctorate in Williams.</p>

<p>I never heard of Pomona until my counselor in the US education info center pointed me to it.</p>

54

<p>Wellesley, Amherst, Williams, Smith and Barnard</p>

<p>(in that order -- Radcliffe would prolly make that list prior to officially merging with H)</p>

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<p>So far (1/4/08), Wesleyan is the most popular LAC on the CC board:
<a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/415178-class-08-how-many-people-cc-applying-each-school-32.html#post5176859%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/415178-class-08-how-many-people-cc-applying-each-school-32.html#post5176859&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

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<p>Whitman, I think</p>

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<p>
[quote]
So far (1/4/08), Wesleyan is the most popular LAC on the CC board:

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Wesleyan, while a great school, lacks national name recognition. The honest truth is that whenever the name comes up in casual conversation, most people confuse it with Wellesley.</p>

<p>Its unfortunate. Its like Haverford and Harvard.</p>

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<p>Amherst. Reed?? Not a chance.</p>

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<p>Sorry to tell you guys, but the U.S. Naval Academy and the U.S. Military Academy are both considered "LACS" maybe not by CC, but the rest of the country. I'm pretty sure the public knows more about these two schools than say Williams or Swarthmore.</p>

60

<p>Vassar was the first LAC I had ever heard about at a college fair, and that was a time when I had no real grasp of the actual concept of what a liberal arts college was.</p>