<p>mantori–
I am serious in my question. I am curious as to which schools peopl feel have name recognition. Do you think because Hillary went to Wellesley that is has name recognition, or it just happens to have it anyway? Which is the one you consider “the one that everyone knows”?</p>
<p>mantori-
To clarify-
I am curious what <em>others</em> think are LACs with name recognition. I went to one, and I think it has name recognition, but I am biased. And many of us here have heard of/are familiar with most of the LACs. Am wondering outside the college focused folks, what schools nave the name recognition?</p>
<p>I was being silly, of course, but it’s true that there isn’t an LAC that the average citizen thinks of immediately when you say “elite liberal-arts college”. For what it’s worth, here are the ones that I think of, as someone with no connection to academics other than my son’s college search:</p>
<p>Swarthmore
Wellesley (not only due to Hillary Clinton)
Smith (maybe only because I have a friend who went there)
Haverford
Williams
Bryn Mawr (mostly, but not only, because I had an employee who went there)
Claremont McKenna
Kenyon (maybe because I’m from Ohio)
St. Mary’s (probably due to association with Notre Dame)</p>
<p>But as I always say, name recognition amongst the general public is not what matters. These LACs and many more are known to people who hire or admit to graduate and professional schools, and that’s all a student should care about.</p>
<p>Thanks, mantori. Your response is fascinating. I have heard of all the schools on your list, but its different, albeit with some overlaps, from what I’d say if asked, and my school didnt even make your list :(</p>
<p>Sorry, I didn’t mean any slight. :)</p>
<p>Oh no, you didn’t slight anyone/anything/any school. No worries. Its just fascinating to me that we can all name the other top schools, the HPSYMs, but we’d probably produce a very different list of the name recognized top LACs.</p>
<p>Colby
Bowdoin
Bates
Macalester
All of the Claremont colleges
Oberlin
Middlebury
Williams</p>
<p>Those are the ones that occur to me, but I don’t know why! I’m sure I would be better informed if our son had been looking for an LAC!</p>
<p>Thank you for the links, and my mom has hired a good number of college grads but since she works in accounting and for the government, the amount of LAC students she runs across is near nil. She knows I have a second hope in transfer admissions as I should have a 3.7-3.8ish with 31 credits and most likely will maintain into 60 or so credits for when I transfer and is worried now about name recognition.</p>
<p>Also the LAC’s that I heard of before I looked into colleges were-
Middlebury (midd kid video)
Oberlin (Art lending program)
Claremont Mckenna
Kalamazoo</p>
<p>Wow. This is fascinating! Guess it depends on locale. The ones that pop into my head, in no particular order are:
Amherst
Mt Holyoke
Sarah Lawrence
Vassar
Williams
Smith
Pomona
CMC
Harvey Mudd
Swarthmore</p>
<p>I think the only one that my be known nationally and internationally may be Oberlin, primarily because of its music program.</p>
<p>Actually, in my day, Bowling Green was rather well respected in some of the anthro sub-fields. </p>
<p>Bottom line, your mom and her friends won’t be interviewing you for a job. One thing the top LACs excel at is career services, getting kids into internships during college or summers (sometimes even funding kids if it’s unpaid.) The experience of a smaller classes can be intellectually empowering. The leadership opportunites can be great.</p>
<p>If you just want a school most people recognize, go for any large school with a prominent football team. Or that includes it’s state’s name.</p>
<p>People who know about colleges know these schools. However, if she wants to impress her friends, then the small LACs are not good.</p>
<p>I myself had never heard of many of them until I started researching colleges for my kid.</p>
<p>And I have four college degrees, so am not a blue collar guy.</p>
<p>Who ever heard of Pomona, Haverford, etc.?</p>
<p>
<<<<< raises hand >>>>>></p>
<p>Ha, I disagree most average citizens know those LACs. You and I do. Most people only know these if someone they know went there or they live nearby or heard some prof interviewed on the radio. My kids go to schools on these posted lists. I have zero regrets.</p>
<p>I think a lot of it has to do with the region in which one grew up. Growing up in the NE, I, my classmates and parents were, for the mostpart familiar with, applied to, attended schools on this list. That doesn’t mean everyone in the school was familiar with them by any means, but my classmates were. And we are talking many decades ago. That said, didnt really know anything much about Macalester, Grinnell, Carleton or Davidson til grad school.</p>
<p>Then again, plenty of peole think the top state flagships are nothing more than state schools. And, plenty recognize the “Cal State” name in front of some city name and assume, without checking into the particular branch’s rep.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Psychology, art, pop culture studies, teacher education, and photochemistry are the other well-regarded programs I’m aware of. But I didn’t study any of those things and still got a good enough education to get me into a good grad school, so no complaints here.</p>
<p>In my day, when dinosaurs roamed the earth, at my NYC magnet school, the GC used to threaten us with Middlebury. (We used to shudder - go figure.)</p>
<p>For what it’s worth (anecdotes are not data), when my Smithie d. went to Princeton for graduate school, when they heard she’d done Italian Studies at Smith, they waived the language exam.</p>
<p>Add me to the list of people who had no idea was an LAC even was let alone the list of them. I agree this might be a regional thing. Im from So. Cal.</p>
<p>But my D fell in love with many of them and so did I. I do believe however that the people who are in the business of hiring kids fresh out of college know the top LACs. The grad schools definitely know, and I’ve found that folks smarter than I am know too. ;)</p>
<p>Jym, having grown up in the NE as well, I was familiar with and impressed by a lot of LACs that don’t have man on the street recognition here in the Midwest. Even the school-that-Hillary-went-to. The Bed Bath and Beyond people certainly hadn’t heard of it, but I doubt they could find Massachusetts on a map. Or they thought it was someplace called Wells College. D and I have to bite our tongues so we don’t engage in major snark.</p>