I need to decide which school to apply for ED II and really need some advice.
I had the chance to visit all NESCACs and honestly I loved Conn College the most, the students seem the friendliest and I love the artsy and laid back vibe, my next favourite was Colby and Trinity, the campus was BEAUTIFUL. Trinity just gave me a bit more of a conservative vibe and idk how I feel because im very liberal and would want to go somewhere progressive. However I saw that Conn is way below in rankings and prestige compared to all other NESCACs and was concerned even though I know I shouldnt choose a school based on that reason. Why is that, and what’s the major difference between ConnCollege and highest ranked NESCACs like Amherst/Williams and Wesleyan?
Also my ultimate goal is to land a job in top consulting firms on Wall Street, and was wondering if you could rank all NESCAC schools based on prestige, job placement to top New York firms, career/internship support and name recognition among top financial and consulting firms. Will I be missing out on a lot if I chose Conn college among higher ranked NESCAC like Amherst,Bowdoin,Trinity and Colby? I want to major in economics.
My stats are:
ACT 34
SAT 1480
UW GPA 4.0
5 on : AP Bio, Calculus AB, Psychology, Human Geography and Environmental
4 on AP European history and a 3 for AP Lit
Great EC’s: won top student award in my school district based on academic and creative achievement, President of LGBTQ student society, student government President, member of city youth choir, and made a music video that was recognized in a festival nationally.
I understand that I could challenge myself to apply for non-NESCAC schools but i want to apply to those schools for RD and use my ED for NESCAC schools.
Thank you in advance!
Take my opinion w/a grain of salt, I’m just a parent on CC with no special knowledge. That said, I believe wall street/consulting firms do recruit more heavily on the more prestigious campuses (not limited to NESCACs). And that said, you can get a job in that field from other schools, for sure!
You are a great student, with a great resume, and I’m confident you will end up at a school that’s right for you.
Conn College has a much smaller endowment than some of the other Nescacs and with that comes less resources, which is one of the reasons why the ‘prestige’ factor, while still excellent is not as high as some others. It was also formerly an all women’s school, and so may be playing catch up a bit to overcome that stereotype. Overall an excellent school, highly regarded in many areas, strong internship program, pretty campus, and if it is your favorite that is the most important factor for choosing it.
Considering by faculty publishing, NESCACs comprise four (Williams, Middlebury, Wesleyan, Hamilton)
of the top seven economics departments among liberal arts colleges. Amherst, Bates and Colby also appear in the top 20: https://ideas.repec.org/top/top.uslacecon.html. If you would like information on early career salaries as an indication of preparation and placement, then you can search the U.S. News entries for individual colleges. By this standard, Hamilton, Williams and Amherst graduates perform the best among those from the NESCAC LACs, though the margins between schools are often slight.
@Eeyore123 I understand, however, because I need significant financial aid to attend those schools, almost all the schools advised me that applying ED would be a huge advantage for me regarding admissions and the chance of getting big financial aid, so I was considering applying under ED II.
TBH, it’s still an old-boys network. The best way to get an interview with a Wall Street management firm or IB, using a NESCAC as your launching pad, would be to, 1) major in Economics, preferably the most math-oriented track offered, and 2) be a varsity athelete. If you are a woman, you automatically start at a disadvantage because there are fewer roster spots available to them, especially in the traditional helmet sports like football, hockey, lacross and wrestling.
@circuitrider are you sure this is still true? My son works for a major investment bank and he (and a fellow banker friend at another institution) both said their incoming classes were at least 50% women and a very high percentage people of color.
Saying the OP should be a varsity athlete isn’t terribly helpful to him/her at this point, there is no way someone could decide to be one as a high school senior . . .
Williams for your goal and political ethos for my money. It’s really selective. Amherst would be next. Followed by Hamilton, mid and Bates.
Conn Coll is wonderful too. Very artsy vibe and beautiful campus. As an IB target school not imho. However there are many paths and many finance careers.
I really would choose a place that works best for you day to day. IB really is only one path and you may certainly change your mind.
Any would be great. Even trinity has made a real push for diversity and inclusion lately.
Title IX has corrected this issue. There should be as many athletic opportunities for women as men by the ratio of the school’s population. Many of the LACs have more women than men, so there are actually MORE athletic spots for women. Not in football, and very few in wrestling, but in hockey, lacrosse, volleyball, field hockey, swimming. Connecticut College has 15 sports for women and 12 for men. It is often the case that there are more women’s sports offered, especially if there is football.
Call me a cynic, but I suspect that if you conducted a survey of those women at highly sought positions in IB and on Wall Street, you’d find that on the whole, they either had some other way of signaling “leadership” or, if not, they almost certainly had higher GPAs than their male counterparts.
Huh? Doesn’t Title IX require that colleges “Provide participation opportunities for women and men that are substantially proportionate to their respective rates of enrollment of full-time undergraduate students”?
This does not necessarily mean the same sports, though, so if you are saying that specific heavily-male sports are favored by Wall Street or consulting recruiting, then it would have been more clear to say that.
Not to quibble, but, I think I did say that. Title IX does mandate equal participation opportunities for women and men. But, there is a big exception for football for which there is no real opposite sex equivalent. So, yes there are fewer roster spots available for women in, let us say - “contact sports”.
I think you can trust your gut and apply ED2 to the college at which you feel most at home. The colleges you are considering are all amazing! You may excel most at the one at which you think you would feel happiest. You will be living there for four years, after all.
I do not think that the differences in the potential for excellent college experiences between the top ranked NESCAC (which I know the most about of any college!) and the bottom ranked NESCAC are as pronounced as you fear.
You can ask Conn’s admission office about consulting recruiting and employment of recent grads to see if it sounds okay to you.
Here is a link to a thread I once wrote about Connecticut College:
Usually a school will have more teams for women to make up for the football team. Volleyball and gymnastics are often offered for only women, and sometimes now swimming and track too. In D1 schools that have scholarships, they do even it all up and the women’s crew will get scholarships (big ones) while the men’s teams will not (not NCAA scholarsips). When I was talking to a coach at a VERY small LAC (but D1) and asked about funding, she said that since they have football she was quite sure the women’s sports would not be cut.
Really, if one doesn’t think there are the same opportunities for women at a school (not just in sports but in other activities and leadership), why go to that school? I wanted my girls to go to colleges that would treat women equally. One ended up at a engineering tech school that was about 2/3 male. I still expected the opportunities to be the same and they were. She found a few of her fellow students to be bossy and sexist and she had to set them straight. She never had an issue with the the administration or the professors.
Trinity has long established recruiting with Wall Street mostly through their economics program. Beautiful large campus in an urban location state capital. Closer to NYC than Colby. Colby is a nice campus as well. But the remote location is a drawback. But If you like Conn Coll just go for it! Maybe you will develop really close mentoring relationships with professors that can’t be matched at other nescacs.
I also posted this reply to your other thread where you asked a similar question. Below is how I would rank the NESCAC schools based on reputation / prestige. I’ve included admitted median SAT scores in parentheses for the most recent class of 2023 (you can double-check for accuracy), and noted the schools that are test optional.
Tier 1: Williams (1480), Amherst (1490)
Tier 2: Hamilton (1490), Tufts (1490), Bowdoin (1485 – test optional)
Tier 3: Middlebury (1425), Wesleyan (1490 – test optional)
Tier 4: Bates (1425), Colby (1460) - (both test optional)
Tier 5: Trinity (1335), Connecticut College (1365) - (both test optional)
Besides US News and the other more commonly referred to college ranking websites, below are a few sites that appear to place an emphasis on reputation, selectivity and prestige. A number of these NESCAC schools (e.g., Williams, Amherst, Hamilton, Tufts, Bowdoin) are ranked on par with some of the Ivy League schools (or similar).
2020 College Factual (Overall ranking of the 1,727 best colleges nationally)
College Raptor also compiled a list of its top 25 liberal arts colleges in the country for 2020. Six of the eleven NESCAC schools appear in the top 25. Hope this is helpful!
2020 Ranking | Top 25 Best Liberal Arts Colleges in the US