How are the NESCAC schools affected? Is there a big change from 2023 and previous years?
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The basic pecking order is fairly stable (Amherst, and Williams, at the top with Trinity trailing after a large dip), but there was a huge jump for Wesleyan of ~10 positions, IIRC.
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There was new criteria used by US News & World Report to come up with the 2024 rankings list. Some schools benefited from the new formula while other schools plummeted.
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Here are the raw scores and overall rankings among National LACs:
Williams: 100 (1)
Amherst: 98 (2)
Bowdoin: 92 (9)
Middlebury: 91 (11)
Wesleyan: 91 (11)
Hamilton: 89 (16)
Bates: 87 (24)
Colby: 86 (25)
Trinity: 78 (39)
Conn College: 76 (46)
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Oh really? I hadnāt noticed.
I would just say that US News is finally getting it right and is headed toward the light of truth.
Taking out the service academies:
Williams - 1
Amherst - 2
Bowdoin - 6
Midd & Wes - 8
Hamilton - 13
Bates - 21
Colby - 22
Trinity - 36
Conn - 43
Tufts is now #40 in the U rankings.
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Iāll note to my eye, including the raw scores really underscores how between at least Bowdoin and Colby, there is a lot of splitting of hairs going on.
Not that I am endorsing the idea people should automatically prefer Amherst and Williams to that group, nor that everyone should prefer that group to Trinity and Conn.
But even if you take these things much more seriously than I would ever suggest, you can still see how bunched they are in the middle of that range.
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Agree - definitely not much difference in overall scores in this group of top Northeast SLACs (listed after Williams and Amherst). And many students apply to quite a few here and choose one or another based on overall āfitā:
Bowdoin - 6
Midd & Wes - 8
Hamilton- 13
Bates - 21
Colby - 22
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As a comment, rather than a correction, I wouldnāt describe the underlying scores in U.S. News as āraw,ā in that they have been made to conform to a scale of 1 to 100. Nonetheless, the overall scores do represent the statistical separation between schools, which the rankings themselves do not.
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Any thoughts on looking at other rankings for NESCAC? College Consensus is interesting, because it uses two overall scores then averages them. https://www.collegeconsensus.com/rankings/best-liberal-arts-colleges/
Or Niche, Forbes, Raptor, etc? Niche factors in more student input, which might be more interesting (certainly from a teen point of view).
With respect to a variety of perspectives, I find it interesting to read through sites that include universities and LACs in the same ranking. College Factual, for example, includes 3 NESCACs in its top 25: 2024 Best Colleges in the United States. However, my confidence level in a ranking such as this is not especially high, mostly because I havenāt bothered to look at its methods. Nonetheless, the siteās rankings seem to be fairly consistent from one year to the next, which I regard as a positive attribute.
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The issue is that many of the factors included in rankings are not relevant for LACs, such as publications and research grant money. No LAC faculty will be even applying for a $15 million from NSF for studying AI or a $20 million grant from NIH to study cancer, much less getting them.
Many of the rankings for colleges are geared specifically to the mission of āeliteā private research universities. The take the Ivy+ universities, decide what makes them āeliteā, and use those as the factors by which they determine the rankings of colleges.
Most rankings are, essentially, a determination of how similar a college is to what the developers of the methodology decides is their āideal university/collegeā. Because of cultural ideals and because of the alma maters of the magazine owners or the developers of the methodologies, āideal collegesā have been, since the 1980s, HYPSM. So college rankings, from USNews to Forbes to Niche, have been āon a scale of 0.0 to 100.0, how similar is this college to HYPSM?ā
USNews at least, broke them down to categories, at least recognising that the basic missions of these college types are different. Their methodologies for LACs, regionals, etc, is better than for National Universities, since they are not obliged to modify the methodology to make sure that HYPSM always come out on top.
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A sampling of reactions to the Hamas/Israeli War from around NESCAC:
Wesleyan
The Wesleyan Argus | University Community Grapples With Israel-Hamas War
Middlebury
Response to the War in Israel, Palestine | Middlebury News and Announcements
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Catching up with an old draftā¦
Earlier in this thread, there was a post stating something akin to āthose who donāt want to go right to a job after graduating should attend an LAC.ā That is an interesting claim, though I guess the larger point might be that LACs are great for those pursuing grad school.
My D worked for two years immediately after graduating from Bates in 2020, as did the majority of her friends. Others went on to grad school, others had fellowships or other scholarships. She had several job offers prior to starting her most recent job. The work she did as an undergrad at Bates was fantastic prep for her postgrad program. She completed her MSc last month and has just landed a good job.
My sense is that over the last few years, the NESCAC name has gained more notice as a ābrandā and that these colleges continue to be popular. I also think NESCAC grads have a lot of mutual respect for one another, regardless of which one they attended. My own kid worked with fellow NESCACāers and knew several at her grad school. She knows that they āget it.ā I also notice it when I meet people whose kids attended NESCACs, or who attended themselves.
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My impression has always been that SLACs tend to have fanatical alum networks to begin with, AND then when their kids are out on the market, they put rivalries aside and look out for each other too. And it helps those jobseekers are relatively rare in the sense that a given well-placed alum isnāt going to get a gazillion kids each each looking to network. Like, big state schools can have loyal alums too, but then there are a bunch of graduates in most markets every year.
Anyway, I would personally never worry about a good student at a good SLAC having good networking opportunities.
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Honest question (not a point pretending to be a question):
Do NESCAC alums out in the world really care if a colleague went to a different NESCAC, as opposed to a neighboring LAC? (Like, theyād have more of a connection/mutual respect with a fellows NESCACER than Haverford or Bryn Mawr or Swarthmore or Lafayette or Skidmore or Wellesley or Bard or Vassar or Smith or Mt. Holyoke, etc.?) I had always imagined that the mutual respect was for fellow liberal arts college grads ā¦ going to small schools most folks havenāt heard of, but that are academic/teaching powerhouses?
I get athletes that competed against each other a lot, that might be different? But for run-of-the-mill alums?
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Iām sure they donāt care at all. Perhaps I should have said itās more like they are proud of the association.
Edit: @kaslew I myself attended CSULB. To me, itās very noticeable because I have never once run into a CSULB alum who still recalls with pride their time at the university. (Iām sure I just havenāt met them yet.) No offense to my college, and Iām glad I went there. It did the jobš All the selective LACs you just mentioned offer very different experiences to what I had. I guess there are people who take pride in not only their college, but their commonality as a group of colleges.
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One of my best friends is a Pitzer grad and we both think our mutual love of football came from rooting for our obscure, small college, DIII teams while in college.
I suspect all LAC alums bond over the similarity of experience, not simply athletic conference. Given how many students at NESCACs are athletes, though, that connection happens more often than youād think. And my experience of the BBC alums ā a NESCAC subset ā is that they immediately have a bond around Maine. It seems itās more about the connection and a sense of having walked a parallel path than a preference.
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