<p>I'm really curious, Pomona College has a lower acceptance rate and higher mean standardized test scores than Williams, Amherst, and Wellesley College. How come The Little Three is still ranked higher? Isn't Pomona a overall better college too?</p>
<p>The rankings are pretty useless, don't you think? The difference between 1st and 4th? Or 10th and 13th? It's not like they are determined by a Higher Power or anything. It's statistics crunching, in some cases of pretty meaningless stuff. They're all great schools. Anyone would be lucky to be at any of them. It's just a matter of which one you like best, and which one accepts you... the things that can make someone prefer one over another are curriculum differences, weather differences, west coast/east coast, urban/suburban/rural, sports teams, arts opportunities, certain faculty, proximity or distance from home, financial feasability, etc... whatever fits a student best. Not much point in trying to rank them beyond the fact that they're all pretty great.</p>
<p>Beatlesfan -</p>
<p>Welcome to CC!</p>
<p>You can drown in the minutia of the rankings. That said, the rankings also consider alumni giving, and in that category, the Little Three do outrank Pomona.</p>
<p>I believe that one reason for the lower ranking is the "peer ranking" part of the overall score. US News and World Report asks Deans and Presidents to rank schools. There are many more private colleges on the East Coast and as a result East Coast schools get higher peer rankings because they are better known there. Although Pomona on paper is second to none, it is less well known in higher education circles in the East and Midwest than Williams and Amherst.</p>
<p>But as has already been pointed out, it doesn't matter very much.</p>
<p>'rentof2, I totally agree with you on the fact that rankings are pretty useless. I have heard rumors that Pomona values SAT scores more than other liberal arts colleges. Is this true?</p>
<p>They all value SAT scores. And they all place more emphasis on the scores than they publicly admit. However, because Pomona accepts a higher percentage of public school kids than the other top LA colleges, and places less emphasis on athletics, it may routinely get higher SAT scores than the other top LA colleges, since the public school kids tend to have higher scores than the private school kids.</p>
<p>Do you mean the US Newsweek rankings? I believe that those rankings are based on quality of dorms and etc? I really do not know. All I know is that Amherst was ranked the number one liberal arts college, with Wellesley being in the top, too. I'd say that that just means that all those colleges are pretty strong, you can't necessarily deduce that one is better than the other just from one ranking.</p>
<p>Oops, nevermind, midatl_dd answered the question quite nicely.</p>
<p>do you really think that once you're in college you'll care what is printed in USNEWS? You'll find it silly that you ever cared.</p>
<p>Echo brassmonkey. :)</p>