<p>again: bates, colby, conn coll, trinity, and hamilton are virtually identical in terms of academic quality and admission selectivity. true story. dont be fooled by the usnews who ranks hamilton around 15 and even more foolishly, conn around 35!</p>
<p>
[quote]
Suggested tiers (ranked alphabetically within tiers):</p>
<p>(1) Amherst, Williams
(2) Bowdoin, Middlebury, Wesleyan
(3) Bates, Colby, Hamilton
(4) Conn College, Trinity
[/quote]
Just out of curiosity, I looked up SAT scores for these schools at collegeboard.com. I was surprised at how consistently the SAT scores matched the tiers. If you use the 75th percentile as a benchmark, for either verbal or math SAT score, then the schools within each proposed tier consistently fall into the same narrow ranges:</p>
<p>Tier 1 schools: 760 - 780
Tier 2 schools: 730 - 750
Tier 3 schools: 710 - 720
Tier 4 schools: 690 - 700</p>
<p>Tufts, incidentally, would be Tier 2 by this approach</p>
<p>OMG this wins the most stupid and pointless thread ever award.</p>
<p>OK, point taken. People are wasting way too much time on this (and this includes me).</p>
<p>All of the NESCACs are great schools
All of them can provide a terrific undergraduate education
Only you can determine which school is best for you
Nobody's rankings matter, except your own</p>
<p>agreed. but corbett, i have to admire your thoroughness :)</p>
<p>I also agree with Corbett... each NESCAC school is "best" for someone. I know there are NESCAC matriculants/students/alumni posting in this thread, and the NESCAC school they are affiliated with is simply the one that fits them. for example, I know wesleyan isn't ahead of williams or amherst academically (numbers are hard to argue with), but for me, wes is the perfect place, and I know I will get a top-notch education and 4 year experience there (yea wes '10!)</p>
<p>I thought it was pretty interesting that the Wesleyan CC board was one of the few places at which this thread was never cross-posted. My suspicion is that it would have been roundly dismissed. :)</p>
<p>im content with the idea that the nescac is academically by far the strongest league in the country regardless of division, with the exception of the ivy league.</p>
<p>I think the PAC10 is pretty darn strong.</p>
<p>Arizona State?</p>
<p>besides stanford, what school is better/more difficult to get into than any of the nescacs?</p>
<p>I'd say the UAA would rank pretty high with (west to east or so)Wash U., Chicago, Case Western Reserve, Carnegie Mellon, Rochester, Emory, NYU, Brandeis.</p>
<p>(Comment about this being a silly thread: You can certainly tell that the weather is bad.)</p>
<p>Middlebury and Bowdoin are somewhat deceiving with regard to this because of their SAT-optional policy, where they are effectively only reporting their high scorers. I know Midd suspiciously reported an avg SAT of 1470 in 2004 and then 1349 in 2005, so something is amiss. If you look at the 25% range or avg SAT for Midd, it is more right on top of Colby, Bates, Hamilton than it is near the other top 2 tier schools listed above.</p>
<p>It could be harder to get into Cal Berkeley, UCLA or USC than it is Trinity or Conn College.</p>
<p>bates, hamilton, and conn are also SAT optional and their ranges are thus also probably inflated.</p>
<p>better ranking might be the percentage of freshman in the top 10% their high school classes.</p>
<p>Williams 85 %
Middlebury 84%
Amherst 80%
Tufts 80%
Wesleyan 71%
Hamilton 70%
Colby 67%
Bates 57%
Conn 54%
Trinity 53%</p>
<p>nothing reported for Bowdoin</p>
<p>while these numbers are certainly not necessarily reflective of each school's quality and while different percentages of the class at each school submitted class rank, it is still interesting that they seem to fall into three distinct tiers.</p>
<p>That measure seems to come out similarly, although once again Middlebury's numbers seem to move around a lot as I thought I saw them in the mid 70% range the year before. </p>
<p>I feel that at least Williams and Amherst could make the number be 100% if they wanted to, but only to fulfill certain interests, i.e, sports, that it comes in below. After all, a top 10% SAT score is probably less than 1300, which is considerably below their bottom 25%. The schools as low as 70% in top 10% are probably not in the same position to accomplish this.</p>
<p>And again, with half of each incoming class consisting of private school kids who may or may not even have class ranks, these numbers can be massaged endlessly.</p>
<p>I've read recently that even some public schools are resorting to not using a class rank anymore, resulting in the % of students reporting a class rank at many colleges being ~35-40% of the class.</p>