@circuitrider, YOU are a scholar and a gentleman. Well done.
A peculiar response to your post is on the way. One of your 15 points will be addressed with new premises and red herrings, and it will employ a curious use English vocabulary.
“Their names tend not to be on the radar screen in my part of the country (New York City).”
You may be right about the other schools you named, but regarding Oberlin clearly we did not have the same experience. Maybe your part of the country(New York city) was different than my part of the country (New York City). but back when my kids went to school there, Oberlin was a pretty common destination for kids from Saint Ann’s and some of the other private schools we looked into. 30% of Oberlin’s incoming class is from the mid-atlantic region- vs. 21% from the midwest. NYC is Oberlin’s largest alumni club.
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This is all anecdotal but in my tristate cohort, Amherst, Williams, Swarthmore and Pomona are generally regarded as a very slight notch above Wesleyan which is in itself regarded as a notch above Vassar, Oberlin and Kenyon but that is in terms of relative selectivity, not the experience on campus as they are all very strong liberal arts schools, some with better departments in some areas and all with different “feels.” Wesleyan also does attract kids who apply to Brown but there it might that Brown is a reach and Wesleyan is a target. Honestly, while I do know kids who apply to Pomona, Harvey Mudd and Scripps from the NYC area, I haven’t heard of anyone applying to Pitzer.