@newparentcollege, note that profs (and their kids) tend to be more academically-focused (as opposed to pre-professionally focused) compared to the population at large. For turning out, say, PhDs, many LACs do very well.
However, if you ask the question “where do CEO’s send their kids to college?”, I think you’d get a far different answer.
I was going to suggest looking into Swarthmore, which is in a suburb of Philadelphia. Sounds like it would fit geographically into your schedule. Like Williams, Amherst and Pomona, one of the recognized “tippy top” LAC’s with very low acceptance rate, but less “jocky” than Williams and Amherst. Great place for a Renaissance man.
Purple Titan, silly point. If you want to pick an undergraduate school based on where CEO’s went to undergraduate school you will have a list that touches on a huge list of schools, from elite schools to ordinary state schools. In fact about 10% of Fortune 500 never graduated or attended college. Your point is well taken that Harvard, Stanford and U Penn dominate but it is because of attendance in graduate school but we aren’t talking about that. College profs send their kids to LACs more often because they know the teaching quality is better and that acceptance rates into graduate schools, medical schools and law schools is better in many cases.
I agree with the others about Williams and Amherst. My non-preppy, non-jocky, intellectual theater geek son really disliked both of those schools. You will spend your time and travel budget much better if you visit Swarthmore and Haverford.
^ I haven’t seen evidence that LAC students have higher acceptance rates into graduate/professional schools than students at equally selective research universities. If there’s good data to support that conclusion, I’d like to see it. Alumni of a number of LACs do seem to have relatively high per capita rates of PhD completions (although it’s not entirely clear whether we’re seeing treatment effects or selection effects.)
I haven’t done exhaustive research but the acceptance rates into medical, dental, veterinary and law school at Bates and Bowdoin are substantially higher than Emory and University of Michigan and I would assume many others. Bowdoin averaging about 83% and Bates ranging from 80% to 100% of all applicants to medical school. 100% last year for students with a GPA over 3.5 and mcat over 30, which is twice the national average. Both schools have had 100% acceptance rates for law, dental and veterinary. Now clearly the numbers are smaller but it would seem to me the students are stronger on average.
Cornell has a 71% acceptance rate into medical school for students with a 3.5 GPA. So the LACs like Bowdoin and Bates have some pretty good results.
newparent, you are assuming that the 100% acceptance rate means that every single kid who wants to apply to one of these professional schools in fact did so. That is usually not the case for med school. The winnowing of students who intend to apply to med school begins in earnest sophomore year and kids who might have made it through MCAT’s and gotten strong endorsement from their colleges at one college are often discourage from applying at another.
Law school statistics are similarly flawed (although the weed-out factor is almost non-existent for law schools.) Even kids with terrible LSAT scores can manage to get into a law school if they are willing to pay, and there are law schools now with excess capacity who will take virtually any applicant. Will these kids pass the bar and get hired to practice law? The statistics from the past few years suggest no. (poor bar passage rates, poor employment prospects). But a 100% success rate in getting into law school is not impressive unless you know where the kids are getting accepted.
Your assumption that the students are stronger on average is not supported by the evidence you cite. If you told me that kids from Bates and Bowdoin with LSAT’s of 168 and a 4.0 are getting into Harvard, Stanford and Yale law schools, then I would agree with you- clearly a 4.0 from Bates is enough to get a kid at the bottom of these colleges admissions ranges into their schools. But the mere fact of 100% admissions rate- to what might be second and third tier law schools for some of the students- does not prove what you think it proves.
Blossom, sorry you are wrong. I am simply stating a fact. It is very simple, of the kids that actually applied, X% were accepted and kids with a certain GPA and certain MCAT X% were accepted. In the cases I cited it was at least twice the national average. You are right that the quality of schools is important but the list is very impressive as well. If this analysis is flawed then just use it for comparative purposes. Numbers don’t lie but they dont tell the whole story either that is why you should use them for comparative purposes.
NC - The top private schools can be over $60K/year. Are you likely to be chasing need-based Financial aid or merit scholarships? That can skew our suggestions. The schools you’ve mentioned are reaches for all, so make sure you have some matches and safeties on the list too.
These schools dont cost nearly as much as people think. The net cost to the majority of students is one third the top line. Even at schools like Amherst grants and aid to upper middle class families can be as high as 45k a year. 70% of Amherst kids get an average of over 40k a year.
I’m a fan of LACs because my son had a phenomenally good experience, but it’s difficult to predict the fit level without visiting, because so much of the yea/nay outcome is an (instantaneous) gut reaction.
There aren’t too many urban LACs in the Northeast or anywhere. My son who had only ever lived in very large cities thought he wanted urban, but when he was drawn to LACs, decided that rural was better (for him) than suburban.
Swarthmore, Haverford, Vassar and Wesleyan have good access to major urban centers and cultures that align with Brown and Columbia. The more rural LACs like Amherst, Williams, Middlebury, have a different type of appeal, close-knit insular communities and accessibility to outdoorsy activities.
For math/science + music I would give an edge to Williams and Wesleyan over others in the same academic cohort. Any of the more selectives will provide encouragement to explore and experiment across a range of disciplines in the company of similarly intellectually curious kids.
It might be helpful to know why your son’s counselor is steering him toward looking at a few LACs. Could be something that s/he sees in your son that s/he thinks would flourish in a smaller more personalized environment or could be s/he’s just doing his job in exposing him to several options.
Be really careful about comparing medical school admission rates for various colleges. Some colleges do committee letters, using them to screen out potential medical school applicants who are unlikely to gain admission to a medical school (and the lack of a committee letter from a school which does committee letters means an even lower chance of admission than otherwise, effectively telling the student not to apply). The colleges which do committee letters may also have different thresholds of likelihood of admission for issuing a committee letter.
Small schools’ common disadvantage is that it is harder to have strong, or at least acceptable, departments and majors in as many subjects as a large school. However, Amherst’s cross registration with UMass and three other LACs adds additional diversity to the course catalog (at the cost of commuting for a course at another campus). Pomona likewise adds some additional diversity to the course catalog with the four other Claremont colleges, all intertwined in one campus. Of course, the usual advantage is smaller class sizes, especially in the frosh/soph level courses (but check the college’s schedules for actual class sizes).
Has he selected a safety that he likes yet?
“Urban, edgy, intellectual. He has diverse, multicultural and musical friends. Moves in lots of social groups. Not preppy, not into sports. Most likely participate in student government and clubs. Any ideas on good fits and bad fits?”
This is basically Pomona in a nutshell. Located in the center of SoCal metroplitan area, highest priority on academics, extremely diverse and uncharacteristic, friendly and nurturing, not preppy at all, athletics not a focus, more clubs than most peer LACs and a general ease to create new ones (~250 existing clubs).
Just want to call out CircuitRider’s comment about the Claremont Colleges being almost contiguous as a Pomona student. That’s definitely not true spiritually. Despite some added benefits like shared dining facilities and a joint library, the housing is definitely not open to all students (you have to get an exchange, which is a very tough process since most people have the majority of their friends at their home campus).
Pomona for instance does not enable off-campus majors or minors, and it has a very segregated science program from the rest of the 5C’s. In addition, many opportunities at Pomona are Pomona only, especially career based and funding opportunities. There are similar patterns of exclusivity in all of the colleges in different scales; the consortium isn’t as smooth or open as it might seem by physical distance.
Mudd sums up the Claremonts well:
“Would I identify more as a Claremont College student or a Mudder?
Definitely as a Mudder. You could not ignore the other colleges—even if you were passive about interacting with the people from the other colleges, you would still be confronted on a daily basis with opportunities to do things that mix students from various member schools. But most of your close friends and most of your classes will be at Harvey Mudd.”
I hope he likes Brown it sounds like it has everything he wants. They have one of the top applied math programs which not many people seem to know. Also all the profs teach undergraduates. The students get to know the profs very well, especially in their major. In my daughter’s major there were 45 in the graduating class and 30 professors. She was able to get involved in a lot of research and take some grad classes.
I think a visit to the LAC would be good for him to get a feel if he will like it.
I agree there are different end-goals for kids. My oldest went to a school that specifically could advance his opportunity to get a great a job and make good money. This one is, at least at this time, the opposite. I think Stanford is on the list to see if he can get it (not the most mature reason but there are always a few kids from his school that do and I don’t think when he realizes Palo Alto, although close to San Francisco, is miles apart in culture.
Although I do think Pamona itself may be a good fit, I don’t see him in San Diego, having gone to school there myself (and loved it). Crazy how different your kids are, one of my daughters is heading to a beach town college this Fall 
We do qualify for financial aid. Crazy as it sounds, if he goes to a private school it will be less than our state schools (including Chapel Hill). I did the calculators yesterday and, although they may be off a bit, all the numbers were half of what my in-state kids pay except my oldest who got one of the really over-the-top merit scholarships in our state.
Now that you’ve posted more info about your S, I second the recommendation of Oberlin. It’s not urban, but otherwise seems like a good fit. Also good as a back up to some of the lottery schools on his list if he discovers he likes LACs. I think it would be worth a visit.