<p>Thanx, mini and Jyber209.</p>
<p>From everything my D has said, I don't think it even occurs to most people to even think about it.</p>
<p>On another note...Jyber, check your PM.</p>
<p>Yeah, I agree, too, based on my experience at Smith and that of more recent graduates I know. Straight people are not ostracized at Smith, it's just that non-straight people are not ostracized and hidden at Smith as much as at other places. There are also pretty many people at Smith who are "questioning" their sexuality and not committed to a particular label. When I was at Smith, the most I heard was a vague complaint that was dredged up a few times that straight students had been referred to as "breeders" by some lesbian students in some incident some time in the past. Some non-straight students are kind of vocal and you probably will meet some straight students who do resent it or see it as an attack on heterosexuality.</p>
<p>A motivated student can get a solid education anywhere. With that said, Smith is not even close to Williams and Amherst in terms of the quality of education. In 2003, Smith accepted 52 percent of its applicants, Williams and Amherst admitted approximately 18 percent. I realize there are many things that affect the quality of education, but (herd mentality) the percent acceptance is a good indicator. As to Wellesley, it is much better than Smith but not at the level of Williams and Amherst.</p>
<p>But Smith is ranked number 13 compared to numbers 1-4. There is not much of a difference in overall academics. While Amherst and Williams are the most well-known where I live, that says nothing of the quality of the schools. The atmospheres are very different, and specific programs are best at certain schools (like art history at Williams and Italian at Smith). In the end, it comes down to fit.</p>
<p>Fit, fit, fit. It's all that matters. </p>
<p>Selectivity isn't everything. U/Chicago accepts around 42 percent...and for my money it's one of the top five universities in the country for undergrad. </p>
<p>And as been hashed on this board before, US News ratings are great for selling magazines but a dumb way to approach college selection. (And, as dumb as they are, if you go by peer rating, Smith is tied for 7th.)</p>
<p>I have been looking at college quality for a while now and I am quite amazed at what people consider to be good indicators. Consider the % of applicants admitted. A schools popularity can be built upon more than just academic reputation. If Robert DeNiro opened an acting school with a class of 10 and charged $5. He might get 10,000 applicants for 10 slots. Would that really mean the school was better than Juliard or Yale? Of course not. Not everybody is looking for the same thing, for some it might be a great biology department and for others it might be a safe dorm with decent food, and yet another might only want a school with a football team. </p>
<p>Well known schools may offer quality, but for some applicants it is merely the idea of applying to a place they heard of.</p>
<p>I concur with those who have argued the merits of "fit" over simply asking "What is the most selective school I can get in to?"</p>
<p>With respect to selectivity, all the women's colleges are going to show a higher admit rate, since roughly half the appicant population (the males) are not even eligible to apply. There is also, as there is at U Chicago, a considerable amount of "self selection" going on.</p>
<p>We did look at both Williams and Wellesley when my D was doing her college search. I am not saying either would have accepted her, and she never applied there. But she found Williams somewhat too sports focused and Wellesley (including the town) somewhat too uptight for her preferences. Smith is somewhat "funkier." (My D happens to be a quite traditional person in appearance and lifestyle, but she appreciates experiencing a diverse setting.) Again, I echo others -- it is about fit. Williams and Welllesley are both wonderful schools, and we met some neat students at each. But I do not feel that she is missing out by attending Smith instead of either of them. I had hoped that D would take advantage of the 12-college exchange and spend a semester at one of the coed schools in the group, but she saw no point in leaving Smith except to go abroad. </p>
<p>I still have not come to an easy response to the question, "Why a women's college in this day and age?" All I can say is that I have seen the results in my D. She has had experiences and taken advantage of opportunities I would never have imagined her doing a few years ago. The personal support from profs has been great. Again, one can always wonder about "the road not taken," but we have no regrets about the road that led to Smith. </p>
<p>I think we should celebrate, rather than bemoan, the fact that there are schools offering educational experiences of this caliber that can accept a high proportion of applicants -- "admissions bargains" they are called. That does not mean they are of lesser worth.</p>
<p>The idea of "fit" is good in theory, but in practice I'll bet almost no one turns down any IVY or top LAC for a "fit" in an obscure school, except for financial reasons. Let's say one got into Dartmouth Brown or Penn; Almost no one would turn those down to go to Wash U, Vanderbilt, Emory or Duke (except to watch basketball). Maybe you might go to IOWA if you were a creative writer, that sort of thing. But basically, it doesn't happen in the real world, I think.</p>
<p>None of the schools we are talking about here are obscure. My d. had no trouble turning down Williams and a host of other places for Smith. Because it was better, for what she wanted, academically speaking and otherwise. Much better foreign languages, much better study abroad options. More musical opportunities (including 5-college opera consortium). Paid research opportunities in first two years (none at Williams). Deeper and more varied academic offerings in lots of areas. Better town, more service opportunities, more academic possibilities through the 5 colleges. Much more diverse student body. Less drinking, much less athletic dominance. Frankly, when she got down to choosing, it wasn't even close. </p>
<p>Will be different for others. Kick the tires before making decisions. </p>
<p>As for admissions selectivity, double the applicant pool if they admitted men, take out the 10% of the Smith student body that is made up of older students (average age 36), and take away Smith's commitment to economic diversity, and all of a sudden the selectivity is the same as Williams. No mystery there. Can't see that it makes a lot of difference one way or the other. (Grinnell, a coed school, admits like 60% of its applicants, and it is not one whit worse than Williams - my alma mater - by any standard that makes any sense to me.)</p>
<p>Mensa...sigh. One of the most brilliant student posters on this board last year, after much soul searching, turned down Yale for Vanderbilt. He came back a couple of months ago, briefly, to post that he's just extremely happy with his decision and thanking everyone who supported him. And my D turned down Wellesley because she clicked with the student body more at Smith (something like Jyber's D...fairly traditional kid but likes diversity), liked the research opportunities at Smith (after one semester, her name is already on an academic paper presented at a conference and she's accepted an invitation to an NSF-funded research job for part of the summer), and like the fact that performing arts (ballet, orchestra) were more accepted as a central part of the curriculum at Smith instead of pushed off as peripheral EC's at Wellesley. Out of curiosity, how many examples do we have to conjure up to substantiate our broader assertions?</p>
<p>I don't know where you are getting your premises about prestige--your classmates? Asian parents?--but they're really really really wrong. </p>
<p>Note about Asian parents: I say that because of the threads that pop up periodically from students along the lines of "My dad has never heard of Northwestern or Amherst and will only let me apply to Harvard and Princeton", posted by Asian students asking for help on what to do.</p>
<p>TheDad, actually, I'm an American orphan who was adopted by a Korean family....just kidding.</p>
<p>I'd put Smith and Wellesley at about the same high level, so to me that's not a true counter-example.</p>
<p>I can't imagine why anyone would go to Vanderbilt over Yale, prsetige aside. Maybe merit aid? I just can't figure something like that out. I'll look in the archives for the old posts from that student.</p>
<p>Mensa,
The son of good friends turned down Cornell, Chicago and Swarthmore for Brandeis. Yes, he was given nice merit money/honors opportunities at Brandeis, but I know that his parents were prepared to pay full freight for the school of his choice. The decision was his, and was based on personal fit, not money. He was deferred, then waitlisted at Yale, and waitlisted at Columbia. He truly did make a very thoughtful decision on fit/areas of interest. I remember his reactions to visits to some of the schools after the acceptances were in, and it was all about where he could best see himself. He is exuberantly happy at Brandeis, and academically challenged as well.</p>
<p>A friend of my son's turned down Yale for Pomona. Financial aid was equal (and substantial) at both. Pomona just clicked. He's never looked back.</p>
<p>Mensa, imo Smith to Wellesley is akin to Dartmouth/Brown to WUSTL/Vanderbilt/Duke on the prestige scale. And that's with an admitted self-bias against Southern schools, though not for academic reasons.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Mensa, imo Smith to Wellesley is akin to Dartmouth/Brown to WUSTL/Vanderbilt/Duke on the prestige scale. And that's with an admitted self-bias against Southern schools, though not for academic reasons.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Not sure I follow. It seems like you are saying that Dartmouth/Brown are less prestigious than WUSTL/Vanderbilt/Duke. That can't be what you mean. Really?</p>
<p>The original poster did not ask "what is the best fit for me." That answer would be obvious -- best fit is in the eye of the beholder. The OP asked, "Not at all in terms of prestige but in actual academic/ all- around quality." There is no objective method to compare all around quality of schools. Although individual schools may vary, if you took a hundred schools and ranked them in terms of your perception of quality and then look at a list of schools ranked based on percentage admitted and you will see a definate coorelation. Thus, selectivity is the best predictor of quality than any other statistic, even though no statistic is prefect in all cases. Those of you who are suggesting Smith is in the same league as Williams and Amherst are kidding yourselves (or at least formulating your opnions based on having children at Smith). One out of four students at Smith scored below 1150 on the SAT-I. Students with 1150s could not get into Williams or Amherst unless they are legacy or athletes (and the number of athletes is restricted). To suggest that a school where at least a quarter of the students could not get into another school is equal to that school is pretty silly.</p>
<p>Mensa, whups, I flipped my parallel construction in mid-stream. Nope, re-do the equation so that Dartmouth/Brown is parallel to Wellesley.</p>
<p>TOL, your superficial reading of statistics is even sillier. The selectivity factor is so rough that it's no more than that: rough. I've read that actually get a better correlation by size of endowment and so much of "prestige" is a reflection of that. Moreover, if you adjust stats for socio-economic status and age, as Mini points out, Smith suddenly looks a lot closer to Wellesley. More along the lines of the #7 vs. #4 Peer Rating in US News' overhyped rankings franchise. </p>
<p>In the real world, a #1 vs. a #8 isn't significant, a #5 vs. 80 is significant, and you can scale accordingly in between.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Moreover, if you adjust stats for socio-economic status and age, as Mini points out, Smith suddenly looks a lot closer to Wellesley.
[/quote]
So your argument is that if you disregard all those things that are different about Smith, then you have Wellesley. Isn't that obvious? On the other hand, if you disregard socio-economic status and age, then you no longer HAVE Smith. The problem with your argument is that you can't disregard the low SAT scores and poorer selectivity. But the biggest problem with your suggestion that Smith is not much different from Williams and Amherst is that you cannot supply any objective measure to support your conclusion. All you have is your personal opinion which is biased because your daughter attends Smith. If you compare schools based on selectivity, you have the opinions of thousands of people. It is not a perfect statistic, but at least it is better than some guy's opinion.</p>
<p>Evaluating the quality of a college is difficult when they are so close. The right student with the right major meeting the right professors could be wonderful at any of those schools. It is disingenuous to discuss quality without discussing fit. </p>
<p>Application statistics are a combination of advertisement, reputation and popularity, which includes school quality real and imagined. Any school that receives a positive mention in the New York Times, Time, Newsweek, Entertainment tonight or in a popular movie would probably get a boost in applications which would affect their selectivity statistics.</p>
<p>Although I grant that students do influence the college, SAT scores are a snapshot evaluation of students not the colleges they attend. How many of us know students who simply by retaking the test on a less stressful day scored 100 or more points different. As a middle school math teacher, every year I argue with administrators and other math teachers to let me accept some low scoring (standardized test) students into my math class over student who scored higher. I have the luxury of knowing these kids well enough to identify traits that I have found successful in my class. Standardized tests don't show which seventh grade student is willing to come in and get extra help, or which ones are maintaining households while their parents work, mastering English as a second language or who are overcoming obstacles while planning to be the first in their house to get to college. I applaud any college that goes the extra step to find out more about students and to look beyond the safe statistic of SAT scores.</p>
<p>Our local high school does not offer SAT prep workshops and the one English teacher who pushed vocabulary building for freshman got hired away by a private school. We have no College counselor, only a guidance counselor who in addition to his regular duties of making sure the 400 or so kids on his list complete high school requirements he tries to guide students into colleges. He had never heard of the Profile financial aid form before this year and he was assisted by a district employee who didn't believe ED's were required to refuse other college acceptances. Kids who are succeeding without the benefit of equal adult support deserve a look and a chance even if it means overlooking an SAT score as a predictor.</p>
<p>Incidentally, I have no child at Smith, but if my daughter chose Smith over any other school, I would not question her judgement.</p>