<p>I was surprised that Bryn Mawr, which is all girls, is ranked pretty low, considering how famous it is a a seven sister. Why isn't it ranked higher?</p>
<p>Smith is ranked 13th in the US News ranking despite its high acceptance rate. 15% of the score is related to selectivity. The peer assesssment, faculty resources, graduation and retention rate, financial aid resources, alumni giving, and graduation rate performance scores must be good to make up for the lack of selectivity.</p>
<p>Mr. B: ditto! And keep up your crusade to teach those kids! They need you.</p>
<p>As a hs math teacher who writes 10-15 recs/yr, I tell my students constantly that the world is a messy place. We fit mathematical models to this chaos in order to make predictions. The colleges attempt to do the same with their applicants and the applicants the same with their college choices. When I spend time talking to my students about their recs and choices, I remind them that despite our society's need to quantify everything to a single rank or number, they cannot let this override the value of fit. I write recs every year for students who are apply only to the big guns and who have never visited any of them. The ones I get the most excited about, and I'm sure that excitement comes across better in their recs, are those who have shared with me their feel about the school and how they see themselves there.</p>
<p>D spent a month at Smith in a summer science program. She and Smith clicked. Had it been coed it would have been right at the top of her list along with Carleton (where she is now).</p>
<p>Actually, a statistic is not necessarily better than one guy's opinion if you're the guy with the direct experience. The US News stats are an interesting pablum and I would wage jihad upon them if I wasn't sure they'd be replaced by something else equally vile if they disappeared tomorrow.</p>
<p>Mensa, I don't know why BMC is ranked so low. But again, on one hand, as you know by now that I preach, don't get caught up in the rankings in the first place. But otoh, being famous or prestigious doesn't count for diddly either. It's a lot of work to determine what about a given school is good for you and then to do the same for several schools and compare...but it beats the hell out of blindly swallowing rankings and prestige established by others.</p>
<p>
[quote]
not necessarily better than one guy's opinion if you're the guy with the direct experience
[/quote]
I can't say a guy would get too much experience at Smith since it is a women's college.</p>
<p>With a history as a scratch journalist with skills in observing and interviewing, plus having worked for two universties myself, as well as having a spouse who is career senior administrator at a major university, I think I'm pretty good at scoping things out.</p>
<p>Quote from thinkingoutloud: "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."</p>
<p>This is convoluted reasoning. Most people don't have enough experience with 100 schools to come up with a meaningful ranking for them based on "perception of quality". It's likely that a typical poster on CC trying to come up with a ranking based on "perception" for 100 colleges would rely at least a little bit on something like the USNWR rankings (which take into account selectivity) or on the opinions of other CC posters (which often rely on the USNWR rankings). Since so many people's perceptions of quality are heavily based on selectivity, it's obvious that there would be a correlation between perception of quality and selectivity.</p>
<p>Since most of us would put the colleges we heard of on the list and since most people apply to colleges they have heard of...The list would have little value. How many people know anything about Harvey Mudd? I suspect more than a few of us could stroll through a campus, observe the library, the student union and maybe stand outside of a classroom and a few other places and then form a pretty good evaluation of a school. Throw in some conversations with students and I think we could put together a description that would be useful in comparing schools. It would be more useful if we went through looking for things that would be of interest to a particular student. Fit is important. For example, you can get a read of the physical condition of the school (recently painted vs. paint peeling); the course catolog, the menu, dorm space, crowded classrooms dominated by a lecturer vs. small discussion based or lab based classes, an active modern library vs an unused library.</p>
<p>You could look at where recent grads had gone and see if it makes sense for you.</p>
<p>I use the rankings to pull out the data they use, not the conclusion they reached.</p>
<p>
[quote]
This is convoluted reasoning. Most people don't have enough experience with 100 schools to come up with a meaningful ranking for them based on "perception of quality"
[/quote]
Hardly. You criticize my reasoning but you offer nothing instead. If 100 is too many, then try 25. The fact remains that there is a coorelation between selectivity and what groups of people perceive as the quality of a school. I am fully willing to conclude that (in general) Harvard with 10 percent acceptance offers a better quality education than does Penn State with a 54 percent acceptance. </p>
<p>Let's say we had a student who was admitted to 15 schools across the country. He has visited all the schools and he would fit well into all of them and would do well at all of them because of his remarkable personality. He is extremely smart and will qualify for full financial aid at all of the schools. How would you suggest he determine which school would offers the best quality education? To adopt your reasoning and disregard selectivity, all the schools would be the same and, thus, he could pick one randomly and receive an education identical to the quality of the other schools. If one of the 15 is Harvard and another is Penn State, then you would not have any problem saying "go to Penn State because it is just as good as Harvard." </p>
<p>The orignal poster asked about the quality of education of Smith versus Amherst and Williams. Smith is a fine school, but it is laughable to suggest Smith is on the same level as Williams and Amherst. The latter are elite colleges. You can take the uninformed opinion of TheDad whose daughter attends Smith or you can take the opinions of thousands of people who are trying to figure out where they will spend the next four years of their lives.</p>
<p>
Thinkingoutloud, I must respond here. TheDad is NOT uninformed. Quite the contrary -- his reviews of the schools he visited during his daughter's college search were thoughtful, quite detailed, and, I am sure, very valuable to many readers of this site. He is easily in the top 10% when it comes to informed college consumers.</p>
<p>As further background, he indicated well before his D got her result from Yale that he personally suspected that whatever the result of her other applications, Smith might well be the best fit for her. </p>
<p>Yes, his D is now at Smith -- as is mine. I plead guilty to being a Smthie parent who is happy with my D's choice. For the reasons I noted above, my D ruled out Wellesley and Williams, although we visited both. We did not consider them "better" schools, although yes, they are definitely more selective. For my D, Smith simply offered the better fit. </p>
<p>My H did his graduate work at Cornell, but never encouraged our D to apply there -- he was convinced that undergrads at Cornell do not get enough attention. (That may no longer be the case today, but he said he would not be willing to pay for undergrad at Cornell, although he was willing to do so for Smith.) However, Cornell undergrad admissions is more selective than Smith.</p>
<p>Thedad took the individualized approach, rather than the herd mentality. It would be quite simplistic to evaluate schools purely on the basis of their selectivity standards.</p>
<p>jyber209, you are one more poster who questions my post because of your bias in favor of Smith, yet you cannot provide any objective standard to measure what the original poster asked to measure "actual academic/ all- around quality."</p>
<p>Can any of you offer an objective standard in which to compare the actual academic/ all-around quality that is not merely based in your unique personal opinion?</p>
<p>Unless you can do so, then how can you say your favorable opinion of Smith is any more accurate that another person's unfavorable opinion of Smith when comparing Smith to Amherst and Williams? </p>
<p>And I should add that regarding the "fit" argument, the quality of the education at Harvard does not increase or decrease depending how well of a fit Harvard is for an individual student. "Fit" merely addresses how one person may identify the best school for him or her.</p>
<p>Thinkingoutloud, I was actually responding to your comment about TheDad, rather than any bias anyone (you, me, whoever?) might have for or against Smith. I should have kept my post focused on that one point. </p>
<p>The original poster asked, "Not at all in terms of prestige but in actual academic/ all- around quality." I guess I see the selectivity data more related to "prestige" than to "actual academic/all-around quallity." In my (admittedly just one person, just one opinion) opinion, actual academic/all-around qualilty so much depends on what the individual is looking for that it needs to be a more individualized consideration. Prestige is a product of mass opinion (not necessarily well-informed); for example, many schools with strong sports teams acquire a certain amount of prestige through them. Quality, on the other hand, is more likely to be in the eye of the individual beholder -- dependent on what that individual wants. Great, supportive profs? Small classes? Beautiful campus? Terrific opportunities for personal growth? </p>
<p>Finally, I never said, as you indicated, that my favorable opinion of Smith is "more accurate" than anyone else's opinion of any other school. (IF I did say such a thing, please tell me where, and I will retract it.) Again, I only vouch for one opinion - my own. But I will argue for other people to form THEIR own opinions -- based on that three-letter word, "FIT."</p>
<p>
[quote]
Quality, on the other hand, is more likely to be in the eye of the individual beholder -- dependent on what that individual wants.
[/quote]
If we rank a school's quality based on a scale from 1 (lowest) to 10 (highest), and ten different prospective students ranked Harvard based on its fit for them, and each student provided a different number as a rank, it would mean that the quality of Harvard varied from one to ten. Your argument (yes this is what you are saying) does not withstand scrutiny. It would mean that if John Doe ranks Harvard as having the highest quality and, the next day, Harvard fires all of its professors and replaces them with first year graduate students, the quality of Harvard would not change so long as student John Doe continued to rank Harvard as having the highest quality. </p>
<p>My comment about your favorable opinion of Smith was a rhetorical. Sorry for the confusion.</p>
<p>I probably should not have mentioned TheDad since that simply distracted from my argument. I will say that I consider him to be uninformed because I view him as merely a cheerleader for Smith. He offers information to confirm his already formed opinion on Smith as opposed to objective information upon which others can independently form their opinions about Smith. Maybe "uninformed" was not the best word to use; but I had used biased so many times already I did not want to use it again.</p>
<p>Outloud -The original post asked to put prestige aside and to ask if people thought the schools were of the same caliber and apparently the more experienced people here do think they are in the same range of quality. You don't. You have explained why and people, myself included, have politely responded to you. Perhaps you are frustrated that you can't convince us that a colleges student's sats and popularity are measurements of quality. </p>
<p>I think that Smith is in a range that places the quality issue closer to the fit issue. One aspect of Smith that some of us believe is a quality is its willingness to look beyond the SAT scores. I believe you think that is a weakness...Just because someone disagrees with you doesn't mean they are the ones with clouded judgement.</p>
<p>Hi, everybody! Isn't this a fun thread! (kidding)</p>
<p>It seems that some of us have interpreted the original post to be an inquiry about how we ourselves perceive Smith's quality, while others have interpreted it as a query about how some theoretical average person perceives Smith's quality. It's really hard to say how the man on the street perceives Smith. You know, it depends on which street! </p>
<p>It's true that many of us here are affiliated with Smith, because we (or our kids) chose to be after informing ourselves of the various options. Indeed if you went to the Amherst forum you would probably find people there who had informed themselves and decided Amherst was much better.</p>
<p>Jyber, it is kind of you to remember that I mused about Smith over Yale even before Yale's decisions came out. I've never posted anything of that because I anticipated it would be regarded as sour grapes.</p>
<p>ThinkingOutLoud, most of your thousands of people trying to figure out where they're spending the next four years of their lives would be helpless in forming an opinion without the US News rankings at their fingertips or, better yet, memorized. If high school students represented such a font of knowledge and wisdom, there wouldn't be a need for sites like CC; instead, it's a case of the blind leading the blind, often with insufficient data and erroneous assumptions. </p>
<p>One of the reasons that I was invited by CC's management to continue participating on this site is that I was pretty manic for several years in acquiring and distilling information about colleges and the college application process. Moreover, I've worked in university administration for two different well-regarded universities, have friends and associates who have taught at numerous universities and LAC's, including one couple who, oddly enough, are grads of Amherst and Smith and can speak well to those two schools in particular. </p>
<p>Apropos of Smith, not only am I well acquainted with it from my own D's search & selection process and having attended there for one semester, but I've along the way I've talked to several dozen Smith students and gotten their handle on virtually every aspect of Smith academics and life. (Not that Smith is unique in this regard: I talked to one of the guys at the ballet studio home on break from Columbia and added to my mental data file on that school...the trick to interrogating people is to not let them know they're being interrogated.)</p>
<p>If I were a mindless booster, that would be one thing, but I have a journalist's background to working stories, making observations, and interviewing people. I may be many things but "uninformed" does not apply. Nor does "biased" in the sense of "slanted." </p>
<p>After one semester my D has been credited with a paper presented at a computer science conference, been invited by one of the profs to participate in a research project funded by the National Science Foundation for part of the summer, and been invited to apply for a fellowship to fund a junior year semester at the National Mathematics Institute in Budapest. She is also playing at Carnegie Hall in May. In terms of the discussion on this thread about academic quality, none of these are opportunities that she would have had at, say, Yale, let alone Amherst or Williams. Smith may not fit some of the conventional "prestige" indices but in terms of the educational quality and educational opportunity, it's difficult for it to be dissed by anyone. I've also sat in on some of her classes, looked at the syllabi of others, looked at the papers/test of yet others, and also talked to students for whom I'm facilitating internships about their experiences and the aggregate experience is consistent: Smith is yielding to no place on the matter of academics.</p>
<p>Speaking of ignorance, I think it very brave of you to speak your mind as you do, revealing its utter lack of content in the process.</p>
<p>I think I can leap in here as a unbiased observer (well maybe not unbiased but at least having my own bias). My D is not applying to Smith. My opinion is based upon my own research and my own visit. Like TheDad I'm somewhat prestige aversive: many people in year X apply to School Y because it was so highly rated. It was so highly rated because so many people in year X-1 applied. Those people knew that many people in year X-2 applied and so on. I would refer LadyLazarus to Page Smith's book "Killing the Spirit". Smith is an American Historian and he outlines the history of North American education. He was also an Administrator at UCSC. he concluded that in terms of what was coming out of colleges and universities and what he saw at in the graduate departments at Harvard and elsewhere. He concluded that small denominational colleges and women's colleges were the institutions where teaching was still part of the mission. These were the sources of the best graduate students.
In addition you will want to read Anne Fadiman's "Ex Libris" a very witty and enjoyable book which is off this subject but any school with her on the faculty is high in my book (in libro meo). Also read the memoirs of Jill Ker Conway the president of Smith in the 70s. They are very inspiring.
Visit the campus and meet the students. There is a palpable excitement on campus. Also talk to Academicians in your own community particularly at the graduate level. They will tellyou that Smith is the equal of any of the colleges in North America and in many cases better.</p>
<p>TheDad really did his homework with his D before deciding on Smith.</p>
<p>"If you want someone to give you an accurate comparison between Smith and Williams/Amherst, I would suggest you look elsewhere.."</p>
<p>Well, I'm a Williams grad, an active alum, my daughter was being recruited by Williams, received a terrific financial aid package from them, got calls from Williams grads working in the music biz or in graduate school throughout the month of Apri, and chose Smith. (She was also invited to 'diversity weekend' at Amherst, and would likely have been admitted there as well, and she met with some of the faculty, but didn't even apply.) Seeing what I saw, and knowing what she was looking for, I would have made the same choice. It was just "better" for her- academically (in her subjects - better faculty, better course offerings, and better opportunities), location-wise, socially, for study abroad options, and opportunities in the 5-College setting that Williams couldn't even dream about. (I'm sure there are Williams students and parents who could say the same about Eph-country - most notably among the art history majors, math majors, and student-athletes.)</p>
<p>Biased? You bet!</p>
<p>(P.S. For my younger one, both schools would be absolutely awful, in virtually every way. They wouldn't even break the top 50.)</p>
<p>Speaking of academic quality, does Smith practice grade inflation?</p>