Southern VS. Northern LACS

College Search & Selection
21

<p>Being from Connecticut, I guess I had a bias towards the LAC’s in the Northeast and probably considered them much stronger based on their reputation. We knew very little about the southern LAC’s.</p>

<p>We looked at LAC’s like F&M, Gettysburg, Bucknell, Dickinson, Connecticut College, Union, Skidmore,etc. and were trying to decide upon one of them. My D than asked if we could see Elon and Clemson since so many of her friends were looking there. I told her fine but if we were going to travel that far we needed to throw in some other colleges in that area. We decided to visit Furman, a college that I had honestly not heard of, but it was on the way to Clemson. D sat in on a class and was hooked. After taking the time to research the school, I was a little surprised (and embarassed) and how strong this southern LAC was considered. </p>

<p>D applied ED to Furman and was beyond ecstatic to be admitted. We were glad we took the time to look beyond our local borders and find the perfect fit from D’s perspective.</p>

22

<p>Sidperson, I can tell you from my experience with Davidson admissions that the officers simply care incredibly little about test scores. It is far and away the last facet of an application that is considered, for better or for worse. I’m not impugning standardized tests on the whole nor defending this admissions practice, but I do believe that Davidson could very easily compose a class that scores better than the one it accepts, if they wanted to. And, I find it dubious that USNWR is overlooking Davidson’s relatively low standardized testing so as to include a “non-traditional” LAC in the Top 10. Whether it’s a good methodology or not, USNWR has a strict system by which they evaluate and score schools, and Davidson performs phenomenally well on the non-testing related areas–and that’s what guarantees its high ranking.</p>