The Everlovin' LAC Ranking

College Search & Selection
1

This is the LAC version of its University sibling.

Obviously this is for the undergrad level. lol

Similar to the university counterpart, my rough, unscientific formula considers things like academic rep, class sizes/prof interaction (almost even in this case except for Williams with the tutorials and maybe other small differences), comprehensiveness of program offerings, stats/selectivity (forgot to mention that in other thread), and overall quality of experience according to what I’ve read on this site. Since these are all undergrad-first, I am not including the “undergraduate focus” metric from my university ranking.

Try not to take this too seriously, plop down your personal rankings here, and have some fun.

  1. Williams
  2. Amherst, Pomona, Swarthmore
  3. Bowdoin, Middlebury, Wellesley
  4. Carleton, Haverford
  5. Smith, Vassar, Wesleyan
  6. CMC, Colgate, Hamilton, Washington & Lee
  7. Colby, Davidson, Grinnell, Harvey Mudd, Reed
  8. Barnard, Bates, Bryn Mawr, Kenyon, Macalester, Oberlin, Richmond
  9. Bucknell, Colorado College, Holy Cross, Lafayette, Mount Holyoke, Scripps
  10. Dickinson, F&M, Oxy, Rhodes, Sewanee, Skidmore, St. Olaf, Trinity, Union, Whitman

That’s 40+ off the top of my head. There are many more awesome LACs…

2

I’m not sure Bucknell, Colgate, Lafayette, Richmond, Davidson, etc. are in the same LAC boat as the others. Having Division I sports makes a big difference - pro or con depending on one’s view.

3

I agree with it more or less. I’d add Conn College to the 35 slot and move Davidson up to 13. Harvey Mudd is hard to figure in this set b/c it’s so specialized, but for its specialty I’d move it higher, to like 8 or 10, too. Lastly, I like tier ranking approaches like this and think they are more useful and realistic than a US News-style purely hierarchical ranking, which implies artificial degrees of separation between schools. BUT, I would number them tiers as such (1-10), and not on the traditional “tie” system you’ve used. Are there really 16 degrees of separation between a Bucknell or Holy Cross and Colgate or Hamilton? I don’t think so. But tier 6 vs tier 9 I would buy. Tiers suggest a group of schools are similar quantitatively, and from there the choices to be made by the student and family are qualitative in nature, so ranking becomes meaningless.

4

i don’t know if I would have Williams alone at the top.
Would move Davidson and Barnard up a spot.
Would move Richmond, Wellesley, Mount Holyoke, Macalaster, Bryn Mawr, Smith, down each a spot.

5

@xhaavic

That’s the silliness in rankings – gaps are much smaller than they might appear, if there are any real differences in quality at all. I would tell kids to choose any of the schools on this page based on fit and cost, and to only (ever) use rank or prestige to break a tie.

6

@wisteria100

Just checking – Are you giving Barnard a bump up because of Columbia? (and if so, why not BMC for its ties to Penn/Swat/Haverford – or for any other consortium school in general?)

For the record, I judged each school on its own. A kid might partake of the other schools in a partnership or consortium, but (it might be rare…) they might just love their college and take all their classes there. Since we have to recognize that possibility, I figured i’d let each one stand alone.

Now, the social aspects of consortia or partnerships probably can’t be so easily avoided: kids from other campuses will come to yours, even if you don’t spend time on theirs.

:slight_smile:

7

Williams’ acceptance rate is higher than Pomona, Claremont McK, Bowdoin, and Swarthmore, so not sure why it would sit on a tier all by itself. Are its offerings really that superior? (And why?)

8

I think of these in terms of clusters, not numerical rankings. Our research for our LAC kid focused on faculty and academics, not test scores, selectivity, etc. There was surprisingly little difference between Amherst and Dickinson faculty, in terms of quality of Ph.D program, scholarship etc.

Williams, Amherst, Pomona, Swarthmore

Bowdoin, Middlebury, Wellesley, Carleton, Haverford, Smith, Vassar, Wesleyan, Grinnell, Davidson, Harvey Mudd, Reed

Colgate, Hamilton, Washington & Lee, Colby, Oberlin, Barnard, Bates, Bryn Mawr, Kenyon,

Bucknell, Colorado College, Lafayette, Mount Holyoke, Scripps. Macalester, Richmond, Dickinson, Denison, F&M, Oxy, Rhodes, Sewanee, Skidmore, Trinity, Whitman

St. Olaf, Gettysburg

9

What about Furman?
It’s an awesome campus near a beautiful thriving city-why so much emphasis on the cold, tiny, Northeastern schools?

10

@odannyboySF

I have Williams at #1 primarily because of the tutorials. If they didn’t offer those, I’d have the top four on one tier. Intimacy of the learning environment and direct prof interaction are a big deal, IMO. (that is part of why I have Princeton #1 among universities – for their undergrad focus and great prof interaction. I also moved Brown and Dartmouth up a tier from where I otherwise would have put them, due to undergrad focus. Most of the top universities are >50% grad students.)

11

@prezbucky, I would put Hamilton in the #10 bucket, and move down Smith to #22

@Midwestmomofboys, not seeing Hamilton in the same bucket as Bates. Colby, Bryan Maser and Kenyon based on Naviance results from my DD’s HS over last 5 years - acceptance rates to those schools has been 40-50% vs. 20% at Hamilton.

IMHO

12

Well, if it is based mainly on acceptance rates, Colorado College should be up in one of the top tiers. :slight_smile:

13

We each weigh the variables differently and even include different variables. For instance, I don’t include outcomes but I do include undergraduate focus (in my U ranking); others may do the opposite. That’s just one example of how changing a variable or two could lead to different results.

That’s what makes rankings so customizable, fashioned in a variety of ways to suit individual tastes.

If anyone wants an explanation for why I don’t include outcomes (at least, not to compare schools within a peer group of about 20-25 schools; if we’re comparing Stanford to Iowa, of course Stanford has the edge and it would be hard to argue differently) or why I do include undegraduate focus, I’ll be happy to explain.

14

Do you know that only about half of Williams students ever take even one tutorial in their entire 4 years? Something near half of Williams students never take even one?

IDK if it’s as big a factor as you think it is @prezbucky .

Your initial ranking looks a lot like USNews :slight_smile:

15

@OHMomof2

But could more students take tutorials, and take them more often than once? If the tutorials aren’t available for everyone, or more frequently than once, then you’re right, it wouldn’t be as big of a deal as I had thought.

And – maybe it looks like USNews, but there are some exceptions, most notably my placement of Reed, Wes and Barnard… and others to a lesser degree. Sometimes the USNews formula fails. It’s why I prefer the ability to modify misleading data using common sense. :wink:

16

@prezbucky My D looked at LACs in three different consortia, Claremont, Quaker and Barnard/Columbia . In terms of proximity, Claremont and B/C are very different from Quaker. In terms of actual cross-enrollment numbers, B/C > Claremont > Quaker. So I think giving Barnard more of a bump than BMC is perfectly reasonable.

17

Are you referring to the acceptance rate from your high school or the college acceptance rate? If your ranking is based on the former, novel idea.

College acceptance rate;
Colby 17.5%
Bates 22.0%
Kenyon 23.8
Hamilton 25%

18

@Chembiodad My clusters are based primarily on academics – faculty, opportunities etc. To me, selectivity/acceptance rate is a commentary on popularity and how well-known a school is, not what happens in the classroom. So for me, lower acceptance rate is not a significant factor. As @prezbucky notes, each of us weigh different factors in different ways, which makes this process perhaps interesting and almost certainly infuriating.

19

Acceptance rate can be manipulated by recruiting more applicants.

20

Williams deserves kudos for organizing such a robust dynamic, but it’s possible to get the tutorial experience at other LACs too. Swarthmore has its Honors program, and Pomona enables students to readily create independent studies (up to 12 maximum out of the 32 courses). I can speak a little of Pomona since I just graduated from there. You fill out a form (https://www.pomona.edu/sites/default/files/independent-study.pdf) with your proposal and a faculty lead, and bingo- you’re approved. I did two of these. One was a research assistantship half-credit in which a team of three students and myself worked in developing an antimicrobal peptide through chemical synthesis of a frog-toxin. The other was a directed study in which I worked with a professor to examine James Baldwin’s work critically (whom I was introduced to, and fell in love with, through a previous class with said professor). The professor, a noted scholar on Baldwin, helped me create a syllabus that reflected a diversity of readings and experiences: Baldwin’s own and the work of those who influenced him/were influenced by him. We met once or twice a week, and I had to do around 30 pages of writing in total. Both experiences were highly rewarding and among the highlights of my time here. I’ve heard of peers at other LACs getting similarly intimate, individualized experiences as well.

On topic, my stance is to distance myself from trying to rank colleges, especially LACs. Few will have the lived experience of being part of more than one LAC community, and that’s a serious problem for any comparative analysis. All of the commonly used current rankings are flawed to some degree because trying to condense these complex, subjective colleges with a few numbers (which can be manipulated quite readily) misses a great deal of perspective.