Top 10 LACs

College Search & Selection
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The biggest beef I have with relying on SAT scores and percentage of students in the top 10% is that those figures are becoming increasingly unreliable because they represent smaller percentages of students. Many (if not most) high schools don’t rank students anymore. Which means that those numbers are based on a fraction of enrolled students (in many instances, fewer than a quarter of enrollees). SAT scores similarly don’t represent the whole class. The numbers below show the percentage of enrolled students who submitted class rank and SAT scores:

Amherst: 37% submitted class rank, 58% submitted SAT scores
Williams: 25% submitted class rank, 83% submitted SAT scores
Swarthmore:33% submitted class rank, 77% submitted SAT scores
Pomona: 36% submitted class rank, 73% submitted SAT scores
Bowdoin: 45% submitted class rank, 45% submitted SAT scores
Middlebury:28% submitted class rank, 68% submitted SAT scores
Carleton: 39% submitted class rank, 64% submitted SAT scores

Yes, Bowdoin’s SAT scores are higher than many other colleges, but they represent fewer than half the students!

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@arcadia How true! US News rankings are very flawed but do they incorporate ACT at all? Additionally, relying on standardized testing isn’t exactly a good measure of a college’s quality. And while Bowdoin’s IS much higher than most, it’s still at about the same level (give or take 10 points, but really that’s nothing) as other top LACs.

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USNWR factors in both SAT and ACT scores for enrollees*, when available, but chooses to list only the scores more commonly submitted at that school. The percentage of students reporting SATs at a given college says nothing – unless a more detailed analysis is provided – about the validity of USNWR’s reliance on standardized testing scores in general.

Regarding Bowdoin (test optional), the comparison to colleges that are not test optional also requires additional analysis.

  • In a case where a single student submits both to a college, USNWR may use the "higher" figure in its calculations, though this is not specified.
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USNWR side-by-side comparison:

National Universities, Liberal Arts Colleges

  1. Princeton, Williams
  2. Harvard, Amherst
  3. Yale, Swarthmore
  4. Columbia/Stanford/UChicago, Wellesley
  5. n/a, Bowdoin/Pomona
  6. n/a
  7. MIT, Middlebury
  8. Duke/UPenn, Carleton/CMC/Haverford
  9. n/a
  10. CalTech, n/a
  11. Dartmouth, Davidson/Vassar
  12. Johns Hopkins, n/a
  13. Northwestern, Naval Academy
  14. WashU, Washington & Lee
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They do. Do a Google search for USNWR criteria & weights.

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Awesome, thanks for the info @tk21769 and @merc81. Another interesting ranking we can make is by peer institution choices. For research universities, Princeton is the top chosen peer school (here’s an interesting read: http://theairspace.net/commentary/u-s-colleges-name-their-own-peer-institutions-rank-themselves/).

Here’s the list for LACs only:

  1. Carleton College
  2. Oberlin College
  3. Bowdoin College
  4. Amherst College
  5. Williams College
  6. Swarthmore College
  7. Middlebury College
  8. Pomona College
  9. Wesleyan University
  10. Haverford College
  11. Davidson College
  12. Hamilton College
  13. Grinnell College
  14. Kenyon College

Also note that the Ivies selected 2 LACs most often as peers (no surprise: Amherst and Williams).

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Reed, out in the cold once again.

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^^ In some cases, the “peer” selections seem to have little in common other than geographic proximity.
Examples:
Concordia University (St. Paul, MN) selected Carleton as a peer
Brigham Young selected Colorado College as a peer
University of Phoenix-Cleveland selected Oberlin as a peer
Pepperdine selected Pomona as a peer