<ol>
<li>Washington and Lee University</li>
<li>University of Richmond</li>
<li>Furman University</li>
<li>New College of Florida</li>
<li>Rhodes College
Honorable Mention - Trinity University </li>
</ol>
<p>Midwest</p>
<ol>
<li>Carleton College</li>
<li>Grinnell College </li>
<li>Oberlin College</li>
<li>Kenyon College</li>
<li>Macalester College
Honorable Mention - St. Olaf College</li>
</ol>
<p>West</p>
<ol>
<li>Pomona College</li>
<li>Claremont McKenna College</li>
<li>Harvey Mudd College</li>
<li>Colorado College </li>
<li>Whitman College
Honorable Mention - Occidental College</li>
</ol>
<p>What’s the point of this? Those who attend LACs don’t suffer from the same insecurity that necessitates these measuring contests. That, or they learn to get past it.</p>
<p>I agreed with kwu that LAC students probably don’t suffer from the insecurity that most other students seem to. But I didn’t mean that this thread was useless.</p>
<p>As a future LAC student (committed at Reed, yeehaw), I can say we’re definitely not immune to insecurity. Or at least I’m not. After committing, I experienced some serious buyer’s remorse because I turned down a number of higher ranking LACs. But after some reflection, I realized why I was enamored with Reed throughout the admissions process and how the college really is the best fit for me. I believe that every student thinks about rank a little bit though, it’s only natural. Anyway, my opinion:</p>
<p>West:
Pomona
Reed
Harvey Mudd (Mudd is a specialized institution, so its difficult to rank it with these others)
Whitman
Colorado</p>
<p>Midwest
Carleton
Grinnell
Oberlin
Macalester
Kenyon</p>
<p>East
Swarthmore College
Amherst College
Williams College
Bowdoin College
Wesleyan University
Haverford </p>
<p>All I know about the south is that Davidson is really good.</p>
<p>This could be as simple as looking up your LACs in the US News rankings. But first, you need to define your categories. What does “Midwest” mean? Arguably it covers all the territory between the Rocky Mountains and the Appalachians (what other principled boundary is there?) Colorado College is on the Eastern side of the Front Range. And it’s a member of the Associated Colleges of the Midwest. So if you call it Midwestern and follow US News, it goes right after Oberlin. If you want to call it Western, it ranks a little higher than Whitman (#24 v. #36).</p>
<p>In the West, you should add Claremont McK (whether you move Colorado or not). I think Maxdel has Reed in the right place, despite its lower USNWR rank, which only reflects its refusal to provide information to that magazine. </p>
<p>Does the South include Kentucky? If so, Centre College (#46) deserves to displace New College (#97). That is, after you make room at the top of the list for Davidson (#8).</p>
<p>The Northeast group surely needs to account for Middlebury and Wellesley (tied at #4).</p>
<p>As for kwu’s remarks, I think I understand what he’s saying. Anyone who chooses a top-N LAC almost certainly could have chosen a larger school with much better name recognition. So you have to be secure enough to ignore the prestige factor. The good news about LACs, in my opinion, is that there is not a very steep decline in quality as N gets larger. They all follow pretty much the same good educational formula. So to me, Kenyon (#30-something) is pretty much the same educational product as Bowdoin or Carleton (which both rank in the top 10). Aside from certain departments that are especially strong at one or another (Government at Bowdoin, English/Writing at Kenyon), SAT medians are about the only important, data-driven distinction I can think of. Not that there aren’t unquantifiable differences in atmosphere or brand cachet.</p>
<p>The northeast has a disproportionate share of the most prestigious LACs since this is by far the oldest settled region of the country and these schools were all founded in the early 1800s: Bowdoin, Middlebury, Trinity, Holy Cross, Williams, Swarthmore, Amherst, Haverford , Wesleyan. No other region comes close.</p>
<p>^ True enough, but not everyonoe wants to go to a college 1000 miles from home. That’s why I think this thread is useful. Not so much as a ranking, but as a mapping. For the kind of good student who frequents College Confidential, what are the match-to-reach LACs in each region? Example (with US News composite selectivity rank in parens):</p>
<p>The selectivity score tracks the overall USNWR rank roughly, but not exactly. As I suggested above, I don’t know that there is all that much of a quality difference between Haverford and Colby. But there is definitely a difference in your chances of being admitted.</p>
<p>I found the post interesting. My son isn’t a LAC students so many of these school I hear about on CC are new to me if they are not in our region.
I thought the OP was simply giving their opinion and asking others give theirs. When the idea of LAC students being immune to insecurities of ‘rankings’ I was a bit taken back and was just curious how one would come to that conclusion.
Interesting post. </p>
<p>I think it’s good for ‘techies’ to learn about other schools so we don’t end up making embarrassing remarks when a young adult is accepted and goes there. Ideally, you hope you’d make the PC answer and congratulate them! The topic of another thread “Nod and Smile”.</p>
Oh, there’s more than that. If we’re going by the US News rankings, all of the following are also on par with or higher than the New College of Florida:</p>
<p>I would have loved to attend an LAC like Grinnell, Carleton, Macalester or Kenyon for undergrad, always been intrigued by those schools, but in the end, I couldn’t pass up Notre Dame which combined the best aspects and resources of a major university with the small college liberal arts undergrad teaching emphasis of the best LACs. Best of both worlds.</p>
<p>That would just be my ignorance, I don’t know much about CMC so I didn’t consider it. After reading the wikipedia article, I think CMC would either be above or below Reed, and Colorado would be bumped to sixth place.</p>
<p>Haha, I’m inclined to put CMC below Reed, but that is just my bias showing through. I imagine most objectively place it above Reed, yet Reed is somewhat difficult to rank. Who knows. . .</p>
Ideally, you hope you’d make the PC answer and congratulate them! The topic of another thread “Nod and Smile”.</p>