<p>Is a top Liberal Arts College (Williams, Amherst, Pomona) seen as Prestigious as a top University (Princeton, Yale, UChicago, Columbia)? Typically these top Lacs have higher acceptance rates. Is that significant or is it a result of self selection?</p>
<p>It’s mostly the result of self selection. If you really want to get an idea of the academic strength of the student bodies, look at things like average UW GPA and class rank (Though that can be misleading, given that certain HS’s are much more difficult than others). </p>
<p>It really matters how you define prestige, too. If you’re defining prestige as ‘name recognition amongst the average person’, then yeah, the top universities are going to have more prestige. But there are all sorts of sub-categories of prestige which certain schools are stronger in (Academic prestige, wall street prestige, upper-middle class northeastern bourgeoisie prestige, etc.) Liberal arts colleges are certainly up there on a few of those. </p>
<p>How do top LACs fair with Wall Street Prestige?
Thank you!</p>
<p>It really, really matters what LAC you’re looking at in this case. There are a lot of the LACs in the top 50 that are really remarkably poor when it comes to wall street prestige, but there are a select few that will give you comparable opportunities to what you’ll find at the top uni’s. Here are some of them:</p>
<p>Barnard
Amherst
Davidson
Williams
Bates
Colgate (This one is really good)
Bowdoin
The Claremont colleges.</p>
<p>Keep in mind that the Usnews rankings (and academic rankings in general, to be honest) are a poor metric for wall street prestige. The level of academics at a school and wall street prospects are often incongruous. </p>