My D2 liked it for being a geek fest.
Here’s my take on Carleton vs. Trinity - yes, generalizations being made:
Carleton: midwest nice, more geeky/nerdy but you’ll find all types, more liberal, very strong in sciences, down to earth, intellectual yet noncompetitive, trimester schedule, nice campus in a small town about 45 minutes from a major metropolis Minneapolis/St. Paul
Trinity: More preppy and conservative, one of the handful of LACs to offer engineering, draws a lot of prep school kids from the Northeast, semester schedule, bit of a party scene, pretty campus but located in a rougher neighborhood of a medium sized city.
OP, if you have any preferences re: urban, rural, suburban or preppy, artsy, geeky, nerdy, outdoorsy, or any particular ECs or nonacademic interests you’d like to pursue, let us know and I’m sure we can recommend some LACs that might be a good fit for you.
@marvin100 What were the anecdotes that your Grinnell friend relayed to support his assertion of having felt shortchanged there (compared to Williams, Swat, etc)?
Here’s some tables I posted when trying to get a sense of science at the different LACs
of undergrads who go on to get PhDs in the hard sciences
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/19567186/#Comment_19567186
of NSF Graduate Fellowships by undergrads (this is a fellowship for graduate work)
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/19554928/#Comment_19554928
Also I found this website very useful
http://www.collegefactual.com/colleges
You can drill down and see how many degrees were granted for particular majors. I found it an easy way to see if the college offered all the majors that D was vaguely interested in.
So like here you can figure out what are the big majors in the physical sciences at Williams versus Vassar (say)
http://www.collegefactual.com/colleges/williams-college/academic-life/academic-majors/physical-sciences/
http://www.collegefactual.com/colleges/vassar-college/academic-life/academic-majors/physical-sciences/
You see quickly that at Williams there are more majors in the physical sciences.
It’s so funny because the only Carleton folks I know have drifted out to the East Coast to work at Goldman Sachs and the like. Maybe that’s why I think of them like Trinity in the straight-ahead, suit-wearing pre-professional dept. Also one or two going into Big Law–very corporate. I guess you get an impression by what you encounter.
For chemistry or math/econ, Reed would be great. Getting good economists at a school is a challenge but Reed has no problem with it; its location and academic reputation means that the professors are A+. Really, compare our professors’ degrees with those working at any top LAC – we are in the same place. I’ve noticed, on the other hand, that schools like Grinnell have to scrounge for PhDs from not-so-top schools.
Computer science at Reed would be more theory-heavy than other schools, even with the new department coming up soon. It’s a cool program and by the time you would be a sophomore we would be able to provide more variety in courses and strength of the program (again, from what I’ve noticed from our hiring process, we have no problem hiring the best PhDs).
We looked into many of these LACs (the ones on the QB list) for our D last year. First, I want to say that they are all great schools. They have very different vibes, and attract different types of kids. I suggest reading up on them all and trying to figure out where you would feel happy and comfortable. My D chose not to apply to the four you mentioned since she didn’t feel the “fit” was there, but she found it at other schools on your QB list. You might be drawn to a very different set of colleges, though. I really do think they are all wonderful options.
@CodyChestnutt - when we talked about our favorite profs, he felt that his weren’t as illustrious, accomplished, or effective.
Again, I don’t know how true this is, and, while he’s a fan of his alma mater and not a disgruntled squeaky wheel, he may be looking at the past through turd-colored glasses.
It’s very helpful with the LAC’s to get a sense of the registration process and how easy it is for students to get in to the prerequisite classes freshman or sophomore year. I would drill down with the specific school and make sure the opportunity is there to get in to the classes your student wants or needs to take. The size of the school can make it tough if they keep class sizes small, even though the price tag suggests it shouldn’t be an issue!!
Of course this is anecdotal, but my D had no problem getting the classes she wanted as a freshman at Pomona. She has also just gone through the class registration process as a rising sophomore. The school definitely holds spots for the new class of freshmen especially in popular introductory classes. You may not get the exact professor you want, or the exact time (you may get stuck with the 8 am class instead of the 11 am class), or days of the week (my D’s fall schedule has too many Mon/Wed classes and not enough Tues/Thurs). You may get stuck with the unpopular Friday afternoon lab time. But even if you can’t register for a class on the first round of registration, you can often get into the class by requesting permission from the professor and patiently waiting until the first week of classes.
Also, the first semester of freshman year you can only register for 4 classes but after that you can take 5 as long as you meet certain grade requirements. But you can’t register for the 5th class until everyone has had a chance to register for their top 4 classes. So my D won’t know for sure about her 5th class until the semester starts in late August. The availability of cross-registration at the consortium also increases your chance of getting what you want, although my D has not yet had a problem getting what she wants on her home campus.
@CodyChesnutt, @marvin100 – I am a Williams alum and a parent of a Grinnellian. One: basing anything off my perceptions of past professors at any college would be ridiculous for current students! (my professors were not as memorable as marvin100’s friends were, to be perfectly honest anyway…As well, my “adviser” was a sports coach. I got zero advice on how to craft a good path through the curriculum in my years there.).
So, what’s it like today? I can’t speak for Williams, but at Grinnell, i am in awe and profoundly grateful for the personalized attention, care and respect my son received from his professors and administration. This school provides an amazing combination of hands-on support while fostering self-reliance and competencies towards adulthood. The opportunities to do research are amazing, and to explore and grow in any way that every student personally wants to.
As for the quality of the classroom experience itself: I’d say my son was very pleased and impressed with nearly every one of his professors. And, this is a kid who spent most of his college visits as a prospective student sitting in on class sessions whenever and wherever he could (even if he had already decided he wasn’t applying there) because that’s how much he wanted to soak up an academic experience!
Sorry for getting this thread off track, but i’m concerned about a picture being painted on anecdotes from “Old Farts” (aka, alumni from years ago…).
If we just look at selectivity, Williams and Amherst are similar to some ivies such as Dartmouth. So in my opinion, these two are a notch above other LACs.
@hzhao2004 but that’s a big assumption. Some would say yuuuuuge. First, one person’s “must attend” school is miserable for the second person. Using selectivity as a signal of teaching quality is like saying everyone is the same. They seek the same thing.
Also schools have been messing with their selectivity ratings for the past decade or more, just look at Northeastern’s, UChicago’s, Columbia’s, Vanderbilt’s, and GW’s Great Leaps Forward in the selectivity arena. They got more applications, selectivity went up, did their teaching improve?
To my mind, for my personal taste, selectivity is an annoying distraction that leads to bad behavior in colleges (sending out a gazillion come-on flyers to students who can’t afford to apply just to reject them) and among parents (you must attend X college no matter that it’s intellectually and culturally inappropriate for you, we get the bumper sticker! Because only 6% of people get in!) and students (I have to not eat or sleep and maybe do a few drugs just to keep my GPA up because mom and dad are getting all of their prestige out of where I’m accepted to college), but that’s just me and I fully expect others to disagree.
Esch school can be judged on many variables of “fit”, such as:
Academic
Social
Environmental
Housing/Food
Cultural
Invariably, each school becomes known for something. What sets Williams apart a bit, to me, is that students are able to take a class in the tutorial setting. So playing word-association with Williams, for me, brings “tutorial” to mind.
Regarding LAC rankings, i think you can take them in chunks of about 20-30 and say, “There is little to no difference in the quality of education between #1 and #30.”
Now the student experience, that’s maybe where you can make useful comparisons: how beautiful is the setting, what is there to do, how nice are the dorms, is it more of an outdoorsy/rural or urban setting, what is the party and sports scene, etc.? And certainly you can find out where relative academic strengths and weaknesses lie, sometimes simply by looking at which majors are offered.
But the difference between Bates and Bowdoin, for instance, will be negligible in terms of overall academic quality. I think Williams’ tutorial system is a big draw for them, or should be if it isn’t… but the rest will educate you handsomely also.
Here’s how I’d group them:
Top 25:
Williams, Amherst, Swat, Pomona, Middlebury, Bowdoin, Wellesley, Haverford, Carleton, CMC, Wesleyan, Vassar, Mudd (the Caltech of LACs), Colby, Hamilton, Grinnell, Washington & Lee, Reed, Davidson, Bates, Oberlin, Smith, Colgate, Bryn Mawr, Barnard, Macalester.
Next 25:
Lafayette, Kenyon, Mount Holyoke, Colorado College, Holy Cross, U Richmond, Scripps, Pitzer, Bucknell, Whitman, Skidmore, Trinity, St. Olaf, Dickinson, Connecticut College, Occidental, Sewanee, Gettysburg…
Barnard is actually like 29th now in the US News hierarchy… but they have access to classes at Columbia and the degree says “Columbia” on it, which are two pretty nice perks.
Anyway, look for academic and other types of fit – don’t worry so much about rankings. Research them and rank them according to what’s important to you and who does those things best.