<p>oops…</p>
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<p>Bah, incorrect listing order. My bad. 
I am a student, and vossron is the parent of a Reed graduate.</p>
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You presented a quote from Loren Pope (who, unless I’m mistaken, has not been personally involved in this thread) followed by Ghostt saying:
<a href=“%5Bb%5DWhich%20is%20not%20to%20say%20that%20I%20don’t%20think%20these%20universities%20are%20able%20to%20offer%20a%20great%20education%20to%20the%20intellectually%20inclined%20student–they%20obviously%20are.%5B/b%5D%20I%20think,%20however,%20that%20Reed%20can%20give%20its%20students%20things%20that%20Harvard,%20Yale%20and%20Princeton%20don’t%20have,%20by%20virtue%20of%20having%20a%20different%20ethos.%20Not%20all%20colleges%20offer%20the%20same%20things,%20which%20is%20why%20ranking%20them%20is%20pointless.%20Harvard%20is%20not%20a%20good%20fit%20for%20every%20type%20of%20person,%20and%20there’s%20nothing%20wrong%20with%20that.%20I%20wish%20people%20would%20stop%20with%20this%20one-size-fits-all%20nonsense.”>QUOTE</a>
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<p>I still don’t see where anyone states that Reed students are necessarily more intellectual than those of HYP. In fact, he said just the opposite, so… Care to take another whack at it?</p>
<p>I still don’t see the causation between acceptance rate and quality of the education. Could you please provide data on this?</p>
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<p>yes, this pretty much says it all</p>
<p>zchryevns, say tell us again how a school that admits almost half of its applicants (43%) and in which at least 75% of its enrolled students can’t score above 710 on the Math SAT’s is more intellectual than HYP, as you claim.</p>
<p>Where did I claim this again? I’m genuinely confused.</p>
<p>I have a few questions:</p>
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<li><p>Why does onecircuit seem to think that SAT scores + acceptance rate = capacity for intellectuality?</p></li>
<li><p>Why is onecircuit taking this so personally?</p></li>
<li><p>Why does onecircuit make ridiculous quadruple posts all responding to the same thing?</p></li>
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<p>oc should relax; HYP make a respectable showing in [COLLEGE</a> PHD PRODUCTIVITY](<a href=“http://web.reed.edu/ir/phd.html]COLLEGE”>Doctoral Degree Productivity - Institutional Research - Reed College). It is remarkable that kids with lower stats than HYPers do as well as they do!</p>
<p>manarius asked:
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<p>Freshman still drinking the college brochure kool-aid, the flavor that says landing at Princeton was written in the stars, strictly the result of his hard-work and/or good breeding and that luck had nothing to do with it, and that for the rest of their lives humankind can be safely sorted by SAT scores and where they went to college. If he’s lucky, a couple of years of Princeton’s own brand of social Darwinism will knock it out of him. Otherwise, he risks becoming “that Princeton guy” no one pays any attention to in grad school.</p>
<p>"It is remarkable that kids with lower stats than HYPers do as well as they do! "</p>
<p>The chart does not demonstrate this. For one thing it does not distinguish what schools the PhDs are from. from what I understand, not all phds are created equal. Grads of the top x programs are more likey to get subsequent tenure track employment following phD.</p>
<p>For another thing, who says the best HYPers all want to pursue PhDs! For a large number of these people “doing well” may mean getting into med schools, investment banks, top consulting firms or top law schools. Graduate school might well be the fall back "safety’ for some of these students; that’s the path they would settle for if they did NOT “do well” by their standards . While others there do indeed sincerely prefer the PhD route.</p>
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<p>That is a great way to put it. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with going into IB or business consulting, but that typically isn’t where people who are interested in the “life of the mind” aspire to. </p>
<p>Another way of asking the question is - what schools are least likely to give you extra brownie points for being an athlete. Which is not to say that there aren’t smart, intellectual athletes - but as a whole, a school that allocates x% of its class to people based on their ability to throw or kick a ball is indicating that it rewards things other than pure intellectual merit. Which of course they are entitled to do and there’s nothing wrong with that.</p>
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<p>so pizzagirl, which student is brighter - the one that plays 4 sports in high school and still manages to get the 4.0 GPA or the one the doesn’t play a sport but uses the time instead to double the amount of time that he spends studying in getting that 4.0 GPA?</p>
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<p>monydad, fully agree here - this is exactly what I posted earlier.</p>
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<p>There’s really no need to rate one of them as smarter than the other. They can both be smart, and it’s all good. I think only small-minded people are obsessed with rankings, or think that their entrance into an Ivy League school means that they are now perfect people. Given that my nephew is at your school, I certainly hope he doesn’t pick up the attitude that he is “better” than his cousins (my children) who are “only” at a top 20 university and a top 10 LAC. Or if he does, I’d hope that he has the grace and good breeding to keep that opinion to himself. It doesn’t speak highly of someone when they are obsessed with trying to prove that their experience, school, etc. is superior to other excellent schools.</p>
<p>Plus, onecircuit, you missed the point of my comment. It wasn’t about which student is brighter. It was which provided a more uniquely intellectual atmosphere - the college that uses / values athletic excellence as part of admissions criteria, or the college that pretty much ignores it. That is not to say that colleges that use / value athletics cannot offer intellectual atmospheres, but the colleges that pretty much ignore that criteria can fairly be said to be more <em>exclusively</em> intellectual. Which is not <em>better</em>, but just different.</p>
<p>I feel like there have been 10,000 other threads that also degenerate into this debate, but I’ll bite.</p>
<p>I’ll preface it by saying that I’m a first-year student at Carleton - which by the US News definition is a top-10 LAC - and that I chose Carleton over several other “top-notch” National Universities as well as several other highly-ranked LACs. I spent a lot of my college search thinking about the question that the OP has asked, so I’ll give my 2 cents, although I really don’t feel like responding to onecircuit since he clearly doesn’t want to engage in a reasonable argument about the original topic.</p>
<p>Overall, I love it here. I would consider myself fairly “intellectual” in that I really, genuinely do love learning, and I like my classes here a lot. In general, I’m happy with the classes I’ve taken, and I’m really excited to take them spring term. I also kind of like that the distribution requirements mean we need to take classes across the board. Some of my friends at larger LACs who are going on to be science majors were telling me that they “miss classes like English and history” because they felt pressured to immediately jump into lab classes, and I like that my schedule still feels pretty well-rounded.</p>
<p>In terms of the classes being offered, in general, a bigger school will offer a larger breadth of classes simply because they have more students and professors. I am occasionally frustrated by the registration process here, because it is difficult to get into certain popular classes, especially as a freshman (although I have personally gotten into every class I’ve wanted eventually, so I really can’t complain on a personal level about this). However, there is certainly a large variety of really interesting classes, and one of the things I’ve been most disappointed with is that I don’t have time to take them all in just 4 years (haha)!</p>
<p>The OP asked about the qualifications of professors. In general, I think that my professors are certainly as qualified as those at top national universities. My poliSci professor, for example, just came here from Stanford a few years ago, and has done extensive research on immigrant rights (the subject of my class), which is cool. My old bio professor co-wrote the textbook and has done extensive research in botany, and my current professor routinely takes several students to do research on invasive species and habitat destruction, so I definitely trust his opinion. I have had one professor who wasn’t my favorite, but the rest have, in my opinion, provided me with top-notch instruction.</p>
<p>Someone earlier in the thread said that LAC research opportunities are better because students don’t have to compete with grad students. I may be stating an unpopular opinion here, but I don’t think this is true. The majority of my friends at larger universities have ample research opportunities, so I don’t think that’s a fair comparison to make. Research positions here are competitive as a freshman, but the general sense is that most interested students can get research positions with professors, especially over the summer. So I guess my point here is that research opportunities aren’t necessarily as lopsided as some people say that they are.</p>
<p>Socially - the social scenes are definitely different, but I really like the environment that my smaller LAC fosters. To be honest, I think that socially I would have been absolutely fine at a larger school as well, but I’m perfectly content here. I was initially concerned about attending a smaller school, but I actually really like it. I like being able to go to the library and see several of my friends, and having friends all over campus. I like that, for example, when I had a birthday party recently, over 50 people showed up throughout the course of the night, because it’s been a lot easier for me to meet people here. Parties are generally centered around dorms (there are a lot of “progressives,” which have several different stops around campus) or in the townhouses, which are a lot bigger, but because there is no Greek scene this is different than what a lot of my friends from home have experienced. However, I really like it.</p>
<p>Overall - I will admit that I was a little nervous in choosing a school with slightly less “name recognition” than some of the others. What I’ve found, however, is that a lot of my peers are extraordinarily motivated and intelligent, and it’s really nice to be in a supportive, caring environment where everyone is genuinely friendly and respectful of each other’s interests. I think I’ve grown more as a person in the past six months than I did throughout high school, and part of that is the environment here.</p>
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<p>pizzagirl, huh?</p>
<p>what’s with the personal attack?</p>
<p>is this the only way that you know how to communicate?</p>
<p>it seems so by reviewing your posting history</p>
<p>tell us again how you have been telling kids not to dream about working hard to get that Investment Banking, Private Equity, Venture Capital or Consulting job or to attempt to eventually become the CEO of a corporation</p>
<p>reese, very nice post</p>
<p>thanks for sharing</p>
<p>Thanks. I tried to be neutral and actually help with the original topic, although the OP has evidently disappeared. Alas, it will probably be drowned in the arguing, but whatever, I tried. Haha.</p>
<p>Basically, I think there are valid arguments for and against either type of school. I didn’t see myself as someone who would work best at an LAC, but I’ve been pleasantly surprised. I don’t think you can denounce one or the other unless you’ve experienced both.</p>
<p>" I don’t think you can denounce one or the other unless you’ve experienced both."</p>
<p>The two people I know of who have done so are CC poster Hanna, and my D2. Observations about these respective experiences have been posted on CC.</p>
<p>True, and I respect that a lot. However, I don’t think their experiences are representative of all liberal arts colleges. I have several friends here who transferred from large universities, and their feelings are more or less opposites of Hannah and your daughter’s.</p>
<p>I’m not saying that your daughter and Hanna don’t have valid concerns. They do and LACs certainly have faults. Both of the aforementioned people have unique experiences that many other people don’t have, which puts them in a better position to critique. That being said, two people don’t represent the views of the majority.</p>
<p>“For one thing it does not distinguish what schools the PhDs are from. from what I understand, not all phds are created equal.”</p>
<p>Right, I should have included that; here’s the Reed info (bottom of the page; others can post what they know about):</p>
<p>[LIFE</a> AFTER REED](<a href=“http://web.reed.edu/ir/success.html]LIFE”>Life After Reed - Institutional Research - Reed College)</p>
<p>“Grads of the top x programs are more likey to get subsequent tenure track employment following phD.”</p>
<p>Don’t most PhDs go into industry? I think more are produced than there are prof retirements or expansion need.</p>
<p>“For another thing, who says the best HYPers all want to pursue PhDs!”</p>
<p>Right, but for those who want a future PhD, they may prefer to be around like-minded (“life of the mind”) peers. That’s where the per-capita numbers can be useful.</p>
<p>“Graduate school might well be the fall back "safety’ for some of these students; that’s the path they would settle for if they did NOT “do well” by their standards.”</p>
<p>I think it’s easier to get a job than to gain admittance to a PhD program and then succeed at it.</p>