<p>Let's also throw Columbia in there....Which does better in terms of grad school placement?</p>
<p>The differences between the three are extremely small, and they’re respected to a nearly identical degree. Grad placement will depend on the successes of the individual student.</p>
<p>Isn’t Reed graduate placement supposed to be better than all of those three. </p>
<p>For what it’s worth, I’m thinking about applying to all four. Definitely Reed, UC and Columbia.</p>
<p>Just because a school has a higher percentage of its students go to grad school doesn’t mean it places students better. In Reed’s case, the school’s personality dictates that a large percentage of its students will likely end up in a graduate program. That hardly means that the name “Reed” will get you more cred than “Harvard” when you’re applying to college, though.</p>
<p>Columbia, Chicago, and Williams place students very well. There might be a slight gap between Columbia/Chicago and Williams simply because at Williams, you won’t have access to truly well-known professors that will make a shoo-in at certain programs if you have a letter of recommendation from them. Reed is likely a little behind Williams in terms of namesake, but it still performs very well and is known as a place to get a very high-quality education.</p>
<p>@phuriku but wouldn’t the closely tied community of Williams mean that a student has a better chance to actually get to know a professor who will write him or her a good, personal LOR? Because what are the chances that an undergrad student gets a LOR from a nobel laureate?</p>
<p>All the schools mentioned do extremely well in grad placement. If one is choosing a school based on how well he or she can get letters of recommendation, then he or she is not choosing schools for the right reasons.</p>
<p>And at Chicago at least, plenty of classes are taguht by nobel laureates and if you pursue research, even more can be met. They aren’t kings and queens shielded from the world. They’re the same as anyone else out there and as gregarious as anyone else, albeit with more fame.</p>
<p>I attended both schools (UChicago for grad school) so I am very familiar with both. There is no material difference between the three in terms of grad school placement, if you do well at any of them, you will have your pick of the litter in grad programs in virtually any field, so I wouldn’t sweat it. And jamesbond1 is right, the intimacy of the student-teacher relationship at Williams (and believe me, the professors at Williams are certainly all well-respected scholars to boot, they have to be to earn tenure at least) is an advantage that at least compensates for the lack of internationally known professors, who would be more focused on graduate students in any event. I’ve posted about this on a recent thread in the Williams forum, just browse through the typical destinations of Williams grads attending grad schools, they are almost all attending top-tier programs. </p>
<p>Those three schools are all DRAMATICALLY different from one another in terms of size, location, type of students attending, curriculum, environment, and so on. If you are lucky enough to get into more than one, you should attend wherever you would be happiest and most productive, since the reputations are so indistinguishable as to be basically irrelevent.</p>