Using the tiers above 
?
First three in tier 1
Bowdoin tier 2
Midd tier 4 or 5
But that’s using those tiers
That’s bizarre. One of my daughters favorite things at Rice is the diversity. This is their class profile from last year:
ENROLLED DOMESTIC STUDENTS BY ETHNICITY (BASED ON FEDERAL DEFINITIONS)
| ETHNICITY | % OF ENROLLED DOMESTIC STUDENTS |
|---|---|
| Asian American | 35% |
| Caucasian | 30% |
| Hispanic or Latino | 17% |
| African American or Black | 10% |
| Multiracial | 6% |
| Other | 3% |
Compared to Berkeley
- African American 3%
- % Asian 37%
- % Caucasian 30%
- % Hispanic 12%
- % Native American <1%
- % Mixed (2+ Ethnicities) 3%
- % International 9%
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Yes, I would say that in the midwest state where I am from the majority have not heard of and/or appreciate most of the LAC’s. People are much more likely to be impressed with admission to a large state U.
Wut? Who are people?
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At our school, if you did an elo type rating of the LACs (asking kids that got into both schools as to which they’d prefer), Williams would come in between 15 and 20 of the main list.
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William Marsh Rice probably never would have wanted that to happen…
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Well that would open a can of worms with so many founders….
William Marsh Rice was pretty explicit about it when endowing the school.
Of course, when you give money, the recipient may eventually decide that they do not share all of the same values. Rice University changed its charter in the 1960s, though it had to fight off lawsuits by alumni who apparently shared William Marsh Rice’s values on the matter.
Who doesn’t love Earl “The Pearl”?!? 
I will chalk this one up to 'you can learn something new every day '. But just for the sake of clarity, a couple of things:
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I certainly agree that schools with big sports names enjoy greater general recognition because of the sports. My incredulity at the post by @Aguadecoco was narrower and focused on the idea of people recognizing school names and their association with elite academics. I’m quite sure that everybody has heard of UCLA because of the sweat shirts and sports and name use in pop culture. What comes as news to me is that there are pockets in this country in which the average person (not my reference; the poster’s) has not heard of MIT (which, btw, also enjoys a lot of publicity in pop culture) or any of the schools comprising the Ivy League save for maybe Harvard, and only if they picked it up in a movie.
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Admittedly, I didn’t think of the point you both made. On reflection, it is not surprising that places heavily populated with recent immigrant groups and where language and culture isn’t fully immersed into whatever it is we think American mainstream culture to be. I can see that, although I hail from such a place and I wouldn’t say the average person there has not heard of Harvard or Yale, except for perhaps those who were middle-aged adults when they immigrated, who don’t speak English and consume Spanish-only media. I know/knew many of those people. But that’s just my experience. I also spent another part of my youth in a rinky dink down in nowhere USA that most would describe today as downtrodden, but English is and was the predominant language there and the population is not comprised of the recently immigrated. Everybody there has heard of Harvard, just as they’ve heard of the New York Yankees. Many may not be informed about their success, may never watch a game or care about them at all … but they’ve heard of them. It’s hard to escape. I think Harvard is like that. I think Yale and, to a lesser extent, Princeton, is like that too.
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Just more on this LAC track. Initially, in our search for our S22, we had small to medium size schools with strong business programs on our radar—colleges like Bucknell, Wake, Lehigh, and Richmond. I remember, at the time, a significant disparity in the rankings for these undergraduate business programs. For example, in Poets and Quants, the most recent Undergrad B School Rankings have Bucknell 14, Richmond 18, and USNW tied at 108. What are you supposed to do? Add them together and divide by two or ignore them completely?
Dwayne Washington, not Earl Monroe
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And there’s always impressing the neighbors, or being happy with who you are and what you do. My kid found their match and that makes me happy. I could care less what number it is on the list. I am not surprised though. I think many people need to impress friends and family, the “aha/wow choice”. Sadly, that can be a match for the students or it can be that they pick the best # rather than the best fit.
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HA! Words! I need to read them! 
On what basis do you assess Middlebury to be so inferior to Williams, Amherst and Swat?
We know Williams people who complain about the name incessantly. It’s their curse that the name of this school deserving of national recognition is just a common last name.
In my experience, yes with Williams, and not so much with Amherst.
To my kid, the Williams name sounds really great because it is also the name of a Formula 1 race team. It would be like going to Ferrari College
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The LACs will likely always play second fiddle to the major research universities. It’s a very different kind of student/applicant who applies to the LACs… I consider myself a very erudite person, but by my senior year of HS, I had not heard of any LAC…
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Then you’re probably not as erudite as you think. I was practically an idiot when I graduated from high school, and even I had heard of Whitman College and several other LACs in the PNW.
Also, I also don’t think the LAC applicant is quite the unicorn you seem to believe them to be. There’s more overlap than you think.
You may be right about name recognition. America is the land of short attention spans. OTOH, that’s part of what makes marketing so effective here. You just never know.
While a good ways away from the level of branding that the Ivy League has achieved, I now find “NESCAC” to be an increasingly referenced ‘thing’, and I’m over 3,000 miles away from that world. I hear LACs referenced in movies, TV, and other pop culture contexts much more than I did when I was at the college age.
Never say never.
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