1.) Rank the Nescacs in terms of academics
2.) Rank the Nescacs in terms of athletics
Trying to rank them academically is a highly combustible topic. Academically, I don’t think there is a lot of daylight between them. @PurpleTitan had a thread not long ago that included a wide variety of selective colleges and universities and if you teased out all the NESCAC colleges he had listed, the ranking would look something like:
Amherst
Williams
Wesleyan
Bowdoin
Tufts
Middlebury
Bates
Trinity
(@PurpleTitan omitted Hamilton, Colby, and Connecticut)
Personally, I would add Hamilton right between Middlebury and Bates with Colby and Connecticut right after Trinity
Amherst
Williams
Wesleyan
Bowdoin
Tufts
Middlebury
Hamilton
Bates
Trinity
Colby
Connecticut
Athletically, isn’t that just a matter of looking up their individual team records?
Which sport are you interested in knowing about? Male or female sports? Overall Jockyness?
In terms of acceptance difficulty, there are 2 outliers out of the 11, Trinity & Connecticut College, which are fine schools and hard to get accepted to but not nearly like the others.
What you want to study makes a difference as well, they could be resorted any number of ways.
Because of the fact each are small and field a lot of teams, 30-32, acceptance can vary a lot because of the number of athletes required at these schools. I would say up to 40% of the male students are on varsity teams and 35% of the ladies.
Tufts just got ranked very highly for all of DIII atheltics, like top 5 in the country. Just read it in the news somewhere. Very good programs there across the board.
This is sure to raise a lot of dispute, but I think most people would, not necessarily agree with these, but at least find them reasonable.
ACADEMICS
- Williams
- Amherst
- Middlebury & Bowdoin
- Tufts & Wesleyan
- Hamilton
- Bates & Colby
- Trinity
- Conn. College
ATHLETICS
- Williams
- Middlebury
- Amherst
- Tufts
- Wesleyan
- Trinity
- Bates
- Hamilton
- Bowdoin
- Colby
- Conn. College
REMEMBER: These rankings (both academic and athletic) tend to change over time. When I was younger Colby was thought of as being better than Bates. Today, those two have switched. Tufts is really popular right now and so it moves up in the rankings.
Athletic rankings change annually, but the top three all tend to be pretty successful teams in most sports. The Directors cup, which ranks overall program performance in athletics, is regularly awarded to Williams. Middlebury won the directors cup one year, but has finished second more than any other school.
The academic list above (post 4) works for me. I don’t have enough info to evaluate the athletic list.
By student standardized scoring, these NESCACs appear in the top 50 nationally when compared across colleges of all types:
Williams
Amherst
Bowdoin
Tufts
Hamilton
Wesleyan
(“The 50 Smartest Colleges,” Business Insider.)
The athletics need to be more specific. If the OP was interested in squash, track, crew, lacrosse or swimming the list would look far different. In lacrosse for example, of the top 5, 3 are tied in conference schedule and all of the top 5 are ranked in the top 15 in eastern D3 rankings.
School Conf Overall
Tufts 9-1 20-3
Amherst 8-2 14-5
Bowdoin 7-3 12-5
Middlebury 7-3 12-7
Bates 7-3 11-4
Wesleyan 6-4 10-5
Williams 5-5 10-7
Connecticut College 3-7 7-9
Trinity 2-8 5-10
Hamilton 1-9 4-11
Colby 0-10 3-12
Good timing on the athletic question.
The Division 3 Directors Cup Ranking for 2015/2016 just came out today. It aggregates a schools performance in the NCAA national tournament across 18 men’s and women’s sports.
By this metric, NESCAC is perennially the strongest athletic conference in division 3. This year, three of the top five, four of the top ten and 5 of the top 15 athletic programs in the country came from the NESCAC.
Here is an extract from the rankings (there are 322 schools in division 3):
- Williams...................... NESCAC
- Wash U........................UAA
- Emory..........................UAA
- Tufts.............................NESCAC
- Middlebury....................NESCAC
- MIT................................NEWMAC
- Amherst.........................NESCAC
- Wisconsin Whitewater...WAIC
- St. Thomas....................MIAC
- CMC/Mudd/Scripps.....SCAIC
- Wisconsin Lacrosse.....WAIC
- Johns Hopkins.............Centennial
- Stevens........................Empire 8
- U Chicago....................UAA
- Bowdoin......................NESCAC
. . . - Bates...........................NESCAC . . .
- Wesleyan..................NESCAC .
- Trinity........................NESCAC
- Colby.........................NESCAC
- Connecticut College..NESCAC . . .
- Hamilton...................NESCAC
I would love to know how Bowdoin came in 15th in D3 because it isn’t evident from any of the outcomes except tennis on the NESCAC website. Hamilton is very good in golf at least.
Odd sports to choose for the formula in post #8 link. No football, soccer, basketball?
Yeah I agree, NESCAC doesn’t even have mens volleyball or ladies water polo.
No squash either, where NESCAC cleans up, or mens crew or even swimming. No swimming is that right? Its probably best to look at each sport individually.
Bowdoin had the following national placements this past year:
Fall
2 w field hockey
5 w volleyball
17 w soccer
17 m soccer
Winter
9 w basketball
32 w swim
34 w indoor t&f
49 m swim
Spring
3 w tennis
1 m tennis
Hamilton had the following national placements:
Fall
21 m cross country
Hamilton placed 4th in NESCAC for golf. Only the first place team is guaranteed to advance to the NCAA’s.
In some sports a few more NESCAC teams will get voted at large bids, but not golf.
Is CMC/Mudd/Scripps one team, or is that a tie at number 10?
I think they are a combined team.
Aw, man. Seriously?
Academics in tiers (recognizing that most of these are excellent schools by any measure and some have specific strengths that are not reflected here, like Hamilton for English or Middlebury for foreign languages):
Tier 1 Amherst and Williams
Tier 2 Bowdoin, Middlebury, Tufts and Wesleyan
Tier 3 Bates, Colby and Hamilton
Tier 4 Connecticut and Trinity
Ad far as athletics goes, Willams is tops for individual sports and pretty much always wins the Directors cup.
Amherst has been very strong in team sports the last few years. Amherst’s football team has gone undefeated the last two years, men’ and women’s basketball both made the Division III Final 4 this year, and men’s soccer won the NCAA championship this year.
Middlebury is always strong in running, tennis and lacrosse.
I think the others tend to rise and fall from year to year.
“Harvey Mudd College, Claremont McKenna College and Scripps College are associated in a joint program of intercollegiate athletics, intramural and recreational activities, physical education and club sports known as Claremont-Mudd-Scripps (CMS) Athletics.”
Pomona and Pitzer have a similar connection.
Claremont/Mudd/Scripps is a combined team, and so is Pomona/Pitzer
CMC/Mudd/Scripps combine teams (Stags and Athenas). Pomona and Pitzer combine teams (Sagehens).
http://www.cmsathletics.org/landing/index
http://www.pe.pomona.edu/landing/index