<p>How prestigious/respected is Middlebury?</p>
<p>it is very very respected</p>
<p>It's an excellent LAC usually in the top-10.</p>
<p>ditto huskem and isleboy. Middlebury is a well-known LAC. It's ranked below Amherst, Swarthmore, and Williams though.. </p>
<p>Based on US NEWS 2006 TOP LACs Rankings: (Wow Williams over Amherst??)
1. WILLIAMS
2. AMHERST
3. SWARTHMORE
4. WELLESLEY
5. CARLETON
6. BOWDOIN
6. POMONA
8. HAVERFORD
8. MIDDLEBURY
10. CMC.
10. DAVIDSON</p>
<p>Middlebury is respected, but a distinct step down from Amherst, Williams, and Swarthmore. I would put it roughly equal with Wesleyan and Haverford. , Because it does not require the S.A.T., it tends to get white, upper-middle-class kids who are well prepared but who didn't do that well on their SAT. If you think the SAT correlates with the intellectual capacity, you might wish to consider elsewhere.</p>
<p>middlebury does not require the sat, but it does have a testing requirement. you can submit ap/ib/sat ii scores in three distinct areas of study in lieu of the sat or act.</p>
<p>that said, middleburys sat range is significantly lower than other schools in its peer group. so in that regard mensa is correct.</p>
<p>I think Middlebury is very underranked. I would put it fourth to Amherst, Williams and Swat.</p>
<p>To me Midd isn't nearly that high. Its avg SAT is almost 100 pts lower tha Swat, Amherst, Williams. It's more in a range with Colby, Bates, Colgate and a little below Bowdoin & Wesleyan.</p>
<p>Are you suggesting that Bowdoin and Wesleyan are at the same level? I don't think so. . . Wesleyan is still one of the "Little Ivies," even though it dipped significantly below Amherst and Williams when it increased the size of its entering class for financial reasons.</p>
<p>wait so how would a top Lac ranked 34th like richmond compare to the top nationally ranked universities?</p>
<br>
<p>Are you suggesting that Bowdoin and Wesleyan are at the same level? I don't think so. . . Wesleyan is still one of the "Little Ivies," even though it dipped significantly below Amherst and Williams when it increased the size of its entering class for financial reasons.<</p>
<br>
<p>There may have been some ancillary financial benefits to adding women to Wesleyan's 1500 all-male student body in the 70s. But, few people familiar with the situation would dispute that Wesleyan is a better college today than any of the Little Three were thirty years ago. With a slight advantage in economy of scale, Wesleyan can operate its science laboratories full-time (not just when school is in recess as is the case at Amherst and Williams) and qualify for more NSF grants than Amherst, Williams and Swarthmore combined.</p>
<p>In addition, there is some question whether if Wesleyan had remained even a co-ed college of only 1500, there would have been room in the entering class for some of its most illustrious graduates of the last thirty years including three-time NFL championship coach, Bill Bellichick (Class of <code>75), Academy Award winning screenwriter, Akiva Goldsman (Class of</code>83), Sebastian Junger (author of "The Perfect Storm", Class of <code>84), Joss Whedon (Class 0f</code>87) and many others.</p>
<p>At a 1500 enrollment, Wesleyan students had a neglible impact on the commerce of working class Middletown; with 2,600 students to cater to, Middletown's Main Street has undergone a renaissance few onlookers could have anticipated at the time of the decision to increase Wesleyan's size.</p>
<p>And finally, with the virtual absorption of a female enrollment the size of Bryn Mawr, few people would dispute that Wesleyan -- overnight -- has transformed itself from one of the least social of the traditonal small New England colleges, into the most laid-back, most socially self-contained of the Little Three.</p>
<p>vassar all the way, baby.</p>
<p>In looking at SAT, admit rate, yield, % in top 10%, USN&WR, Brody, I would say that Bowdoin has been consistently slightly above Wesleyan for the last decade. Wesleyan's status of one of the "Little Three" isn't too relevant any more (when I was growing up, I used to think Trinity was the third one). I don't know anything about procuring science grants, but with Wesleyan at 700 a class vs Bowdoin at 400, that seems to me kind of like the argument people make when they would preach to go to UMich instead of Dartmouth. They're both good schools, albeit with vastly different student bodies, I just wouldn't say Wesleyan is better, at best I'd say they're equal. On a side note, did Wesleyan not have the liberal, birkenstock-wearing reputation in the 60's & 70's that it has today?</p>
<p>The problem with Bowdoin -- and it's not a huge problem, when one considers the vastness of the world's ills -- is that it, along with virtually every other New England small college can never be more than a shadow of Amherst and Williams; one may have a slightly different shade of brick or stone masonry, but, essentially they are all modeled on Dartmouth which is itself a knockoff of Princeton and so on and so on. The people who invented the USNews rankings had this in mind when they designed the poll; they knew full wel that any poll that did not start <em>a priori</em> with Harvard at the head of the universities poll and Amherst at the head of the LACs would lack the credibility of conventional wisdom (btw, is there a franchise on the face of the earth that has better exploited being at the head of the alphabet than Amherst?)</p>
<p>Wesleyan, OTOH, has made it a point of being as different from Amherst and Williams as a small, 175 year old, New England college can get. "[D]id Wesleyan not always have the liberal birkenstock wearing reputation that it has today?" IT INVENTED IT. When Californians think of which Eastern LAC they most want to attend they may consider Amherst; they may glance at Williams. But, an awful lot of them choose Wesleyan. Somewhere at the bottom of the pile you may find a Bowdoin application.</p>
<p>You may not "know from research grants [sic]", but, to people who do, Wesleyan is at the top of the heap.</p>
<p>We get it. You love Wesleyan.</p>
<p>I dont like rankings, so here is a list of tiers of LACS:</p>
<p>Williams, Amherst, Swarthmore, Pomona</p>
<p>Wellesley, Bowdoin, Haverford, Middlebury, Wesleyan, Harvey Mudd, Reed, Carleton, W&L</p>
<p>Davidson, Vassar, Colgate, Hamilton, Colby, Bates, Grinnell, Oberlin, Macalester, Trinity, Barnard, Conn College</p>
<p>Smith, Bryn Mawr, Mt Holyoke, Lafayette, Scripps, Holy Cross, Kenyon, Whitman</p>
<p>Bucknell, Colorado College, Sewanee, Richmond, Union, Bard, Franklin & Marshall, Skidmore, Dickinson, Rhodes,</p>
<p>pomona is up there too</p>
<p>How about Vassar???? It's my dream school!</p>
<p>I mean a more detailed description....I see it on the list.</p>
<p>huskem... care to explain how you arrived at your tiers? some of the schools seem missplaced to me.</p>
<p>fit is most important when you're considering these top schools. as mini always says, these schools are peas in a pod.</p>