<p>I am putting together my list for colleges to apply to. What other colleges are in the league of say Bucknell, Williams, Colgate, Hamilton, etc. in the northeast? They can be a step below this level of selectivity. Any help out there?</p>
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<p>In all seriousness, this question makes no sense with Williams on the list. It is currently the #1 ranked liberal arts college overall, therefore, not sure what comparison you are looking for. If you are going for engineering, then Mudd is really the #1. Or, if you are knee-deep in languages, then Middlebury is the best. You do need to see what you are interested in studying and then choose a college environment that fits you. </p>
<p>I think the question’s pretty easy to understand - you want some top liberal arts colleges. Williams is top, but Colgate, Hamilton, and Bucknell are also in the top 30 or so. The rankings fluctuate every year; Williams hasn’t always been #1 and won’t always be #1, and there may only be a very small number of points separating one school from the one behind and in front of it. So I think it’s more helpful to think of colleges in groups (like top 10, top 30, etc.) than in absolute numbers. I also think that for LACs, unless you want to study engineering or another preprofessional field, the major doesn’t matter. Sure, Middlebury is excellent and well-known for its language schools, but a student who was unsure or undecided could get a good education at any one of the LACs.</p>
<p>Other top Northeastern LACs with the same level of competitiveness as Williams are Amherst, Swarthmore, Bowdoin, Middlebury, Haverford, Vassar, Colby, Bates, Wesleyan, and Skidmore. If you’re a young women who is interested in women’s colleges, there’s also Wesllesley, Mount Holyoke, Smith, Bryn Mawr, and Barnard.</p>
<p>A step down in competitiveness would be Dickinson, Franklin & Marshall, Union, Bard, Connecticut, Trinity, Gettysburg, Hobart & William Smith, Muhlenberg, Wheaton (the one in MA), Allegheny, and Bennington. You might also be interested in Hampshire College, one of the Five Colleges in the consortium with Amherst, Mount Holyoke, and Smith.</p>
<p>I agree that you need to consider college environment and location, too. Some of these colleges are in tiny rural towns, some are in or near smaller cities and a few (Wellesley, Barnard, Swarthmore, Haverford, and Bryn Mawr) are located in or just outside very large cities.</p>
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<p>I agree with your post, but this is where I think we approached differently - I do not think the top 20 and 30 are the same as the top 5 in terms of competitiveness. The students are very self-selective at the very top end and many could have one to the Ivys, but rather go to an LAC. (I put Mudd in a category onto itself in the LACs, just like Caltech is in a category onto itself, in my view)</p>
<p>Thank you very much, Julliet!</p>
<p>Your post is spot on, Juilliet. If one focuses on the USNews rankings, they are missing out on many potentially fabulous schools. </p>
<p>You’re welcome, @laikadog! (Also, I like your username :D)</p>
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<p>I agree with you in terms of selectivity - Williams, Amherst, and Swarthmore are more competitive in that sense than Bucknell, Colgate, and Hamilton.</p>
<p>…but not so much as to not even be considered in the same breath.</p>
<p>*Williams: 18% acceptance rate; 670-770 CR, 660-770 M, 690-780 W; 88% in the top tenth of their class
Amherst: 14% acceptance rate; 670-760 CR, 680-770 M, 670-760 W; 86% in the top tenth of their class
Swarthmore: 14% acceptance rate; 680-760 CR, 670-770 M, 680-770 W; 89% in the top tenth of their class</p>
<p>Bucknell: 30% acceptance rate, 580-680 CR, 620-720 M, 600-690 W, 62% in the top tenth of their class
Colgate: 27% acceptance rate, 620-720 CR, 650-730 M; 76% in the top tenth of their class
Hamilton: 27% acceptance rate, 640-730 CR, 660-740 M, 650-730 W; 72% in top tenth of their class*</p>
<p>Colgate and Hamilton’s acceptance rates are quite a bit higher than WAS’s acceptance rates, but the middle 50% of their SAT scores are not much different from WAS’s (statistically, there’s not much difference between a 650 and a 680, and there’s even less of a difference between a 730 and a 760). There are more students in the top tenth of their class at WAS, but not so much more that I think it significantly affects the quality of the student body, although YMMV. I also think the lower acceptance rates at WAS have a lot to do with name recognition. A lot more people are familiar with Amherst, Swarthmore, and Williams than are familiar with Colgate, Hamilton, and Bucknell. I think you have to be deliberately seeking an LAC to find the latter three.</p>
<p>But at least as I understood the question the OP was asking, she was just generally asking about good liberal arts colleges with great reputations for an excellent education. Amherst, Williams, Swarthmore are reaches for everyone, but Bucknell, Colgate, and Hamilton live in that universe too. I don’t think it’s outside the realm of normalcy for a student who is considering Williams to also consider Colgate, too, since everyone needs some match or reach-match schools.</p>
<p>Completely agree, juillet. </p>
<p>I second that - I do think the acceptance rate differences are due in large part due to name recognition and the US News effect - but BCH are benefitting from that as well. It wasn’t all that long ago that acceptance rates were double what they are now. And future trends are only going to make it more difficult to get into these schools. After all, you’re already at the point where they are rejecting 2 to 3 kids for every one they accept. Count yourself fortunate if you can get in any one of them.</p>
<p>As far as the quality of the student bodies, D is a freshman at Hamilton and she reports she hasn’t met a less than smart person yet, and she’s pretty smart, but no longer top of the class. What was most interesting of all was that she reports every freshman, no matter how smart, was struggling at midterms - almost like it’s boot camp, letting everyone know that they can make it as hard as they want, don’t think you’re going to coast through this place. It’s apparently quite common for papers and tests to have almost no A’s, the best anyone gets is a B+ on many assignments in the first half of the semester. We’ll see where the grades wind up, I suspect they’ll rise, but they are certainly challenging everyone to the point that they are all struggling together.</p>
<p>There is a consortium of five fine LACs in Ohio – Oberlin, Kenyon, Wooster, Ohio Wesleyan and Denison – that are certainly worthy of consideration</p>
<p>St. Lawrence. Equal in many ways to those you mentioned, with the ironic qualification that the school appears – currently – perhaps too easy to get into.</p>
<p>Location, location, location. St. Lawrence’s appeal is limited by the difficulty of getting there. Fine school, but it’s really remote from anything. Easy access to legal alcohol in Canada though.</p>
<p>No doubt, @MrMom62, SLU is a bit of a trip from any large U.S. cities. But the school’s location, between the Adirondacks and the Thousand Islands, with access to Montreal, seems cool to me.</p>
<p>As a parent, I have to get my kid to and from school. I have no problem sending my kids halfway across the country to the right school. But at some point, I’d like to see them again, and time and expense is a consideration. This is why Whitman is also limited in appeal for those outside the West Coast, it takes all day to get there. And school in Hawaii would be ideal for a lot of kids, but it’s a bit expensive to travel in and out, not to mention the travel time.</p>
<p>To complement the above analysis, the significant statistical gap between the OP’s listed schools may be between Colgate and Bucknell. </p>
<p>SAT 25th percentile</p>
<p>Williams: 1330</p>
<p>Delta = 30</p>
<p>Hamilton: 1300</p>
<p>Delta = 30</p>
<p>Colgate: 1270</p>
<p>Delta = 70</p>
<p>Bucknell: 1200</p>
<p>(Source: USNWR Best Colleges, 2015)</p>
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<p>For many, Grinnell has the same issue. Great school though. </p>
<p>I agree there are so many great LACs not in the “top 25” or whatever bracket we want to assign.</p>
<p>Reed College, for example, is swimming in the bathwater of the USnews rankings, simply because they refuse to submit their data to a list as ridiculous as the US News rankings. They still remain a college with some of the best undergraduate teachers, a distinct intellectual vibe, and sends a high percentage of their graduates to PhD programs. </p>
<p>I do think it is important to consider your major or interests when considering LACs. Some LACs have subpar upper level course offerings in the sciences, for example. For students considering graduate school the lack of these classes can leave them a bit behind when they start their PhD / Masters. For that reason, some lacs are better for science and others are not. Bryn Mawr has one of the best classics programs in the country, but not so much known for their chemistry. Harvey Mudd obviously is one of the best science LACs (if we agree with the notion that CalTech is its own category).</p>
<p>Juillet made a great post. LACs, overall, are not very well-known to the average American. I myself had no idea of any LACs before I started college searching. My mother knows 0 LACs - but she holds a negative perception of LACs for post-graduate careers, which is also certainly untrue. Although Forbes rankings are only a bit better than USnews, they do include LACs and RUs on the same list and the methodology is based more on post graduate success than 25-75% ACT scores or yield rate.</p>
<p>However, the “top-ranked” LACs like WAS are the cream of the crop of LACs. If someone has heard of a LAC, surely they have heard of these ones!! Especially when compared to colleges like Grinnell, Carleton or St. Olaf, in the middle of nowhere, people are much less likely to hear about them.</p>
<p>We only have 50 states. The public should make more of an effort to know the more notable colleges for at least some of them.</p>
<p>For example, and using some examples already given:</p>
<p>Oregon, Reed
Iowa, Grinnell
Minnesota, Carleton
Washington, Whitman</p>
<p>The universties in these states would all be substantially less selective than their LAC neighbors, yet have better name recognition. </p>
<p>If people can easily learn 5 players or coaches on each of 32 NFL teams, learning a few outstanding colleges should not be too difficult.</p>
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<p>Agreed. I do not disagree at all with your posts, and even agree actually.</p>
<p>However, we are just looking at it in reverse, and I do not lump such a range of schools together. My way of looking at it is I think that a student looking at Colgate, Bucknell should not be thinking that Williams, Amherst, Swarthmore and Bowdoin are equivalent in terms of competitiveness and getting for the raw numbers are highly deceiving because the self-selectivity of the applicants. I have seen many students think these schools are all similar and then when they get x’ed from the top 10, but get into multiple 11- 30, then they realize they are not the same.</p>
<p>Another thing the OP needs to look at is the ED pools. I believe Williams takes something like 45% of its class ED. Unless applying ED, the acceptance rate is really more like 12% for RD, 50% less than the overall 18%. Amherst, I believe, has even be lower RD acceptance % after factoring ED. I do not think the schools from 11 - 30 are even close in that regard. (I leave Mudd out of the mix because it is so specialized.)</p>
<p>I do think your posts were perfect for the OP, so she got the answer for which she came.</p>
<p>ED acceptance rates, class of 2018</p>
<p>Hamilton
ED1: 41%
ED2: 29%</p>
<p>Williams
ED (sole option): 43%</p>
<p>Just throwing it out there.</p>
<p>(Source: College websites)</p>