<p>And also, which is the least sports oriented?</p>
<p>They’re small colleges. None of them are very sports-oriented. I think it’s difficult to gauge which ones are least; I’ve heard that Williams is the place to go if you’re sporty but also want a small college. But the differences are probably negligible.</p>
<p>Same thing with the departments. Undergraduate departments are not ranked because you are not specializing; you are getting a liberal arts education. ANY of the NESCAC schools will offer you a good education in history or political science. Only some of them have a government major (Wesleyan and Connecticut for sure), although some of them have other kinds of related majors (Amherst: law, jurisprudence, and social thought; Trinity: public policy and law, legal studies; Williams: justice and law).</p>
<p>Find the college’s bulletin and page through it, looking at course descriptions and the number and frequency of courses offered.</p>
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<p>This is so not true! Sports rivalries within NESCAC are fierce, and some of these schools take intercollegiate athletics very seriously. I don’t follow NESCAC sports but my impression is Williams is the most jockish, with Middlebury, Amherst, and Bowdoin all in the running. The one school I’ve visited where students and administrators emphasized they are NOT into competitive sports is Wesleyan–but maybe only because they haven’t fielded many competitive teams lately. Four NESCAC schools–Williams, Amherst, Tufts, and Wesleyan–were among the 39 founding members of the NCAA, and NESCAC schools have won the Division III Director’s Cup for most NCAA championship every year but one since its inauguration in 1996. In short, these schools are the epitome of intercollegiate NCAA sports at the small-college level. Just because they’re small doesn’t mean they’re not sports-oriented.</p>
<p>Least sports oriented? Maybe Wesleyan. Or maybe Connecticut College which doesn’t field a football team.</p>
<p>What about CMC…for an option outside NESCAC?</p>
<p>Bclintonk wrote:
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<p>I think it’s more than that. At 2700 u/g, Wesleyan is nearly twice the size of Amherst, its smallest Little Three conference competitor. As a practical matter, what that means is, it only takes Wesleyan a fraction of what it takes Amherst’s student body to field a comparable number of sports rosters. That leaves a sizable swarth of the social scene under the control of the rest of the student body. Thus, it is no accident that Wesleyan has a much more “artsy” feel than the rest of NESCAC even as its USNews ranking suffers - in part - because that publication tends to penalize economies of scale.</p>
<p>“Least sports oriented? Maybe Wesleyan. Or maybe Connecticut College which doesn’t field a football team.”</p>
<p>Disagree about Conn not being athletic. Just to name a few, lax, soccer and sailing are some of its more competitive sports. Remember that it’s the only NESCAC school that used to be all-women, which perhaps accounts for no football…yet.</p>