<p>Hamilton College is ranked among the best LACs, but is still not talked about as much in general conversation on this website really unless specifically brought up. Although it is small, why are certain colleges (some within the nescac) perceived as better when Hamilton is just as good or better?</p>
<p>This also has to do with the yearning for knowledge about why Hamilton has this way about it in terms of public discussion.</p>
<p>It is an LAC. It is very small with a very small alumni base. These factors tend to hurt it when it comes to prestige. Few people have heard of Hamilton outside of the general area. It is a decent enough school though. Maybe a little over-ranked, but for an LAC, it is a good school.</p>
<p>informative^^ what do you mean for an LAC , it is a good school?</p>
<p>Hamilton is small but I think it’s pretty highly regarded on CC. With only 5200 applicants or so per year and a student body of 1,840 I wouldn’t expect as many people to be talking about Hamilton as Cornell or even Vassar and Colgate.</p>
<p>It is an excellent LAC and is well ranked (I think in the top 20 LACs in USNWR). But yes the small size and DIII sports make the college less of a household name. However, I would expect that people such as potential employers, grad schools would hold Hamilton in high regard.</p>
<p>My theory: Size is just one issue. The location is another: Not only is Hamilton in a small town not near a large city, but there are not many other comparable LACs nearby. For example, Colby and Bowdoin are also in small towns, but because Bowdoin, Colby and Bates are within a drive of each other, many kids hit all three on a college tour even though they might not otherwise have visited them all - and many have vacationed in Maine so it feels less ‘remote’ to them. Finally, the frat scene is something that many LAC applicants are specifically trying to avoid. Because Hamilton has a pretty strong frat culture, it’s an even more self-selected group of applicants than usual for LACs.</p>
<p>My nephew just graduated from Hamilton and loved it. It’s a great school. However, I don’t think it attracts quite as national a student body at some of the other Northeast LACs so it just isn’t known as widely.</p>
<p>Compare Vassar to Hamilton here </p>
<p>[Where</a> Does Your Freshman Class Come From? - Facts & Figures - The Chronicle of Higher Education](<a href=“http://chronicle.com/article/Where-Does-Your-Freshman-Class/129547/#id=191515]Where”>http://chronicle.com/article/Where-Does-Your-Freshman-Class/129547/#id=191515)</p>
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<p>Colgate is only about a half hour away from Hamilton, and Union College is only about and hour and a half which is not much farther than the distance from Bowdoin to Colby. But central New York State somehow feels more isolated than Maine.</p>
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<p>All the Northeastern LACs draw their student bodies primarily from the Northeast. Hamilton is certainly on the high end with 73% of its enrolled freshmen in 2010 coming from the Northeast, but Colby (72%) and Bates (76%) are right in the same ballpark. Even Amherst, Williams and Swarthmore are over 50% Northeasterners, even though that region comprises less than 25% of the nation’s population.</p>
<p>@bclintonk: And that feels like a significant difference to me. From my West Coast perspective, Amherst, Williams and Swarthmore are a lot better known than Hamilton, Colby or Bates.</p>
<p>^ I don’t disagree with what you’re saying, but apart from Californians who are numerous at all 3, you won’t find many Westerners at AWS, either. Or Southerners, apart from Floridians and Texans. Or Midwesterners, apart from Illinoisans (probably mostly from suburban Chicago). I’m not knocking these schools; heck, even the Ivies are far more regional in their student bodies than many people assume. There’s just less of a national market in higher education than many people on CC seem to think.</p>
<p>Interestingly, the least regional of the top LACs is Oberlin, which draws only 22% of its students from its home region, the Midwest; it draws nearly twice that many, 43%, from the Northeast. Next closest is Macalester, which draws only 38% of its student body from the Midwest; followed by Carleton, 40% from the Midwest; Grinnell, 41% from the Midwest; Wellesley, 41% from the Northeast; Davidson, 44% from the South; and Pomona, with 45% of its students from the West. </p>
<p>Why? Well, I don’t think it’s that these schools are inherently more “national” or better known. I think Northeasterners are just far more likely to attend LACs (and private schools in general) than people in other parts of the country, and they’re far more likely to go outside their home region to do so. So when the top Northeastern LACs are filled up (mostly, but not exclusively, with Northeasterners, as all these schools are trying to achieve some semblance of geographic balance), the Northeasterners spill over into the Midwest, South, and West in search of quality. Top students here in the Midwest are far more likely to go to their state flagship, or if they go private, to stay relatively nearby. It appears to be a similar pattern in the South, and in most of the West except California. Californians will go anywhere (though less to the South than to the Northeast or Midwest). </p>
<p>Oberlin is just the extreme case. In 2010 it enrolled 102 New Yorkers and 82 Californians, compared to just 53 from its home state of Ohio. It enrolled more students from Illinois (56) than from Ohio; Chicagoans are a bit more like Northeasterners and Californians in this regard than are their Midwestern neighbors. Oberlin enrolled more than twice as many from both Massachusetts and New Jersey (48 each) as from neighboring Michigan (22), and almost that many from Maryland (40). But it drew poorly from the South and from the West apart from California; and within the Midwest, it drew significant numbers only from Illinois, Ohio and Michigan (only 7 from neighboring Indiana, for example).</p>
<p>That same pattern, in less extreme form, is also evident at the other top Midwestern LACs, which all draw well from the Northeast and California, and, within the Midwest, from the Chicago area and their home state, and secondarily perhaps one immediately adjacent state.</p>
<p>To the OP’s question: I just think Hamilton gets a little lost in the shuffle. It’s a good school, but it’s very regional, drawing over half its students from just 3 states (NY-NJ-MA), and it’s ranked the 10th-best LAC in its home region, with easily a dozen or more private universities in its region also outshining it academically and in public attention. Nor does it have a distinctive brand identity like the Seven Sisters schools. Nor is it in or near any major media market, or on a well-traveled transportation corridor or vacation destination. None of those are reasons not to go there, but they are reasons Hamilton labors in relative obscurity.</p>
<p>Way too cold - no one wants to visit.</p>
<p>When I looked at it, I came across a website from a group of alums who posted many complaints about how the college was being run. I don’t know if their complaints were justified.</p>
<p>Everyone cries about how their college is being run</p>
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<p>I don’t buy it. Cornell is in the same general area and it has no problem drawing people from all over. Middlebury is at least as cold.</p>
<p>I think not being near a major airport might be a factor. Californians will generally go just about anywhere, but there are fewer Californians at Hamilton than at any top 30-ish LAC in the Northeast or Midwest except Bates. I imagine it’s not so easy to get to Hamilton from LA or San Francisco; you’d need to change planes once or twice just to get to Syracuse which would leave you a good hour or more away with no good public transportation options. You’d need to get a bus from Syracuse to Utica, then it’s a 10 mile cab ride from there to Hamilton. That’s pretty arduous.</p>
<p>The people who attend Hamilton generally live within driving distance.</p>
<p>The Founding Fathers laid down clear rules. They allowed Alexander Hamilton to work his voodoo mojo on only one colonial college. Columbia got it all.</p>
<p>Prob because it’s a small school in the middle of nowhere</p>
<p>Part of the problem may have been its athletic conference. Hamilton just joined NESCAC, which I think will help raise its profile to prospective students.</p>
<p>Yea i see what you all are saying. That’s what I think too. It’s just sometimes because of this predicament I get worried that people doubt the validity of the school when they shouldn’t be. Also, Hamilton has been part of the nescac since its formation, it recently has become a full member, adding the last of the teams that still weren’t in it.</p>
<p>Had we not planned a visit to nearby Colgate we never would have set foot on the Hamilton campus. Of the six campuses we visited (Univ of Rochester, RIT, SUNY Geneseo, Cornell, Colgate, and Hamilton), I would say that Hamilton was the one that exceeded expectations.</p>
<p>I think others gave valid reasons why Hamilton lacks prestige. Detractors complain about it’s location just like many who complain about the National Baseball Hall of Fame’s location in Cooperstown. In my view the school is one of the best LAC’s in New York.</p>
<p>the NESCAC hasn’t changed a member since the 1950s XWORDS59</p>