<p>FWIW: College Day this year on SSPAN was broadcast from Williams and the kids had a lot of fun with it. They played Amherst at home, and it was the first time DIII athletics were featured for College Day.</p>
<p>The Williams/Amherst rivalry is the oldest athletic rivalry in the country.</p>
<p>Useless trivia: Jennie Jerome cut up purple ribbon for the Williams team to wear, hence their purple. Who was Jennie Jerome? Winston Churchill's American mother.</p>
<p>bustles,
If anything, you will find some posters from certain Division I colleges (read mostly from the Ivies) like to diminish and underrate colleges like Duke and Georgetown (not to mention places like Northwestern, Rice, Vanderbilt, and ND) because of their athletic scenes. Their (false) argument is that highest quality academics is incompatible with highest level athletics. </p>
<p>I think that the standard is different for Division III colleges like Williams. No one pretends that Williams is nationally relevant at the highest levels in college sports, except within their division. Qualitatively, the athletic scene (both in terms of quality of play and campus interest) at Williams is not a far cry from what you will find at the Ivies. </p>
<p>How the athletic scene at a school like Willams factors into their campus life is a significant difference between what an undergraduate will experience at Wiliams (or the Ivies) and what he/she will encounter at academic peers like Stanford, Duke, Northwestern, Rice, Vanderbilt, ND, and Georgetown. For some students, this can be a significant differentiator in choosing the undergraduate experience that a college can offer.</p>
<p>hawkette- I think you have incredible information to pass on, and I love your posts. I just have to correct one thing. Rice does NOT have an athletic scene AT ALL. Only the baseball team is worth a flip, and it is excellent. (I'm talking major sports- track is OK, etc). The majority of the Rice kids don't go to the baseball games and while they support the team and get excited at the very end when it is time for the college world series, Rice has very little "athletic vibe". MUCH less so than Williams, which is very focused on it's athletics (which I liked about it). If students go to the Rice football games, it is to see the opposing team (maybe UTexas) or to watch the Rice band, which is hilarious. I know Rice is DI, but it probably shouldn't be. My daughter missed the "big-time" athletics a little bit at Rice, but didn't miss some of the stuff that goes along with it. I personally think Vanderbilt has the right mix of academics and athletics. Rice is too light on athletics.</p>
<p>MOWC,
I agree that Rice is the closest to the Williams/Ivy athletic level among the group of colleges that I often list as having strong academics and good athletic scenes. Undoubtedly their size (3000 undergrads) is a factor in this, but I think (hope!) you will agree that their football scene is a bit stronger than what you'd find at AWS or nearly any of the Ivies, even if part of that is fueled by the energy provided by partisans of other colleges, eg, UT. </p>
<p>As for Rice's baseball, this is their exception and it is noticeable for its national prominence. It is a major sport on college campuses, played by almost 300 colleges in all regions of the country and Rice is consistently among the nation's best (current ranking of # 11). </p>
<p>Finally, I would agree that Vanderbilt has a broader mix of great athletics to go with their great academic strength and strong student body. I would liken Vandy more to Duke and Rice more to places like Williams or Yale.</p>
<p>Rice's football scene is actually really bad, and I think the athletic DIIIs like Williams have much more energy behind football. Rice made it to an obscure bowl a couple of years ago, but that was a fluke.</p>
<p>Vanderbilt is no Duke! People get all excited about Vanderbilt just because they enroll a few classes with high SAT scores, they have no particular strength except Peabody. Despite being the oldest engineering school in the south, they are still ranked in the 40s nationally in engineering by most publications. The biggest draw to the school is good looking girls, and greek life. </p>
<p>Duke has been an elite school on the international scene for years. Just a few years ago, Vandy's average SAT was 1290, when elites like Duke were at 1400+, now I see people asking Vanderbilt vs. Duke, like the school would change in a few years just because the SAT score went up. </p>
<p>Vanderbilt is a good school, but to compare it to Duke, I don't buy it.</p>
<p>while it may not be as good as duke, vandy deffinitely compares to Duke. It is a great school, perhaps you need to get off your ivory tower and not scoff off a top 20 school. </p>
<p>Now to answer your assonine assertions.</p>
<p>It has a very rigorous and well respected engineering school, with more of an UNDERGRAD focus, which is why it lags in the GRADUATE rankings.
Duke has just as much Greek Life as Vandy (sorry it doesnt have the good looking girls)
Vandy is also located in Nashville, which clearly trumps Durham.
While I would personally go to duke, going to Vandy would by no means **** over your future</p>
<p>LOL...Duke isn't really an engineering powerhouse either...</p>
<p>keefer,
I am a big fan of Duke, but I think you are gravely mistaken in how you think it compares to Vanderbilt. Duke probably wins most of the cross admit battles for the reasons that you cite, but this is diminishing with each passing year. Many students will pick Vandy (and sometimes in part due to the arrogance of Duke people who dismiss other schools as unworthy). There is a lot to like about both schools.</p>
<p>I'm not citing graduate rankings, I WAS talking about undergraduate, there's a reason that USNEWS conducts separate rankings for grad and undergrad, i'm quite sure people rating the schools knew that they were grading undergraduate programs. </p>
<p>There's a lot to like about both schools, but Duke is a lot like other elites on the east and west coast, while Vanderbilt is a south regional school and the name doesn't reach on the international stage. The applicants that Vandy draws from the northeast are mostly from boarding schools.</p>
<p>keefer,
I'd be happy to give you more information on Vanderbilt and I'm sure there are others who would happily join me in doing so. The differences with Duke (and most of the elites you cite) are scant and reflect historical perceptions rather than what is going on on the ground today. Both are truly terrific colleges and offer among the very best overall undergraduate experiences available anywhere in the country. </p>
<p>But this is a Williams thread and so I apologize to the OP for my role in taking the discussion in a different direction. If keefer or anyone else wants to start a new thread comparing Duke and other colleges, including Vanderbilt or even Williams, I'd be happy to participate.</p>
<p>Hawkette--</p>
<p>If there's anyone with a chip on his/her shoulder, it's you. Here is yet another quote from you about Ivy League supporters:</p>
<p>"If anything, you will find some posters from certain Division I colleges (read mostly from the Ivies) like to diminish and underrate colleges like Duke and Georgetown (not to mention places like Northwestern, Rice, Vanderbilt, and ND) because of their athletic scenes."</p>
<p>Hawkette, you constantly try and diminish the Ivies and then insist that anyone supporting them must be prejudiced against big time athletics. You refuse to acknowledge that schools without huge football programs can be just as satisfying as schools with such programs or that school "spirit" can be derived from something other than a nationally ranked team.</p>
<p>To the OP--Williams is a wonderful school. Its academics are top notch (it has an amazing tutorial system where students can be in a class with only two people) and it also has an excellent reputation and placement in Wall Street firms, if that is of interest to you. It has many many kids participating in all forms of athletics and maybe because of its somewhat remote location, the student body strongly supports the teams. While it might not be as well known across the country as other schools (and this is true of most LACS), graduate schools and employers recognize the quality of Williams graduates. If you're interested, here's a link to the Wall Street Journal ranking of feeder schools to some of the best graduate programs in the country (note that Williams is very high up on the list):</p>
<p>I know at least 5 kids who go/have gone there, including one who is very close to me, and they have uniformly adored the school and had an amazing experience.</p>
<p>FG13 --</p>
<p>Below is a (poorly formatted) listing of the fourteen most selective colleges in the U.S. There is %admitted, %attending, USNWR ranking (note USNWR has two separate lists for "Universities" and "Colleges". This list, and the category called Xadmit, which is from the soon to be published paper of 3300 students in 2000 and their preferences for one school vs. another, are for all Colleges and Universities combined.</p>
<p>You see in this list Williams fares very well among to top 13.
%in %go USNw Xad SAT Mid
Harvard 9 79 2 1 1490
Yale 9 70 3 3 1480
Princeton 10 69 1 6 1480
Stanford 11 67 4 5 1440
Columbia 12 58 9 8 1445
MIT 13 69 7 4 1470
Brown 14 59 14 7 1440
Dartmouth 16 49 11 10 1450
Caltech 17 37 5 2 1520
Penn 18 66 5 12 1430
Pomona 18 39 s7 24 1445
Williams 19 47 s1 18 1430
Amherst 19 38 s2 9 1430
Swarthmore 19 40 s3 14 1425</p>
<p>midatlmom,
I acknowledge that, for some students, schools without huge football programs can be just as satisfying as schools with such programs. </p>
<p>Satisfied? </p>
<p>Please stop with the false accusations. I have acknowledged this on many occasions. </p>
<p>I'm not diminishing the Ivies and have consistently acknowledged their longstanding academic reputations. But now many schools around the country have the same or higher academic level as the non-HYP Ivies and can also offer nationally competitive and relevant sporting teams in major sports like football, basketball, and baseball and that are fun to watch and which add to a campus's social life. </p>
<p>The truth is that these colleges have a side to them that the Ivies flatly cannot match. It is clear that pointing this out upsets Ivy defenders and prompts false accusations such as you made above. </p>
<p>It might be more helpful if you and the Ivy defenders acknowledged that for students who ARE interested in colleges that can provide the best combination of top academics and top athletic scenes, then the best choices are Stanford, Duke, Northwestern, Rice, Vanderbilt, Notre Dame, and Georgetown. That has been my point all along, here and elsewhere. Do you agree with the conclusion?</p>
<p>I am still going to disagree with Rice as having a "top athletic scene". Remember, I am a Rice parent and lived in Texas for 28 years. Rice's athletic scene is mediocre at best, despite the baseball team. As much as I, personally, enjoy other sports, what makes a college have "top athletic scene" is football and basketball (and, in a few cases, hockey). Penn basketball is a lot more dominant and fun than Rice's is.</p>
<p>First of all, I resent your implication that I am simply an Ivy defender--I have posted positive remarks about numerous schools (although I have focused on my alma mater Princeton which I know the most about) and I don't have a habit of taking swipes at other schools when I do so (as you seem inclined to do constantly).</p>
<p>Secondly, I disagree with the premise of your question, because it presupposes that football and possibility basketball prowess is the only barometer of "top athletic scenes" (and by the way, even if I did agree with you, I would take out Rice and put in University of Michigan). If you like hockey, Cornell or BC or even Harvard might provide a top-notch experience. If you prefer lacrosse, you might enjoy Johns Hopkins, Cornell or Princeton. </p>
<p>However, all of this is completely beside the point for the original poster and, in spite of my distaste for many of hawkette's remarks, I apologize for changing the conversation from Williams, where it belongs.</p>
<p>top D1 sports/academic excellence schools:</p>
<ol>
<li>Stanford (in the past 15 years has outdone UCLA in sports)</li>
<li>UCLA (100 NCAA Div. 1 titles in about 11 sports)</li>
<li>Michigan</li>
</ol>
<p>Northwestern, Notre Dame and UC Berkeley are close as well, but not really close to the same overall athletical program success (speaking of the past twenty years).</p>
<p>Rice? Hello, are they ranked Top 20 ever in anything athletic??????</p>
<p>I've got to agree with Hawkette in that there are many, many super bright kids who just get excited about the D1 revenue sports of Football and Basketball, and think that is a good balance to their coursework.</p>
<p>MOWC,
I believe that the Rice baseball scene is unique due to its stature in a sport that is very broadly played on America's college campuses. There are almost 5 times as many colleges playing baseball as ice hockey or lacrosse which makes Rice's baseball success that much more impressive. I concede that its other sports are not nearly as strong although culturally, I would say that its football scene for home games like UT is something that the Ivy League folks have never seen before. </p>
<p>midatlmom,
I likewise resent your (false) statement that I have a chip on my shoulder about the Ivies. I have very often commented on and complimented their academic strength. I just think that you don't like it when an area of comparison is uncovered where the Ivies don't fare well with several other top academic colleges. </p>
<p>As for U Michigan, it is a very good state university, but I would not place it in Rice's class nor that of any of the Ivies. But certainly there are some fine students there and they undoubtedly enjoy one of the best athletic scenes in the country as do students at each of the consensus top five publics of UC Berkeley, U Virginia, UCLA, U Michigan, and U North Carolina. </p>
<p>DunninLA,
Rice has been a fixture in the Top 20 baseball for years, including this year at # 11 currently (and going higher :) ).</p>
<p>DunninLA,</p>
<p>Rice won the national champ in baseball few years ago.</p>
<p>"some fine students"?...wow...just wow...</p>