<p>I wasn't trying to establish any catchy epithet like the HYP ratio, which certainly never existed when I was applying to schools. I was more assessing schools where I didn't/wouldn't have gotten into along the lines of the old Groucho Marx quote, "I wouldn't want to be a part of any club that would have me." </p>
<p>In retrospect, I didn't have the best approach to applications. I applied to Princeton and Yale (where I was rejected) and was wait-listed at Dartmouth. The only other school (besides Penn State) I applied to was the one I thought was most similar to Dartmouth and that was Colgate, where I ended up going. I certainly had no appreciation of the concept of applying early anywhere or I certainly would have gone for ED at Dartmouth (especially if specifics like ED acceptance rate: 33%, RD acceptance rate: 14% were chronicled back then). Nevertheless, it's amazing how things have changed in less than half a generation with the Internet, obsequious following of USNWR rankings and the amount of info surrounding the college application as I've found from trying to help my younger cousins in the process, although I'm not sure it's all for the good as I've seen a lot of misinformation/creation of unnecessary anxiety as well.</p>
<p>Long ago established perceptions do matter as monydad points because of the slow inner-workings of these schools and the impressions of the hiring managers doing all the recruiting. Do you think they're following the annual minutia of college rankings changes?</p>
<p>I don't think these hiring managers follow the changes in rankings! I don't think they determine, oh, Penn is no longer #5 so we'll stop recruiting there...</p>
<p>Anyway, I do find it interesting that Wesleyan has become somewhat invisible in the minds of people looking at the top LACs. You used to hear Wes being up there with Amherst and Williams. It seems like it has been replaced by Swat. Sort of like what's going on with Stanford replacing Y or P. What explains the changes in these "long ao established perceptions"?</p>
<p>Did it used to be referred to as Connecticut Wesleyan? I had never heard of that. I certainly agree that not very long ago that Wesleyan was considered stronger than Middlebury and Bowdoin and harder to get into and now the general perception seems to be the opposite. I wonder what has caused the relative demise. </p>
<p>I had the impression that Stanford was replacing Yale and Princeton in the early '90's, but that it's no longer considered the case. It kind of shows the lack of usefulness in tracking some of this stuff.</p>
<p>
[quote]
You used to hear Wes being up there with Amherst and Williams. It seems like it has been replaced by Swat.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Maybe if you go back 100 years. When I was at Williams in the 1970s, Williams, Amherst, and Swarthmore were clearly considered the top three LACs. The three have traded the USNEWS #1 ranking spot roughly equally since the rankings first appeared in 1980.</p>
<p>Wesleyan is considered with Williams and Amherst because of the traditional Little Three football rivalry. However, even back in the 70's Wesleyan was considered a slight drop back from Amherst and Williams.</p>
<p>This ranking stuff isn't that hard to figure out. With a few exceptions (discounted rankings for all-female, or midwestern location), just look at the per student endowments:</p>
<p>To a very small degree resources drive rankings, but don't see why they drive academic "prestige". Cornell, Penn and Georgetown aren't on the top 50 list either and I don't think they've suffered relatively to the same extent as Wesleyan has, so there got to be more to it than that.</p>
<p>It's not iron-clad, but all of the LACs currently ranked above Wesleyan on the USNEWS list have larger per student endowments.</p>
<p>The reason it's not a pure correlation is that:</p>
<p>a) New England locations are favored in the rankings over non-New England locations</p>
<p>b) Formerly male schools are favored in the rankings over women's colleges</p>
<p>c) Old-money big endowment schools are favored over new money big endowment schools.</p>
<p>To a large extent, the rankings reflect the traditional preferences of students from the Boston to DC corridor.</p>
<p>As for Cornell and Penn: they have the lowest per student endowments of the schools in the Ivy League football conference and have -- traditionally -- been the least selective/prestigious of those schools. Penn's ranking today strikes me as a bit of an abberation or, at least, a change from traditional rankings.</p>
<p>Georgetown benefits from location. Remember, academic prestige largely represents the "collective wisdom" of prep school and affluent suburban consumers from the Boston-DC corridor. It takes a huge endowment for a school outside of this market to break into the top echelons (see Stanford, Duke, Emory, Wash-Stl, etc.) and even a huge endowment isn't enough is the school is surrounded by cornfields (see Grinnell).</p>
<p>"However, even back in the 70's Wesleyan was considered a slight drop back from Amherst and Williams."</p>
<p>Maybe moreso by Williams students? I recall regarding all three in the same sentence- Amherst, Williams, Wesleyan. The "potted Ivies", or something like that?</p>
<p>"Before the college admission process became such an outrageous multimillion dollar enterprise and the over reliance on rankings, I would think that with the exception of H, Y, and P, most of the other top schools were just that, top schools. "</p>
<p>We were a little more discerning than that back then. At least I was. All the information one could want, stats, etc were available in the guide books of the day. It's just that no third party pre-digested this information for you and spewed out their summary analysis of the data. So I analyzed it myself. Even for those less motivated than I, there were still guidance counselors,prior students,etc to help sort things out. There was still a pecking order back then, somewhat different than today's but hardly random and hardly unknown. In my circles, anyway.</p>
<p>"It's not iron-clad, but all of the LACs currently ranked above Wesleyan on the USNEWS list have larger per student endowments."</p>
<p>Maybe that's in part the case because the size of the endowments, per capita or otherwise, is itself a factor in those rankings? I mean it's hardly an independent variable, it's one of the factors they cook into their ranking formula, isn't it? I recall reading that previously they did not include endowment size in the rankings and the ranking order was different. So higher rank going to higher endowment schools is in part a function of the formula that ascribes a certain value to that endowment size.</p>
<p>
[quote]
To a large extent, the rankings reflect the traditional preferences of students from the Boston to DC corridor.</p>
<p>As for Cornell and Penn: they have the lowest per student endowments of the schools in the Ivy League football conference and have -- traditionally -- been the least selective/prestigious of those schools. Penn's ranking today strikes me as a bit of an abberation or, at least, a change from traditional rankings.</p>
<p>Georgetown benefits from location. Remember, academic prestige largely represents the "collective wisdom" of prep school and affluent suburban consumers from the Boston-DC corridor. It takes a huge endowment for a school outside of this market to break into the top echelons (see Stanford, Duke, Emory, Wash-Stl, etc.) and even a huge endowment isn't enough is the school is surrounded by cornfields (see Grinnell).
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Interesting. That is why all those wonderful little schools in the Midwest will always be underrated. To me, particularly, a school like the College of Wooster should be top 20 for the quality of its program.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Maybe that's in part the case because the size of the endowments, per capita or otherwise, is itself a factor in those rankings?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>No, endowment size is not directly considered, at least in the USNEWS rankings.</p>
<p>However, endowment indirectly contributes to just about everything. Per student spending is considered in the rankings. Endowment drives spending. Williams and Swarthmore spend $12k - $15k more than Wesleyan and $26k - $28k more than Oberlin, per student per year. Is it any surprise that they are more "desireable", "prestigious", or whatever euphemism you want to use in your rankings for "nicer product"?</p>
<p>Schools that have historically large per student endowments spend more on faculty (lower student to faculty ratios), have the nicest facilities, the top faculty attracted with salaries/benefits/sabbaticals, and all the other things that contribute to "peer assessment" and a long line of customers stretching out the door ("selectivity").</p>
<p>"whatever euphemism you want to use in your rankings '</p>
<p>how about 'ranked higher by US News" as a euphemism</p>
<p>"and all the other things that contribute to "peer assessment""</p>
<ul>
<li>if that's the point of all this spending in the end, I might mention that peer assesment rankings do not exactly track these other rankings IIRC.</li>
</ul>
<p>Maybe the NE schools are favored in part because they have to pay more $ for faculty due to cost of living differentials, thereby requiring more spending per student? (I say that as someone having just moved from the midwest to the east, being paid twice as much for same job and being economically worse off).
I recall doing #s on this once, showed Wash U profs higher paid on net basis than Harvard Profs.</p>
<p>You guys are really over intellectualizing all of this. Who says AWS are more selective than they were thirty years ago? Amherst is admitted 19% of its first year class last April; it admitted the exact same percentage thirty years ago.</p>
<p>Wesleyan admitted 28% of its first year class last April; it admitted the exact same percentage thirty years ago. </p>
<p>Nothing has changed except perception. And the effects of branding.</p>
<p>The only outliers here are Williams and Swarthmore. Thirty years ago Williams was generally considered the smallest, least diverse, and most isolated of the Little Three. It has since galvanized itself by turning into a what one faculty wag called, "a Nike store with enrichment classes." I applaud it; it seems to have caught something in the <em>zeitgeist</em> that is working for it. Bravo Williams.</p>
<p>Same thing for Swarthmore. Thirty years ago it and Chicago were the poster children for "self-selection" -- places admired for their intellectual capacity but not necessarily as places known for, let us say -- their robustness. Fast forward, it now quite consciously brands itself as a counterpart of Williams and Amherst -- AWS. Even Interesteddad would be the first to admit that its history, stewardship and philosophy differs markedly from the average NESCAC college.</p>
<p>Wesleyan, and Amherst are virtually alone among the small, old Establishment Eastern Seaboard colleges that are in effect selling the same brand today that they were thirty years ago. Their product is stable and it is reflected in their popularity. What's the problem?</p>
<p>As always, JW, I leave the Wesleyan history up to you. But, I don't believe Swarthmore's market position has changed one iota in the last 50 years. It became widely known as a "braniac" school back in the 1930's when the Honors program was implemented and the brand was solidified nationally with a win on the nationally televised College Bowl program in the 1950s. With the exception of increased diversity and the end of "in loco parentis", I can't think of anything that has changed about the school or its brand image since then. Acceptance rates are the same today (19% this year) as they were in the late 1960s.</p>
<p>I think Amherst has changed more than any of the other schools as it attempts to recast itself from the preppiest of the LACs into a leader in diversity.</p>
<p>BTW, I think the differences between Swarthmore and Amherst/Williams are rooted in the different cultures at the private boarding prep schools of New England and the Quaker-founded private prep schools of the mid-Atlantic (Phila/Baltimore/Washington) region.</p>
<p>Author James Michner, a Swat alum and benefactor, has written that the role of women in the founding and governance of the school, is a second key factor.</p>
<p>
[quote]
BTW, in the early decades of the 20th century, Swarthmore was a jock school and - believe it or not -- a football, lacrosse, and tennis powerhouse.
[/quote]
Swarthmore claims seven slots at the National</a> Lacrosse Hall of Fame, more than any other LAC. For comparison, Amherst and Williams have zero; in fact, there seems to be only a single NESCAC entry (representing Middlebury). </p>
<p>Swat is also ahead of Harvard/Radcliffe (4) and Yale (6), though it does remain slightly behind Johns Hopkins (60). Possibly JHU has a slight home-field advantage in this regard (the National Lacrosse Museum and Hall of Fame is located on the Hopkins campus).</p>
<p>The entry for Philip Lamb states "He played four years of lacrosse at Swarthmore in the days when Swarthmore and Johns Hopkins were the perennial national champs. He was a star for the national championship team of 1904 and 1905 championship team, which beat Hopkins 16-4."</p>
<p>The 1986-87 edition of The Yale Insiders Guide gives the admission rate as 44%; that same year Wesleyan's was listed as 38% -- and that was while Wesleyan was still digesting a female population the size of Bryn Mawr! </p>
<p>Things took off for Swarthmore from about 1989 onward, just as the USNews rankings were starting to have traction with the general public.</p>
<p>Swarthmore got killed when the end of the baby boom around 1970 hit. The pool of college applicants shrunk which caused acceptance rates to increase.</p>
<p>Virtually all of Swarthmore's elite college competitors offset the decline in applications by accepting the half of the population they had previously barred -- women.</p>
<p>This was a double-whammy for Swarthmore as students who had previously chosen Swarthmore because it WAS one of the few coed options could suddenly (literally over a period of just a few years) choose from:</p>
<p>Harvard
Yale
Princeton
Dartmouth
Columbia
Penn
Williams
Amherst
Bowdoin
Wesleyan
Haverford
UVa
Duke
Davidson....and so forth</p>
<p>You can see the impact very clearly from the graph. The acceptance rate nearly doubled in just four years (from 23% in Fall 1970 to 45% in Fall 1974) at eactly the same time the tsunami wave of co-education swept thru the mens' schools. </p>
<p>Interestingly, the median SAT scores remained largely unchanged from 1970 thru the recentering around 1995:</p>
<p>This suggests that Swarthmore's "braniac" brand image was so solidly entrenched by 1970 that self-selection was in full swing and the number of applications/yield didn't really change the students who enrolled.</p>
<p>1) it's "monydad", not "moneydad"
2) Between 1971 and 2003 I paid no attention to any of this whatsoever; virtually anything could have happened in between as far as I know.</p>
<p>It would sort of be interesting to consider and compare how various schools have deviatiated in selectivity over the years, I think.</p>