Williams vs. Ivies?

Colleges & Universities A-Z Williams College
21

<p>dkane: I don't recall saying that the quality of undergraduate education at Harvard was superior to that at Williams, but I don't necessarily think it inferior either. Since the quality of the education has to do with more than class size and the employment status of the faculty, I don't think it's as easy to assess as you suggest.</p>

<p>Since you've called me a liar, I suppose I need to respond to your other comments. </p>

<p>First,
[quote]
You can bet the other 5 are big lectures with no meaningful interaction between the vast majority of students and the professor.

[/quote]
Actually, no. Two are enormous lectures (fall and spring of the same economics course), but the others are smaller and have afforded her an opportunity to interact with the faculty. In fact, the professor who teaches the large lecture does make an effort to get to know the students, although because of the class's size, it's obviously not meaningful for most students. I believe that any student who makes the effort is able to talk with him. </p>

<p>Second,
[quote]
But not everyone who is "not a T.A." is a tenure track member of the faculty. Harvard has a huge population of poorly paid, overworked non-T.A. lecturers (and other categories). How many of these three small classes are taught by "real" faculty (tenure or tenure track)?

[/quote]
You're right that at least one of my D's teachers is a non-tenure track faculty member. He's been teaching there a while and has won teaching awards, but you're right, if you're judging him on his salary and employment status, he's not as good as Williams faculty. As for the others, I do know that several classes have been taught by full professors, but I honestly do not know the salary or employment status of all of my D's teachers this year. </p>

<p>Third,
[quote]
He tells some nice stories that probably have only a limited connection to reality. A Harvard philosophy professor wrote two pages of comments on a two page paper?! Maybe. How much did he write on all her other papers? How much did he write about the papers for the 45(!) other students in the class?

[/quote]
I'm sorry you don't believe that my D received two pages of comments on a two-page paper. In fact, she has received extensive comments on every paper in that class, which is, incidentally, taught by a fully tenured faculty member. How much did the professor write on the papers of the other 45 students? I have no idea, but since my D is doing reasonably well in the class, I have no reason to think that she was singled out for extra attention. </p>

<p>Fourth,
[quote]
How many tenured/tenure-track faculty would know his daughters name if they met on the street? How many total words of commentary have they written on her work? How many total words of questions/answers/conversation has she shared with them over the year. That is the guts of an education.

[/quote]
How many would know her name? No idea, and since I'm not sure of the employment status of all of her teachers, I don't know how that would break down. How many total words of conversation? No idea.</p>

<p>Fifth,
[quote]
Even if, by some miracle, his daughter is actually having non-trivial interactions with Harvard faculty, how representative is her experience compared to other Harvard students? From <em>everything</em> I know about Harvard (and I had lunch in Eliot House today), his description is a complete outlier compared to that of the typical undergraduate at Harvard.

[/quote]
You obviously know much more about a current Harvard education than I do, so I'll let you assume my D is an outlier.</p>

<p>One thing I do is contrast my D's experience to my own at Williams. Of my professors freshman year, I'd say at most two or three knew my name. I had a full professor (obviously tenured) for math, and he had no idea who I was and never expressed any remote interest in me that I could discern. Sophomore year I had a large (filled Bronfman auditorium) political science lecture. Great professor (yes, tenured), but no additional section in which to discuss the material, and no, he had no idea who I was. How much interaction did I have with faculty members at Williams? Not much, other than English 101 and until I declared a history major. There were some wonderful professors in that department, who went out of their way to get to know me. Could I have made more of an effort to get to know other professors? Of course, and it's one of my regrets that I didn't. </p>

<p>The point I was originally trying to make was that one can tout the advantages of a Williams education without exaggerating the "deficiencies" of a Harvard one. Of course, every positive experience at Williams is the norm, and every positive one at Harvard is the exception.</p>

22

<p>"give students/others credit for 'intelligent' evaluation of such a choice ... the advice can be very mixed - even from sources who are credentialed in academia."</p>

<p>"Intelligent" evaluation optimally includes college visits so that every applicant can do the "primary" research and make the best decision based on the results. Most advice from well-meaning posters here (without personal agendas) emphasizes the importance of the college visit to determine the suitability of the fit. Caring what others think, in my opinion, should not be the reason for an applicant's choice. As has been stated elsewhere, students who want to do well will do so, and happily, at whatever college they ultimately choose. If the "prestige" of the brand name is what will make someone happy -- then by all means, they should go for it. No one here is trying to stop any student from making the best possible decision for themselves.</p>

23

<p>"my own at Williams"</p>

<p>Keep in mind that, even in the last couple years, the professor to student ratio at Williams has improved (an additional fifty or so have been hired with no increase in the number of students).</p>

24

<p>I am an Amherst alum and a big proponent of a LAC education; however, I do not think we should bash Harvard or other Ivies with regard to the their quality of education which are superb by virtually all standards but still qualitatively different than at places like Amherst and Williams. I also do not believe seminar-based educations are the only way to learn. They are preferable for some students, and certainly they were in my case. However, I do think you can still get a personal education at Harvard, particularly if you put some effort to build close relationships with faculty whenever possible. My brother attended Harvard College and had a terrific experience. There is a master of the House who lives with students and serves as general advisor, overseer, and loco parentis. He/She, and sometimes their family, form a close bond with some students, particularly if those students live in the same house all four years. Although, many of the introductory classes are lectures rather than seminars, they can be given by superb lecturers who not only are at the top of their respective fields but also excellent communicators. You can still learn a lot from that type of experience (it arguably could be more one way rather than bilateral,but learning doesn't have to stop after class), and perhaps with some initiative, also be able to develop a close relationship with the prof. Also, some faculty members really make it a point to know their students despite the class size. One professor who was notorious (in a positive sense) for his interest and concern for students memorized the faces and names of the students in his intro chem class of 200 before each semester, and shocked them by acknowledging them by name in their first few classes when they asked questions. He also was very generous with his time during office hours and off-hours. He obviously was an extreme case; however, there are many professors who take an interest in teaching and their student's lives-I think it is unfair to generalize. Although tenure may depend more on research than teaching at Harvard, there are intangible rewards that almost all educators experience when one shares one's experience and knowledge with others, particularly bright and eager students. Also there are a lot of incredible informal learning opportunities. My brother and a few other freshman had dinner with B.F. Skinner as part of a program to have students exposed to great faculty on a social basis. His interests did not lie in psychology so the dinner only remained a pleasant college memory but it had potential for further associations if that were his interest. Last, if one chooses to write a thesis, there will undoubtedly be at least one faculty advisor with whom you will have a close relationship. At a place like Harvard, close faculty contacts are definitely possible. Although the quality of teaching may be uneven at times and probably not as consistently as high as Williams, that relative weakness is compensated by the breadth and depth of courses, resarch opportunities, and physical resources that are available at a great university. However, close interactions with faculty are not a given and students will have to take initiative. At a place like Williams, it is part of the ethos. It is pretty difficult NOT to have close faculty interactions and friendships. Most of us who were lucky to have the opportunity to study at a top LAC appreciated the quality of that type of education before we matriculated, and almost universally afterwards. Some us decided to forego the relatively higher recognition and prestige of larger peer schools and the Ivies, so we could have that type of education. On the other hand, as enthusiastic as I am for the LAC style of education, I realize that many outstanding students prefer going to other top universities, even if their reasons would be very different than mine.</p>

25

<p>Soon to be a Williams alum, I have become skeptical of the value of LACs. I very much agree that students who like it here exaggerate the benefits to grandiose proportions. While a majority certainly do enjoy it, there are more people who don't than one might think. In the past week I have talked to six other seniors who have said things ranging from "If I could do it over again, I'd choose a different school" to "I'm glad I came here, since the experience made me a stronger person, but I certainly wouldn't repeat it." I have found that those who don't like this place are determined to have something wrong with them; people seem to have trouble accepting the fact that Williams is NOT right for everyone.</p>

<p>nceph, I wouldn't bother arguing with dkane. Based on his comments and his link to ephblog, I'm assuming it's David Kane (I don't have actual proof of this, so for legal reasons I'll just call it an assumption). He frequently picks fights with people and acts like a know-it-all. In fact, I just read in the Record that a person is persuing legal action against him for libel.</p>

<p>Corbett, you have some incorrect information in your post:
1. TAs do grade work in many departments here. They are undergrads instead of grad students like at large universities, but they still aren't professors. One of my friends took an art history class and even had papers graded by a TA.
2. There is no guarantee that a student will get into a tutorial. In fact, many tutorials have far more students sign up than can ultimately enroll.
3. OK, that's true.</p>

26

<p>
[quote]
Corbett, you have some incorrect information in your post:</p>

<ol>
<li>TAs do grade work in many departments here. They are undergrads instead of grad students like at large universities, but they still aren't professors.

[/quote]
OK. Williams can guarantee that student TAs won't teach intro courses, lead discussion sections, or oversee labs.

[quote]
2. There is no guarantee that a student will get into a tutorial. In fact, many tutorials have far more students sign up than can ultimately enroll.

[/quote]
The fact that demand for some tutorials outstrips their availability is a tribute to their success. I would encourage Williams to offer as many as possible. But even if it's not possible to accomodate every student in their tutorial of choice, it's still better to have some tutorials (as at Williams) than none at all (as at Ivies).

[quote]
3. OK, that's true.

[/quote]
I think so too.</li>
</ol>

27

<p>
[quote]
I do not think we should bash Harvard or other Ivies with regard to the their quality of education which are superb by virtually all standards but still qualitatively different than at places like Amherst and Williams. I also do not believe seminar-based educations are the only way to learn.

[/quote]
Clearly there are different learning styles, and clearly it is possible to get a good education at an Ivy. However, I suspect that many Ivy applicants have significant misperceptions regarding the nature of the undergraduate programs that they apply to, and that the Ivies make little or no effort to correct them. If so, then these are legitimate grounds for criticism.</p>

<p>At Princeton, for example, grad student TAs (or "Assistants in Instruction") are specifically cautioned about freshman who are surprised to learn that they will not be taught by professors. No need to take my word for it -- read the Princeton AI</a> Handbook for yourself:
[quote]
When a graduate student first enters a class or a laboratory as an Assistant in Instruction, he walks into an arena already filled with assumptions and expectations about teaching at Princeton.</p>

<p>**The first is the undergraduatesā€™ expectation, created probably before they even applied to Princeton, that the faculty -- that is, the senior faculty -- do all the teaching. **It is true that regular faculty members, senior and junior, deliver the lectures and conduct the seminars, classes and workshops in most courses. Over the past twenty years, however, graduate students have assumed an increasing share of the teaching responsibility in precepts (small-group discussion sections, primarily in humanities and social science courses) and beginning language courses, and for a much longer time have been supervising laboratories of nearly all undergraduate experimental science courses as well as conducting the problem sessions and classes in the sciences and engineering. A social science faculty member observed that when he arrived as a junior faculty member in 1975, faculty taught 70 percent of precepts in his department; today graduate students teach 70 percent of that departmentā€™s precepts.

[/quote]
The bold text (added for emphasis) is a rather explicit admission that at least some Princeton undergrads are surprised by the "bait-and-switch".
[quote]
Assistants in Instruction should realize that in many cases they are filling the role that not long ago was an important, if not major, task of the faculty.

[/quote]
It's fine that Princeton is candid with the AIs about their role as "substitute" faculty. But do you suppose that Princeton is equally candid with prospective undergraduates?</p>

28

<p>How many Williams students does it take to change a lightbulb?
The whole student body--when you're snowed in, there's nothing else to do.</p>

29

<p>"when you're snowed in, there's nothing else to do."</p>

<p>Not true. The student center, restaurants, towns all continue to operate. The school hasn't "closed" in recent memory due to snow that I know of.</p>

30

<p>Corbett and Williams07student,
I was a science t.a. when I was a senior. It was a lot of fun. However, the laboratories were always conducted with a full-time faculty member present, usually the professor teaching the course or one of his/her colleagues who might teach the course another semester. The latter would only do one of the lab sections in his/her off semester. The students certainly didn't lose out with faculty contact. They also had the benefit of a more knowledgable student to help out in the lab. I also gained teaching experience. Pretty much a win-win-win situation rather than shifting teaching duties to grad students. </p>

<p>Seniors also helped out in an occasional humanities seminar (I remember this happened in my freshman seminar) but again, their roles were minor and always with a senior faculty member present. I'm sure things haven't changed that much over the years, and that it is similar at Williams.</p>

<p>Williams07student,
I agree with your points. There are certainly students at LACs that may have benefited more by attending a large university, and there are students at Ivies that may be disappointed with the quality and style of teaching at their schools, particularly in their intro courses. I would say that there probably is more self-selection among students attending LACs; that is, they probably were more aware of what they were getting themselves into when they decided to attend a LAC, rather than vice versa. Still, we are all very adapatable and most of us obtained a fine education if we were fortunate to attend any of the top colleges. I also wonder whether your friends may have some wi****l fantasies about the grass being greener on the other side of the fence as you approach commencement. Over time, you will appreciate your experiences and friendships even more (you really don't have any other frame of reference other than your experience) just as students at other schools will do the same. Memories generally tend to be selective and become more positive over time. Anyways congratulations and enjoy your last days as an Eph!</p>

31

<p>I meant to say wist full (pardon the spelling) in the previous post but it got blocked out when I spelled it correctly. It is g-rated!</p>

32

<p>Yeah the censoring mechanism on this is kind of f'd up.
It may just be a "grass is greener" thing, but I know for a fact that two of the people I talked to (plus myself) have visited other schools and had a MUCH better time there than we've ever had at Williams. I don't know if the other four have, but even so, I think it's a case of a school looking good when visiting/applying and turning out to be quite different than expected. It's also changed while I've been here. For the most part, I enjoyed it freshman year. Sophomore year sucked, so I tried to transfer. That was unsuccessful so I figured I'd study abroad junior year. I also took the fall semester off this year to minimize the time I'd have to be here. Now I'm just counting down the days until graduation.
I have made some close friends here and I'm certainly happy about that, but aside from that, I think three of the past four years (not the year abroad) have been a waste of my time and my parents' money.</p>

33

<p>Sorry you feel that way. Its definitely true that Williams isn't for everyone. I had the exact opposite experience. I hated freshman year, and liked my sophomore, junior and senior years much better</p>

34

<p>williams07, I'm sorry to hear that your experience was more negative than positive. I didn't like my university either though I certainly recognize its merits. Fit is so important and at a small college it's even more so.</p>

<p>Just to balance for those who are considering, I recently had the opportunity to ask my senior son and three of his friends if they would choose Williams again. They all concurred, enthusiastically, that they would. </p>

<p>In response to the nothing to do in the snow comment: I think it helps a lot to like to do something that you CAN do in the snow -- like skiing or snowboarding. Adverse weather is one aspect of rural New England that's a constant. Some love it, some hate it, some barely notice it.</p>

35

<p>Class size is very important. Both my wife and I are Ivy grads but would have gone to a top LAC like Williams (or Amherst, Swarthmore, Pomona) "if we knew then what we know now". </p>

<p>For instance, I never met half my professors my freshman year, because in those large classes I "didn't have to". Didn't help when it came time for letters of recommendation.</p>

<p>Even though Harvard has "smallish" classes, it has over 10 TIMES as many classes with over 50 students than, say, Pomona (13% vs. 1%). Don't underestimate the value of a small intro course in engendering enthusiasm in a course of study, and don't underestimate the negativity that a large intro course can generate where one gets lost, left behind, or worse, just breezes through without being challenged. </p>

<p>Our D has discovered this already - she'll be attending Pomona this year.</p>

36

<p>when i say ivies, i'm referring to harvard, yale, and princeton. I think it may be debatable whether other ivies are better than lac's, but i'd say that you can't really generalize harvard, yale, and princeton into a school that you make them to be. </p>

<p>So first, out of all of those who've been saying that one should go to williams instead of harvard/yale/princeton, who has gotten into harvard/yale/princeton? Not "oh i know a friend who went to williams instead of hyp." Not many i presume. The simple fact is that even though those who buy into the LAC education do so based on aforementioned overly stressed reasons (close faculty-student interaction and so on) they do so, IMHO, because they believe in that education. That's good. But let's be honest. If you got a big fat accpetance letter from harvard/yale/princeton, would you honestly choose to forgo those schools to attend williams? I don't think so. You'd start thinking about the name value, which IS important in something called the real world, the quality of faculty (the 'superstars' that you can meet), the quality/number of amazing guest speakers (let's be honest. famous people are more likely to stop by cambridge than williamstown), internship opportunity (yes, williams has a strong network, but could it beat the network of a school that is three times its size and has people at the top of every field?), etc, and you'd start to see the reality and will most likely (like 90% of people who face these situations) choose hyp. Actually most williams people i talked to revealed to me that their #1 school was one of hyp after i had gotten into those schools. </p>

<p>So does your argument have merit? sure it does. currently i'm taking intro courses that have 100-200 students and the professor probably doesn't even know my name. But you know what? Introductory course professors don't have to know my name, nor do I have to know their name. Intro stuff is pretty self-explanatory, and I find myself more comfortable talking to TA's who are actually extremely smart (come on, they've worked their asses off to come do a Ph.D at hyp) and extremely approachable. But when I become sophomore or junior, I'll start working at a lab, like students at LAC do, and I'll get to know my lab advisor well. In sophomore/junior year, my classes will shrink to size of less than 30. You may say, 'o williams has less than 15 students!' but in the end, what's the big deal? HYP have profs who are nobel laureates, field medal winners, etc (basically those who are at the top of their game) teaching students. I'd take those courses just to listen to their brilliant talk. And you say students at HYP don't have profs to write recommendations? Pure BS. Then how do you explain their excellent med/law/graduate school acceptance rate? HYP need something to boast about, and if no prof writes recommendation and they all abandon their students, these schools would be losing prestige. </p>

<p>Enough said. Williams does provide a great education. I'm just sick and tired of hearing people bash HYP when there's clearly more benefit than harm to attending those schools.</p>

37

<p>From the Harvard Crimson a few years back</p>

<p>Opinion
No Intellectuals Need Apply
Published On 12/9/1999 12:00:00 AM
By ADAM I. ARENSON</p>

<p>It's time we, the student body, write a collective letter to our friends at Williams or Swarthmore, Wesleyan or Amherst. It doesn't have to be long, just enough to admit the truth: Liberal-arts colleges, you win. You possess the nation's most innovative minds, the most intellectual student body. You are the stomping grounds for the great thinkers of the next millennium. We, Harvard, will stop trying to lord over you, stop saying that we are better or smarter, because it just isn't true. You can out-think us any day of the week.</p>

<p>There. Once that is said, we can all go on with being more honestly what we are--not intellectuals. </p>

<p>Don't get me wrong: Harvard students can be, and often are, great. They just aren't intellectuals. Sure, that first night the entire dorm gathered in somebody's common room and shared a bunch of ideas about what college was supposed to be, about where they were from and what they thought was really important, but the minute placement tests came along, let alone classes and extracurriculars, everyone was holed up in their room, hard at work or hard at play, and the great intellectual college conversations you had dreamed of became the thing of nostalgia and viewbooks. </p>

<p>It is probably important to define what I mean by intellectuals. I mean people who have a tendency to answer questions with questions and to think not inside or outside the box as much as about the box itself. The intellectual may not get the recruiting job or the place in the U.S. Senate, but he or she may win a MacArthur Prize or be invited to Sweden for a hefty award down the line. Many of you may be recoiling in disgust, but if a good philosophical conversation interests you and you can't find the right conversation partner, then you know what sort of intellectual I mean is missing from Harvard. </p>

<p>In some ways, it's the entire Harvard attitude. For example, on other campuses current events matter. People begin statements "when I was watching the news..." or "as I just read in the Globe...." Dinner conversations can be about reports on the increase in dual AIDS-hepatitis C cases or the assassination attempt on a member of the Palestinian National Council, to quote some of last week's news that has gone unnoticed and unmentioned. On other campuses, people leave plays, concerts and especially speeches charged up, ready to fight out their beliefs and talk about how they felt challenged or inspired. Here, people mumble, "yeah, that was good," before they turn back to thoughts on how much work there is left to do tonight. </p>

<p>Harvard seems populated with people I would fit into two large groups, which have some overlap: the leaders and the hard workers. </p>

<p>The leaders are often Harvard's pride and those students most easily confused with intellectuals. They found groups, they take on massive projects, they organize and coordinate large student activities from the Hasty Pudding to Project HEALTH to the IOP. They work long hours, put in incredible amounts of effort and make important changes in the quality of life for Harvard students and the surrounding communities, but leadership alone does not make an intellectual. These leaders could enthusiastically talk you under the table with plans for new improvements and new programs but are just as unlikely to know why it matters what they are doing. They work with like-minded students but might not be able to convince a disinterested party why, on a deep philosophical level, they are adding anything more to life than an inveterate slacker. </p>

<p>Which brings us to the next category: the hard workers, probably the most deeply anti-intellectual group at Harvard. Some work hard in their classes and can be found at all hours at computer terminals or in the bio labs, and some work hard at not working: scheduling the perfect weekend, planning the cheapest way to hit Paris and Acapulco during reading period or beating the next level on the newest Nintendo game. These people are focused and do the work that gets the grade--or at least gets them by--but ask for their thoughts and their eyes glaze over. </p>

<p>Harvard does have some intellectuals. Each of these groups attract some, but in some ways it feels like a fluke. Given the hostile environment to real thinking, students become "politic." </p>

<p>The politic are those who, despite their feelings on an issue, "just don't want to get into it." Maybe they feel the exchange of ideas will leave them where they are anyway and just create tension in a rooming group or a friendship. "It's just not worth it," they think, and so they are willing to step back and keep their ideas to themselves. They can see Harvard isn't the place where each existential moment deserves its own observations, where "what it all means" might be as important as the bottom line. </p>

<p>The intellectual high school senior probably self-selects away from Harvard and toward schools like Swarthmore. Imagine what you would think of a student who showed up as a pre-frosh and asked when the last time you were up late struggling with Wittgenstein's theories of games or Weber's predictions for the future of civilization--not just writing a response paper after skimming half the book, but really considering the challenges posed by these thinkers. Imagine if they asked if the triumphs and catastrophes, big and small, we face every day, even if we rush by and pretend not to see them, grabbed you with a thought and would not let go. What would you say? If a pre-frosh came up to you and asked about what the true nature of good is, the most common student response would be something flippant like "not this conversation" and change the subject, more often than not to the chorus of "I have so much work." </p>

<p>Maybe the undifferentiated mass of "work" we always talk about is the real problem. Where is the "learning from discussions with others" touted in those viewbooks? Does anyone ever carry conversation beyond section? When is the last time you got into a discussion with a roommate over reading for a class you don't have in common, or even one you do have in common? Hey, when is the last time you talked about anything with your roommates? Harvard often seems like an intellectual wasteland. </p>

<p>There are some reliable exceptions, such as this editorial page, some study groups at the IOP, the extraordinary tutorial and the really rare Core section that may live up to its billing as a class about "approaches to knowledge." Yet they are few and far between and seem rather the exceptions that prove the rule. </p>

<p>So, Swarthmore, Williams, maybe even Yale and the University of Chicago, you win. The lesson here is clear enough: no intellectuals need apply.</p>

38

<p>Hello, really, H, Y, and P really don't need any defending. Kids, and more to the point parents, all know these schools. Pretty much anyone who has chosen Williams or Amherst over those schools has made a carefully considered choice, and for the right reasons -- there is just so much pressure to choose a "name" brand. On the other hand, I guarantee you lots of kids choose ivies over a place like Williams when they'd be better served at a top liberal arts college, simply because in their school or their community, no one has ever heard of liberal arts schools. Those are the folks who the most ardent defenders of the LA experience are trying to reach. I believe if folks were fully educated about the (1) very real educational advantages of a place like Williams and (2) the fact that in almost every field kids at these types of schools enter into, you will have the exact same opportunities coming out of Williams, the yield rate of Williams vs. Harvard would climb well above 10 percent. </p>

<p>I think that it impossile to say one type of school is "better" than another at this level. Williams professors are undoubtedly better and more attentive teachers -- at Harvard, you can get tenure if you are a horrible and disinterested teacher, so long as you are famous enough in your field. That simply isn't the case at Williams. But like you say, you will have access (limited / superficial though that access may be) to far more prominent names, big time lecturers, kids of famous politicians, etc. etc. at a place like Harvard. I think the key is really determining which type of environment suits you.</p>

<p>But one reason NOT to pick Havard over Williams is for post-grad opportunities, unless you want to go into something very narrow and non-traditional like comedy writing, where Harvard has a network Williams can not match (and in terms of networking, Harvard may have a much bigger group of alumni, but that is more than compensated by the far-superior enthusiasim and loyalty of Williams alums, of whom plenty have achieved great things. Williams alums, like Williams profs, tend to be incredibly accessible). </p>

<p>Probably 75 percent of my friends from Williams, including myself, went into the traditional, most popular fields that kids who go to HYP or WAS enter into: scientific research, academia, law, medicine, finance / business, government policy. To succeed in most of these, you need a graduate degree in any event, and grad schools certainly don't favor Harvard over Williams. Of my eight or ten closest friends, only one graduated with anything better than a 3.6 g.p.a. And in terms of what they are doing, two got Wharton MBA's and are employed by the top employer in their respective fields, one is a resident at Johns Hopkins after earning a Phd/MD, two are professors at top 30 national universities after receiving Phd's from institutions at the top of their respective fields (and by the way, those profs constantly bemoan the level of engagement of students and fellow profs in teaching and classroom participation), one is at a top-five national law firm, one is the youngest partner in a major consulting firm. This is not unusual: read the notes in the alumni magazine in HYP or AWS, and alums will essentially report working at the same places and running in the same circles. My friends, certainly, could not possibly have done any better had they chosen Harvard (an opportunity that at least one of them had). And they were able to have incredibly well-rounded college experiences, with tons of different activites. </p>

<p>And that is one other real advatnage of a liberal arts school -- room for experimentation, and the ability to have a much more diverse, well-rounded college experience. If you want to be an editor on the Harvard Crimson, that will be your life. You'll find a lot more kids at a place like Williams who are newspaper editor and play a club sport and are in a campus band, etc. etc. And I think Williams tends to attract more of the well-rounded type kid who may not be the best mathemetician, or the best oboist, but is really good at lots of different things. </p>

<p>Again, I don't think Williams is objectively better than Harvard. But nor is it objectively worse, either in terms of undergrad experience or in terms of post-grad opportunities. And this fact is known by far, far too few prospective applicants, who dismiss a place like Williams simply because they've never heard of it. That is why liberal arts grads are often such passionate prosthelytizers for the cause: not because we all believe our alma maters are objectively better, but because too few people know they are not objectively worse, and for many kids who choose based on name recognition alone, would undoubtedly provide a better overall undegrad experience, without sacrificing anything whatsoever in terms of post-grad opportunities.</p>

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<p>Also, I've heard that the administrations of many (probably most) elite schools generally act on their own with little student input. However, I find it hard to believe that most schools act directly against the ardent demands of the students on a regular basis. Every year I have been here the administration has enacted some major new policy in direct contradiction to the requests of students. Furthermore, they generally do not feel the need to justify their actions, essentially replying, "We know what's best, so let us handle this". In the latest controversy, the head track coach, Ralph White, who led the team to numerous national titles, has been fired. The school would not give the reasons, although President Schapiro stated that *The College<a href="i.e.%20the%20administration,%20not%20the%20students/faculty/staff/99%%20of%20people%20here">/i</a> was "utterly convinved" it's "time to move on", whatever the hell that means. There is some speculation (and <a href="http://www.letsrun.com/2007/rwhite2157.php%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.letsrun.com/2007/rwhite2157.php&lt;/a> has a letter from a parent supporting the theory) that he dared question the administration's absolute power over improving track facilities.
If you are interested in how students see the administration here, check out this discussion: <a href="http://wso.williams.edu/discuss/comments.php?DiscussionID=887&page=1%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://wso.williams.edu/discuss/comments.php?DiscussionID=887&page=1&lt;/a>.
Also, you think teaching plays a major role in tenure decisions here? Two professors who have received great reviews from students were denied tenure for not producing enough research (although even that claim was dubious).</p>

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<p>"it's 'time to move on', whatever the hell that means"</p>

<p>It's true -- you would be least likely to be among those to whom the administration would reveal its rationale. </p>

<p>"Two professors who have received great reviews from students were denied tenure for not producing enough research"</p>

<p>It would be best to get the facts staight before launching into another of your (predictably negative) diatribes against Williams. The physics professor in question, particularly, admitted that his teaching skills were less than stellar when he began at Williams.</p>