<p>agreed, tho i tihnk that colgate is maybe in tier 2, or seomthing like that. not quite a williams or amherst, but i think comparable to Reed and Haverford with regards to academics</p>
<p>I like huskern's list - and I agree with Colgate's placing. I might move Davidson up one though, and maybe one of the Tier 2 ones down. And I don't think the inherent bias is East Coast necessarily - Southern schools like Davidson, W&L, Sewanee, and Centre don't benefit from it and are missing from most of these lists (specifically the first two on that list, who I would argue are on par with Wesleyan and above Colgate, though Colgate gets negative points with me for depressing weather) . It's more of a Northeast bias.</p>
<p>...just wondering how bucknell and lafayette arent in the same tier and how a school like trinity can be two tiers ahead.</p>
<p>if i were making a similar ranking:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Williams, Amherst, Swarthmore, Pomona</p></li>
<li><p>Wellesley, Bowdoin, Haverford, Middlebury, Wesleyan, CARLETON, SMITH, DAVIDSON</p></li>
<li><p>Vassar, W&L, Colgate, Hamilton, Colby, Bates, Grinnell, Oberlin, Macalester, Barnard, REED, MT HOLYOKE, BRYN MAWR, CLAREMONT MCKENNA</p></li>
<li><p>Lafayette, Scripps, Holy Cross, Kenyon, Whitman, TRINITY, CONNECTICUT COLLEGE, BUCKNELL, COLORADO COLLEGE, RICHMOND, SEWANEE</p></li>
<li><p>Union, Bard, Franklin & Marshall, Skidmore, Dickinson, Rhodes, DEPAUW, FURMAN, OCCIDENTAL, SARAH LAWRENCE, WHEATON (Ill), CENTRE</p></li>
</ol>
<p>I'm an engineer, so I think in terms of outcomes, and I think academics are the primary measure, so mine is the percentage of graduates who go on to earn a PhD. Not that everyone wants a PhD, but I think it reflects the overall quality of the institution:</p>
<p>Reed
Swarthmore
Carleton
Oberlin
Bryn Mawr</p>
<p>Actually, I think ericatbucknell's list is just about right -- though I would put Smith in the third group and move up either Vassar or Barnard.</p>
<p>ericatbucknell- i put bucknell where i did because the people i know who got in there didnt get into the higher tier schools, and because of the admission numbers. likewise, the schools that you disagreed with are in the tiers they are because of that reason.</p>
<p>also forgot to mention that this is also based on talking to a couple of admissions counselors that i am close to.</p>
<p>Anyone familiar with Knox College in Illinois?</p>
<p>
[quote]
ericatbucknell- i put bucknell where i did because the people i know who got in there didnt get into the higher tier schools, and because of the admission numbers. likewise, the schools that you disagreed with are in the tiers they are because of that reason.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>bucknell v lafayette (class of 2009)</p>
<p>acceptance rate: bucknell 33.9%, lafayette 37.5%
yield: bucknell 33.0%, lafayette 27.9%
acc student sat math: bucknell 650-730, lafayette 640-730
acc student sat verbal: bucknell 620-710, lafayette 610-700</p>
<p>further, 67% of bucknells enrolled students were in the top 10% of their class. only 62% of accepted students at lafayette met this criterion.</p>
<p>this isnt a bash on lafayette, which also deserves to be in the fourth tier. i just have no clue how lafayette could be ABOVE bucknell in a tiered system unless youre going on a handful of anecdotal examples from your school. in that case i highly doubt you have sufficient examples for all the schools you tiered.</p>
<p>...</p>
<p>on wesdads comments, smith was the last tier two school in and vassar the first out. it came down to 'prestige' and resources. however, i dont see any justification for barnard in tier two.</p>
<p>Smith belongs in Tier 3 at best definitely not Tier 2. Same for Barnard. Vassar is borderline, you could move Vassar up one but you would also have to bring up W&L and possibly Colgate. Alternatively, you could bring Wesleyan down one. I think those four schools are about even.</p>
<p>Sticking with the Tier system - I would put Knox somewhere between Tiers 8 and 10.</p>
<p>eric: i apologize for the error- bucknell should place in my 4th tier schols along with lafayette, kenyon, etc. otherwise, i stick to my rankings, including trinity college and conn college in the 3rd tier with their peer schools colby, bates, etc.</p>
<p>This is how I came up with the following ranking (which has its flaws, but at least is somewhat grounded in consensus). </p>
<p>I took each of the major national rankings of colleges (U.S. News, Wall Street Journal Feeder Index, Revealed Preference, PReview Academic Index, Brody Prestige Rankings, Atlantic Monthly, and the Laissez-Faire College Rankings), and assigned a value to the placement of the college in the list (a school that was #1 received one point, #2 got 2 points, etc.). For PReview's academic index, I subtracted the number given from 100 to arrive at the assigned number (e.g., a college with a 99 ranking received 1 point, one with a 90 ranking received 10 points, etc.). </p>
<p>The only colleges that were on all lists were Amherst, Williams, Swarthmore, Pomona, Middlebury, and Claremont McKenna. For those colleges not on a list, I assigned them the next highest value after the last school on the list (e.g., the WSJ looked at the top 50 schools. All schools not in the top 50 received a score of 51). </p>
<p>I then tallied up all the scores and this is what I arrived at. Schools with the lowest numbers are ranked highest.</p>
<p>College, Score:
Amherst, 48
Swarthmore, 50
Williams, 59
Wellesley, 80
Pomona, 108
Middlebury, 131
Bowdoin, 150
Wesleyan, 165
Carleton, 169
Haverford, 177
Claremont McKenna, 179
Vassar, 186
Davidson, 204
Washington & Lee, 212
Colgate, 239</p>
<p>I realize that each of these rankings has its flaws, but overall, I think this is close to what people have been posting.</p>
<p>Thoughts?</p>
<p>I agree that women's colleges should be included. But...</p>
<p>...does anybody find it odd that in the 1960's when virtually every all-male college and university went coed, a ton of all-female colleges did not? I recall a couple decades ago when Mills College wanted to go coed, the students reacted as if they were going to bulldoze the college and replace it with a monument to Arthur Schopenhauer.</p>
<p>P.S. I'm not trying to start trouble here...I like the idea of there being an option of single-sex colleges. This is more a question of why didn't more than a handful of male colleges have the guts (you don't know how hard it was not to say b#lls) to stick to their single-sex guns (so to speak) when so many of the all-female schools had that sort of determination?</p>
<p>interesting point tourguide. i think it has to do with the fact that womens colleges are based on the premise that women can be intimidated in class by men or seen as inferior, especially in math/sciences. the 60s/70s was a peak for womens rights movements, which is why most of the all mens schools went coed. plus, the natural camaradity among women is much stronger than that of men, which makes the appeal of female schools much stronger than that of all male schools.
the only womens schools that i can think of that went coed during that time were vassar and conn college, though im sure i am missing quite a few.</p>
<p>"the natural camaradity among women is much stronger than that of men"</p>
<p>I'm guess you're a dude. Cuz trust me, females aren't that much simpler than males. If anything, women feel less competition amongst each other when there aren't males around, and that's just cultural. I think part of the thing is that yeah, women's colleges stayed under the premise that women still needed to be promoted in a society which was traditionally male-dominated. Women in the 60s/70s were fighting an uphill battle in coed schools to be recognized for all their accomplishments. Today, women still receive far fewer tenured positions in academia than do males, in spite of the fact a similar number of females are getting PhDs. A Berkeley professor did a study showing that on average, female /professors/ at Berkeley spend 50 hours a week on housework and childcare -makes it pretty darn hard to compete in the professional arena. A lot of our social and economic institutions are still not set up to give women equal footing with men, given their truly natural, biological differences (like childbearing).</p>
<p>^^ok i guess i didnt explain very well what i wanted to say. when i talked about the camaradity, i meant that women are much closer and supportive of each other, which is why womens schools are still popular.</p>
<p>yeah, but i mean, that's a /huge/ generality that dudes often believe about chicks. but in many instances, women can be horrible to each other. i've heard people make the same generalities about males, that males bond better than females do. i think that just goes to show that either generality is difficult to make. the women who /go/ to women's schools, generally like camaradity with women and see value in that education. but overall, i think women's schools have more to do with male vs. female conflict than they do with "women's nature" or whatever</p>
<p>arcadia - I think your rankings show some of the bias in most of these rankings (US News exluded). All of the schools that appeared on all the lists were in the NE or Cali. The top schools by numbers are all Northeast schools followed by California schools. Look how low comparatively, the top southern schools are (Davidson and Washington and Lee) when they are probably on the level, when you take away the bias, of higher ranked NE schools like Vassar.</p>
<p>maybe this is less of a "NE bias" issue than it is the fact that selectivity is taken so much into account. b/c the NE and west coast have the largest populations, so the most people apply to those schools. whether you think selectivity ought or ought not to be a factor, is a whole other debate</p>
<p>I really think huskem's rankings are about dead-on :)
I'd try my own ranking, but it would be almost the same as huskem's, and I'd be highly biased in favour of Wesleyan :P</p>