How many colleges are "better" than Williams?

[Anonymous]

Keep in mind that Williams, and many other top LACs, has an extremely high percentage of recruited athletes. Near 40% of every class, I think. This may or may not be a point in its favor.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Williams is around Dartmouth/Penn/Brown level. My Ivy pecking order goes H>Princeton>Y>Columbia>Penn>D>B>Cornell

There are only three other LACs that I'd call equal, not better or worse, and that's Amherst, Swarthmore, and Pomona. Pomona in particular is a rising star in the same way Stanford is overtaking Harvard in many aspects. They were the most selective LAC by acceptance rate, had a 55% yield for their recent class (much higher than Swarthmore's 40% or Williams 45%), they enrolled the most diverse student body of any top LAC in their recent class, and their endowment per student is the largest of the four, fifth only to HYPS. With the Forbes rankings I think they'll only get more selective. The 5 Claremont Colleges are also selective, with 4 of the 5 representing the lowest acceptance rate among top 50, non-military LACs, and Scripps the second most selective women's college after Barnard.

Williams is definitely more prestigious and has a richer history of successful alum than Pomona, however.

Bowdoin, Carleton, and Middlebury aren't far behind (comparable to places like Rice, Emory, Vanderbilt in rank), though they're poorer on an endowment per capita basis and not as selective.

You're over-analyzing this.

What an odd comment. I appreciate the thoughtful post PP!

NP here -- "Williams is definitely more prestigious" is thoughtful?

I don't think that comment is off. Pomona is a more recent rise than Williams. I mean, it does much more poorly than Williams on US News Ranking for one reason- peer assessment. Williams peer assessment is a 4.7 compared to Pomona's 4.3. And guidance counselors rated Williams #3 out of all LACs compared to #15 for Pomona.

I could see Pomona becoming as prestigious in the coming years, however.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Williams gets mega respect from anyone in the know. Flyover trash and rubes are the only morons who don't know Williams is one of the finest schools in the world.

Very, very few human beings have heard of it.

The humans I care to associate and converse with know about Williams. I don't care what middle management, flyover, poor schmucks think of it.

+10000

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Williams gets mega respect from anyone in the know. Flyover trash and rubes are the only morons who don't know Williams is one of the finest schools in the world.

Very, very few human beings have heard of it.

I went to one of the schools under discussion and no one in my home town had heard of it. People kept saying if I studied hard maybe I could transfer into the local community college. (particularly funny because--really--did they think the community college rejected anyone?). Most of them probably hadn't heard of Yale, though, which is where I did my graduate work.
But everyone's heard of Harvard! And they also knew any school with a decent basketball team.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Williams gets mega respect from anyone in the know. Flyover trash and rubes are the only morons who don't know Williams is one of the finest schools in the world.

Very, very few human beings have heard of it.

Imagine how low its acceptance rate would be if it were as well known among the populace as HYP.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Williams gets mega respect from anyone in the know. Flyover trash and rubes are the only morons who don't know Williams is one of the finest schools in the world.

Very, very few human beings have heard of it.

Imagine how low its acceptance rate would be if it were as well known among the populace as HYP.

It'd be around Dartmouth's level (~10%), honestly. The college is so isolated that it turns off a lot of applicants. Williams gets almost 1000-1500 less applicants than ASP, even though it consistently does better on the most well-known rankings (US News, Forbes). The other three are less isolated and have additional consortia systems to give more resources.

[Anonymous]

This entire thread is a case study in splitting hairs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Williams is around Dartmouth/Penn/Brown level. My Ivy pecking order goes H>Princeton>Y>Columbia>Penn>D>B>Cornell

There are only three other LACs that I'd call equal, not better or worse, and that's Amherst, Swarthmore, and Pomona. Pomona in particular is a rising star in the same way Stanford is overtaking Harvard in many aspects. They were the most selective LAC by acceptance rate, had a 55% yield for their recent class (much higher than Swarthmore's 40% or Williams 45%), they enrolled the most diverse student body of any top LAC in their recent class, and their endowment per student is the largest of the four, fifth only to HYPS. With the Forbes rankings I think they'll only get more selective. The 5 Claremont Colleges are also selective, with 4 of the 5 representing the lowest acceptance rate among top 50, non-military LACs, and Scripps the second most selective women's college after Barnard.

Williams is definitely more prestigious and has a richer history of successful alum than Pomona, however.

Bowdoin, Carleton, and Middlebury aren't far behind (comparable to places like Rice, Emory, Vanderbilt in rank), though they're poorer on an endowment per capita basis and not as selective.

You're over-analyzing this.

What an odd comment. I appreciate the thoughtful post PP!

NP here -- "Williams is definitely more prestigious" is thoughtful?

I don't think that comment is off. Pomona is a more recent rise than Williams. I mean, it does much more poorly than Williams on US News Ranking for one reason- peer assessment. Williams peer assessment is a 4.7 compared to Pomona's 4.3. And guidance counselors rated Williams #3 out of all LACs compared to #15 for Pomona.

I could see Pomona becoming as prestigious in the coming years, however.

Prestige means nothing without context -- it's in the eye of the beholder. Prestigious among graduate schools in art history? Among recruiters for investment banks? Among shoppers at Whole Foods perusing college decals in the parking lot?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This entire thread is a case study in splitting hairs.

The narcissism of small differences -- Freud (but, hey, who cares what he thought? He didn't go to HYP.

[Anonymous]

I mean, yes, to the PP above. AWS are extremely prestigious in all of those contexts. Investment bank recruiters and art history phd programs alike. Not to belabor this.

[Anonymous]

This entire discussion is nonsensical. A school is only "better" if the area you want to study is "better." If you want to study mathematics and the mathematics department is marginal, then no it is not a better school for you. People get too caught up in names when they should be researching the underlying departments when making their decisions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This entire discussion is nonsensical. A school is only "better" if the area you want to study is "better." If you want to study mathematics and the mathematics department is marginal, then no it is not a better school for you. People get too caught up in names when they should be researching the underlying departments when making their decisions.

I get your premise for larger state schools, but it doesn't hold at all for liberal arts colleges and the ivies.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This entire discussion is nonsensical. A school is only "better" if the area you want to study is "better." If you want to study mathematics and the mathematics department is marginal, then no it is not a better school for you. People get too caught up in names when they should be researching the underlying departments when making their decisions.

I get your premise for larger state schools, but it doesn't hold at all for liberal arts colleges and the ivies.

Actually, PP's point holds even more true for LACs because faculties are so small. A LAC could have a great physics program but no one who specializes in the kind of bio your DC is interested in. Or a poli sci department that's strong in IR and quantitative methods, but your kid loves con law and political theory. Ivies fall somewhere in the middle wrt size -- most fields/subfields will at least be represented on the faculty, but departmental (and subfield) strength can vary pretty significantly. I ended up choosing between the two Ivies I got into based on across-the-board strength vs strength in the one field I thought I was most interested in but no appealing Plan B if I changed my mind. Good call, since I did change fields.

So, yeah, look at departments. But don't just focus on a single one.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This entire discussion is nonsensical. A school is only "better" if the area you want to study is "better." If you want to study mathematics and the mathematics department is marginal, then no it is not a better school for you. People get too caught up in names when they should be researching the underlying departments when making their decisions.

I get your premise for larger state schools, but it doesn't hold at all for liberal arts colleges and the ivies.

Actually, PP's point holds even more true for LACs because faculties are so small. A LAC could have a great physics program but no one who specializes in the kind of bio your DC is interested in. Or a poli sci department that's strong in IR and quantitative methods, but your kid loves con law and political theory. Ivies fall somewhere in the middle wrt size -- most fields/subfields will at least be represented on the faculty, but departmental (and subfield) strength can vary pretty significantly. I ended up choosing between the two Ivies I got into based on across-the-board strength vs strength in the one field I thought I was most interested in but no appealing Plan B if I changed my mind. Good call, since I did change fields.

So, yeah, look at departments. But don't just focus on a single one.

Ehh. I know a kid from Pomona who's doing a mechanical engineering PhD at MIT this year. Pomona doesn't have engineering. And I know another at Amherst who was funded for a summer experience at U'Chicago since they had a research topic he was interested in that Amherst didn't. He's going to Stanford for a neuroscience PhD. Yet another is a CS major at Swarthmore, and their CS program, to put it mildly, is lackluster. Still got to intern at Google last summer.

These schools and many other top liberal art colleges, despite their lack of resources compared to universities, still end up preparing their grads well. They open doors regardless of how good their individual departments are. Furthermore, their emphasis on exploration and breadth means they give much more fluidity in the courses and research endeavors students can access than those at a state university. Top Ivies like Yale and Columbia are modeled after the liberal arts college. And while they certainly offer more classes, let us not forget that most undergraduates take only around 30-40 classes total in their four years. The difference between a school like Williams offering 700 courses and another like Yale offering 2000 really isn't that vast for the real experience of an undergrad.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Williams gets mega respect from anyone in the know. Flyover trash and rubes are the only morons who don't know Williams is one of the finest schools in the world.

Very, very few human beings have heard of it.

Imagine how low its acceptance rate would be if it were as well known among the populace as HYP.

It'd be around Dartmouth's level (~10%), honestly. The college is so isolated that it turns off a lot of applicants. Williams gets almost 1000-1500 less applicants than ASP, even though it consistently does better on the most well-known rankings (US News, Forbes). The other three are less isolated and have additional consortia systems to give more resources.

Isolated colleges produce better students, better college experiences, deeper friendships. College isn't so you can be a Kardashian popping bottles in some nightclub.