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.