Williams vs. Carleton vs. Middlebury vs Pomona vs Swarthmore

[Anonymous]

My son is a junior at Williams.

Academically he couldn't do better, and the level of one-on-one personal contact with professors is amazing. He has had classes with only 6 students in the room (no missing classes). He's in a relatively small department and this year the department named him a faculty-student liaison. He came in as a student athlete (about a third to half the students do in some way), and his grades are even better than they were in high school because of the intense academic environment.

He is salivating to apply to grad schools.

Middlebury, Carleton & Swarthmore are also fantastic schools.

Pomona is the wild card here, being on the West Coast.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My son is a junior at Williams.

Academically he couldn't do better, and the level of one-on-one personal contact with professors is amazing. He has had classes with only 6 students in the room (no missing classes). He's in a relatively small department and this year the department named him a faculty-student liaison. He came in as a student athlete (about a third to half the students do in some way), and his grades are even better than they were in high school because of the intense academic environment.

He is salivating to apply to grad schools.

Middlebury, Carleton & Swarthmore are also fantastic schools.

Pomona is the wild card here, being on the West Coast.

Carleton is in the Midwest. What do you mean by a wild card?

[Anonymous]

My middle daughter visited Williams, Swarthmore, Middlebury. She crossed Middlebury off. Her view was nothing but rich prep kids more than Williams. She applied to Swat, Williams and got into both. She ranked Williams over Swat.
Current son has visited Williams, Carleton, Pomona. We are going to Swat this summer. He ranks Williams 1st, Carleton 2nd, Pomona 3rd. He really feels he will miss winter if he goes to Pomona.
But I cannot over emphasize all are great schools and you can't go wrong with any of the choices.

[Anonymous]

Probably too late for this year, but for next year can continue. Can't agree more with last post. We have 3 kids and are from the Midwest. All 3 felt Middlebury was a school of too many rich prep school kids who wanted to ski. Last son is starting senior year of HS in August. He also felt he would miss winter at Pomona. Currently he has Williams 1, Amherst 2nd, Bowdoin 3rd and Carleton 4th. He has not yet visited Swarthmore.
Middle child got into all and ranked Amherst 1st, Williams 2nd, Bowdoin 3rd, Swarthmore 4th. Of note she really, really liked Bowdoin, but just felt it was the least racially, socially diverse of all the schools.

[Anonymous]

09:09, what differentiated Bowdoin from Middlebury, since they are purported to have very similar student bodies?

[Anonymous]

To 00:38 sorry for late response, I am not on here to frequently. Differences between Bowdoin and Middlebury. 1st the student bodies are different Middlebury has a much larger percentage of international students. Next the setting is different. Middlebury really is in the middle of no where isolated. Some feel that the isolation can lead to a stronger sense of community bonding. Bowdoin is in a quaint small town with more resources. We found the Bowdoin campus more compact and Middlebury spread out. If you trust all the survey's the food at Bowdoin is the best in the country. Also Middlebury had a January requirement I think. These are the basic "factual" differences in my view. But in the end it all boils down to feel. Any student can get a world class education at either school. I cannot emphasize this enough. I graduated from Williams in 1982. Being from Missouri nobody had ever heard of Williams. However when I applied to medical school every single school knew of Williams and were impressed. The University of Missouri was impressed, Cornell, Washington University, University of Penn, Northwestern all felt that Williams was great. That is all that mattered to me. I have to assume the same is still true today. Go where you are going to have the best time. I believe every graduate program will look at a student with same grades and same test scores the same if one is from Bowdoin and another is from Penn.

[Anonymous]

bump

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:To 00:38 sorry for late response, I am not on here to frequently. Differences between Bowdoin and Middlebury. 1st the student bodies are different Middlebury has a much larger percentage of international students. Next the setting is different. Middlebury really is in the middle of no where isolated. Some feel that the isolation can lead to a stronger sense of community bonding. Bowdoin is in a quaint small town with more resources. We found the Bowdoin campus more compact and Middlebury spread out. If you trust all the survey's the food at Bowdoin is the best in the country. Also Middlebury had a January requirement I think. These are the basic "factual" differences in my view. But in the end it all boils down to feel. Any student can get a world class education at either school. I cannot emphasize this enough. I graduated from Williams in 1982. Being from Missouri nobody had ever heard of Williams. However when I applied to medical school every single school knew of Williams and were impressed. The University of Missouri was impressed, Cornell, Washington University, University of Penn, Northwestern all felt that Williams was great. That is all that mattered to me. I have to assume the same is still true today. Go where you are going to have the best time. I believe every graduate program will look at a student with same grades and same test scores the same if one is from Bowdoin and another is from Penn.

Sorry, but this is total bs. How would you know this ?

Medical schools do not care where one attended undergraduate school; medical schools care about an applicant's GPA, MCAT score, interview, and involvement in & exposure to the practice of medicine.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My son is a junior at Williams.

Academically he couldn't do better, and the level of one-on-one personal contact with professors is amazing. He has had classes with only 6 students in the room (no missing classes). He's in a relatively small department and this year the department named him a faculty-student liaison. He came in as a student athlete (about a third to half the students do in some way), and his grades are even better than they were in high school because of the intense academic environment.

He is salivating to apply to grad schools.

Middlebury, Carleton & Swarthmore are also fantastic schools.

Pomona is the wild card here, being on the West Coast.

Small classes can also be found at many other LACs and at many elite private National Universities such as U Chicago, Northwestern, and Columbia. (At Northwestern some classes consisted of just 5 students.However, intro courses such as the introductory econ courses for freshmen did have over 100 students--something that would never happen at Williams College or at any elite LAC with which I am familiar.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To 00:38 sorry for late response, I am not on here to frequently. Differences between Bowdoin and Middlebury. 1st the student bodies are different Middlebury has a much larger percentage of international students. Next the setting is different. Middlebury really is in the middle of no where isolated. Some feel that the isolation can lead to a stronger sense of community bonding. Bowdoin is in a quaint small town with more resources. We found the Bowdoin campus more compact and Middlebury spread out. If you trust all the survey's the food at Bowdoin is the best in the country. Also Middlebury had a January requirement I think. These are the basic "factual" differences in my view. But in the end it all boils down to feel. Any student can get a world class education at either school. I cannot emphasize this enough. I graduated from Williams in 1982. Being from Missouri nobody had ever heard of Williams. However when I applied to medical school every single school knew of Williams and were impressed. The University of Missouri was impressed, Cornell, Washington University, University of Penn, Northwestern all felt that Williams was great. That is all that mattered to me. I have to assume the same is still true today. Go where you are going to have the best time. I believe every graduate program will look at a student with same grades and same test scores the same if one is from Bowdoin and another is from Penn.

Sorry, but this is total bs. How would you know this ?

Medical schools do not care where one attended undergraduate school; medical schools care about an applicant's GPA, MCAT score, interview, and involvement in & exposure to the practice of medicine.

Not strictly true. Med schools love high-achieving humanities majors too. They are admitted at an equal rate, and don't necessarily have much "involvement in the practice of medicine."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:For all those curious, she committed to Carleton! She fell in love with that place and its people most out of all her choices. She found the professors to be particularly engaging, and she received a lot of communication from folks at Carleton encouraging her to take advantage of the opportunities there. She was hesitant about turning down W/P/S due to perceived prestige, but she ultimately realized it was about where she fit in best.

We're so excited! Yay!

So she's graduated by now - hope it was a great experience. If I'd had the choices your DD had I would have picked Middlebury (it was my first choice at the time). In retrospect I am lucky I didn't have the choice because I went to Carleton and loved it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To 00:38 sorry for late response, I am not on here to frequently. Differences between Bowdoin and Middlebury. 1st the student bodies are different Middlebury has a much larger percentage of international students. Next the setting is different. Middlebury really is in the middle of no where isolated. Some feel that the isolation can lead to a stronger sense of community bonding. Bowdoin is in a quaint small town with more resources. We found the Bowdoin campus more compact and Middlebury spread out. If you trust all the survey's the food at Bowdoin is the best in the country. Also Middlebury had a January requirement I think. These are the basic "factual" differences in my view. But in the end it all boils down to feel. Any student can get a world class education at either school. I cannot emphasize this enough. I graduated from Williams in 1982. Being from Missouri nobody had ever heard of Williams. However when I applied to medical school every single school knew of Williams and were impressed. The University of Missouri was impressed, Cornell, Washington University, University of Penn, Northwestern all felt that Williams was great. That is all that mattered to me. I have to assume the same is still true today. Go where you are going to have the best time. I believe every graduate program will look at a student with same grades and same test scores the same if one is from Bowdoin and another is from Penn.

Sorry, but this is total bs. How would you know this ?

Medical schools do not care where one attended undergraduate school; medical schools care about an applicant's GPA, MCAT score, interview, and involvement in & exposure to the practice of medicine.

Not strictly true. Med schools love high-achieving humanities majors too. They are admitted at an equal rate, and don't necessarily have much "involvement in the practice of medicine."

Not sure when this became a discussion about humanities v. other majors.

Two family members were heads of med schools. One med school at a major university, the other was primarily regional. If you don't think that demonstrated exposure to, and demonstrated interest in, the practice of medicine is an important admissions factor then you are wrong.

Again, only you brought up the humanities major issue. Humanities is fine IF one's MCAT score is within the acceptable range. Nevertheless, I feel confident that you are unfamiliar with medical school admissions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My middle daughter visited Williams, Swarthmore, Middlebury. She crossed Middlebury off. Her view was nothing but rich prep kids more than Williams. She applied to Swat, Williams and got into both. She ranked Williams over Swat.
Current son has visited Williams, Carleton, Pomona. We are going to Swat this summer. He ranks Williams 1st, Carleton 2nd, Pomona 3rd. He really feels he will miss winter if he goes to Pomona.
But I cannot over emphasize all are great schools and you can't go wrong with any of the choices.

Don’t apply to pomona if you don’t really want to go out west. Waste of an app.

[Anonymous]

I like reading the posts about Williams. I turned it down for Princeton years ago primarily because it was so remote and it felt almost impossible at the time to turn Princeton down, but it seemed like the epitome of a SLAC experience to me (had no other connection to the school and only visited it once, so most of what I knew about Williams came from guides and from one alumni interviewer who was fantastic). Often wondered what it would have been like to go there and happy to hear many who did go there had the type of positive experience I’ve always imagined.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I like reading the posts about Williams. I turned it down for Princeton years ago primarily because it was so remote and it felt almost impossible at the time to turn Princeton down, but it seemed like the epitome of a SLAC experience to me (had no other connection to the school and only visited it once, so most of what I knew about Williams came from guides and from one alumni interviewer who was fantastic). Often wondered what it would have been like to go there and happy to hear many who did go there had the type of positive experience I’ve always imagined.

BRAG POST