T20 or T5 lacs

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:People who insist upon situating LACs in opposition to universities reveal their ignorance and/or lack of intelligence. No one--neither classmates, nor parents nor faculty--at my Ivy feeder alma mater would have blinked an eye at anyone choosing, say, Williams over Yale (and some of my classmates ended up at an Ivy precisely because they didn't get accepted to, say, Amherst or Swarthmore), in no small part because they were wise enough to understand that the value of these schools is in the quality of education and opportunities they offer and that on those grounds, any differences between them were negligible because anyone "worth" impressing would recognize the value of all of these schools. Plenty of students at my LAC chose it over an Ivy or Stanford. Those in my social circles--people who by and large have attended "top" schools--would think very poorly of anyone who insisted that WUSTL was better than Bowdoin just because the former is a university ranked in the top 20. More than a few of my friends who graduated from Ivies have observed that, as with any school, fit matters for those who have the luxury of choosing where to matriculate based upon metrics other than finances.

I agree with most everything you say. But at the same time (for mainly all the wrong reasons, with the exception of the crazy athlete proportions at SLACs), there has been a moderate prestige shift in the past decade or two away from SLACs and towards national universities. The reality, unfortunately, is that a smaller proportion of kids at top SLACs chose it over the top Ivys than in your time. To be sure, nobody blinks an eye these days at someone choosing, say, Swarthmore over Penn, or Williams over Brown. But Amherst over Harvard? Not so sure.

According to whom? Do you have a source? I think so much depends, as a PP alluded to above, on your social/class/economic circles. For better or for worse, in "elite" prep school circles there has been little if any change in perception of prestige that I've noticed over the last forty years. The only major shift that I can think that would affect changes in perception of prestige would be due to the masses who rely too heavily on social media for information.

This is not complicated: top kids — from all social strata — are voting with their feet in the direction of universities (relative to before; not all, certainly). This is common knowledge in admissions circles. Rest assured, WASP still has kids who chose them over the Ivys; but far fewer than you may remember. Go ahead, ask someone from your circles attending these schools (who will know where their peers were admitted), and compare and contrast to your day: you will find a marked difference. And, no, I am not talking about first gen kids or kids receiving financial aid (who tend to be even more university focused), nor am I talking about ED-applying athletes.

As for elite prep school circles, you are clearly out of touch. You may likely encountering parents from certain circles rationalizing “lesser” choices (not objectively, but as their kids define them) as equally desirable. Of course, in your time, they were; but you are missing the nuance here: these parents don’t really believe it — even if their parents did.

Rest assured that you are wrong; very wrong. From someone who runs in the circles of the elite prep schools on the West Coast nobody is rationalizing “lesser” choices. Rather, they are quietly laughing about the ignorance of so many around them. The crazy obsession towards the T20 by certain groups just gets a knowing head shake since they are pretty clueless of the elite LACs as an alternative.

[Anonymous]

SLACs have far more name recognition now than they did 20 years ago. The rise of rankings (mostly US News) has given them a lot more notoriety. More publicly available info on grad school placement and the trend toward far more people going to grad school has also helped them.

I worked in admissions at a highly ranked national university professional school and there hasn't been any shift in how they've viewed top SLACs and T20 schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:People who insist upon situating LACs in opposition to universities reveal their ignorance and/or lack of intelligence. No one--neither classmates, nor parents nor faculty--at my Ivy feeder alma mater would have blinked an eye at anyone choosing, say, Williams over Yale (and some of my classmates ended up at an Ivy precisely because they didn't get accepted to, say, Amherst or Swarthmore), in no small part because they were wise enough to understand that the value of these schools is in the quality of education and opportunities they offer and that on those grounds, any differences between them were negligible because anyone "worth" impressing would recognize the value of all of these schools. Plenty of students at my LAC chose it over an Ivy or Stanford. Those in my social circles--people who by and large have attended "top" schools--would think very poorly of anyone who insisted that WUSTL was better than Bowdoin just because the former is a university ranked in the top 20. More than a few of my friends who graduated from Ivies have observed that, as with any school, fit matters for those who have the luxury of choosing where to matriculate based upon metrics other than finances.

I agree with most everything you say. But at the same time (for mainly all the wrong reasons, with the exception of the crazy athlete proportions at SLACs), there has been a moderate prestige shift in the past decade or two away from SLACs and towards national universities. The reality, unfortunately, is that a smaller proportion of kids at top SLACs chose it over the top Ivys than in your time. To be sure, nobody blinks an eye these days at someone choosing, say, Swarthmore over Penn, or Williams over Brown. But Amherst over Harvard? Not so sure.

According to whom? Do you have a source? I think so much depends, as a PP alluded to above, on your social/class/economic circles. For better or for worse, in "elite" prep school circles there has been little if any change in perception of prestige that I've noticed over the last forty years. The only major shift that I can think that would affect changes in perception of prestige would be due to the masses who rely too heavily on social media for information.

This is not complicated: top kids — from all social strata — are voting with their feet in the direction of universities (relative to before; not all, certainly). This is common knowledge in admissions circles. Rest assured, WASP still has kids who chose them over the Ivys; but far fewer than you may remember. Go ahead, ask someone from your circles attending these schools (who will know where their peers were admitted), and compare and contrast to your day: you will find a marked difference. And, no, I am not talking about first gen kids or kids receiving financial aid (who tend to be even more university focused), nor am I talking about ED-applying athletes.

As for elite prep school circles, you are clearly out of touch. You may likely encountering parents from certain circles rationalizing “lesser” choices (not objectively, but as their kids define them) as equally desirable. Of course, in your time, they were; but you are missing the nuance here: these parents don’t really believe it — even if their parents did.

Rest assured that you are wrong; very wrong. From someone who runs in the circles of the elite prep schools on the West Coast nobody is rationalizing “lesser” choices. Rather, they are quietly laughing about the ignorance of so many around them. The crazy obsession towards the T20 by certain groups just gets a knowing head shake since they are pretty clueless of the elite LACs as an alternative.

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:People who insist upon situating LACs in opposition to universities reveal their ignorance and/or lack of intelligence. No one--neither classmates, nor parents nor faculty--at my Ivy feeder alma mater would have blinked an eye at anyone choosing, say, Williams over Yale (and some of my classmates ended up at an Ivy precisely because they didn't get accepted to, say, Amherst or Swarthmore), in no small part because they were wise enough to understand that the value of these schools is in the quality of education and opportunities they offer and that on those grounds, any differences between them were negligible because anyone "worth" impressing would recognize the value of all of these schools. Plenty of students at my LAC chose it over an Ivy or Stanford. Those in my social circles--people who by and large have attended "top" schools--would think very poorly of anyone who insisted that WUSTL was better than Bowdoin just because the former is a university ranked in the top 20. More than a few of my friends who graduated from Ivies have observed that, as with any school, fit matters for those who have the luxury of choosing where to matriculate based upon metrics other than finances.

I agree with most everything you say. But at the same time (for mainly all the wrong reasons, with the exception of the crazy athlete proportions at SLACs), there has been a moderate prestige shift in the past decade or two away from SLACs and towards national universities. The reality, unfortunately, is that a smaller proportion of kids at top SLACs chose it over the top Ivys than in your time. To be sure, nobody blinks an eye these days at someone choosing, say, Swarthmore over Penn, or Williams over Brown. But Amherst over Harvard? Not so sure.

According to whom? Do you have a source? I think so much depends, as a PP alluded to above, on your social/class/economic circles. For better or for worse, in "elite" prep school circles there has been little if any change in perception of prestige that I've noticed over the last forty years. The only major shift that I can think that would affect changes in perception of prestige would be due to the masses who rely too heavily on social media for information.

Well, that is a larger issue. The "elite prep school circle" is becoming a ghetto. It's a tiny little bubble with rapidly declining relevance. I'm an outsider looking in. Not my world. But good golly, the prep school SLAC parents are delulu about the modern world. I'll give them Williams, Harvey Mudd, Pomona, Swarthmore, Bowdoin. But beyond that, it's all very precious and the decline in respect for the old liberal arts colleges is precipitous.

Which is too bad. SLACS are a good space some students. But...perception. D3 lax bros and delicate flowers.

You have it backwards. There are dozens of great LACs for undergraduate education quality. There are a handful of universities that manage to reasonably balance undergrad focus against their research and graduate prioritization.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why people look down on T5 lacs? It seems the majority of kids (and parents) desire T20 university.

Most people don't. But you're on the internet the where loud, simplistic, and boorish opinions often seem to dominate over things like nuance, fact-based knowledge, and humility. Both T20 universities and T5 LACs are great, and 99% of high school students would be extraordinarily fortunate to attend either.

This!

But there is a particular strain of LAC-bashers on these threads, who simply don't get their value. I think the majority of those posters were not educated in the US to begin with, so just think the whole concept of LACs is weird. They're only familiar with, and understand, big national universities.

I think the bashing is part of the Trumpie effort to tear down any institutions that could keep them from establishing a totalitarian dictatorship.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:SLACs have far more name recognition now than they did 20 years ago. The rise of rankings (mostly US News) has given them a lot more notoriety. More publicly available info on grad school placement and the trend toward far more people going to grad school has also helped them.

I worked in admissions at a highly ranked national university professional school and there hasn't been any shift in how they've viewed top SLACs and T20 schools.

DP. I have family who worked at a T10 university and the clear preference among their faculty and staff, some of the most informed people in the industry, was to send their own kids to LACs. These are people who easily could have found for their kids incredible research projects or internships to dazzle an admissions committee anywhere.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:People who insist upon situating LACs in opposition to universities reveal their ignorance and/or lack of intelligence. No one--neither classmates, nor parents nor faculty--at my Ivy feeder alma mater would have blinked an eye at anyone choosing, say, Williams over Yale (and some of my classmates ended up at an Ivy precisely because they didn't get accepted to, say, Amherst or Swarthmore), in no small part because they were wise enough to understand that the value of these schools is in the quality of education and opportunities they offer and that on those grounds, any differences between them were negligible because anyone "worth" impressing would recognize the value of all of these schools. Plenty of students at my LAC chose it over an Ivy or Stanford. Those in my social circles--people who by and large have attended "top" schools--would think very poorly of anyone who insisted that WUSTL was better than Bowdoin just because the former is a university ranked in the top 20. More than a few of my friends who graduated from Ivies have observed that, as with any school, fit matters for those who have the luxury of choosing where to matriculate based upon metrics other than finances.

I agree with most everything you say. But at the same time (for mainly all the wrong reasons, with the exception of the crazy athlete proportions at SLACs), there has been a moderate prestige shift in the past decade or two away from SLACs and towards national universities. The reality, unfortunately, is that a smaller proportion of kids at top SLACs chose it over the top Ivys than in your time. To be sure, nobody blinks an eye these days at someone choosing, say, Swarthmore over Penn, or Williams over Brown. But Amherst over Harvard? Not so sure.

According to whom? Do you have a source? I think so much depends, as a PP alluded to above, on your social/class/economic circles. For better or for worse, in "elite" prep school circles there has been little if any change in perception of prestige that I've noticed over the last forty years. The only major shift that I can think that would affect changes in perception of prestige would be due to the masses who rely too heavily on social media for information.

This is not complicated: top kids — from all social strata — are voting with their feet in the direction of universities (relative to before; not all, certainly). This is common knowledge in admissions circles. Rest assured, WASP still has kids who chose them over the Ivys; but far fewer than you may remember. Go ahead, ask someone from your circles attending these schools (who will know where their peers were admitted), and compare and contrast to your day: you will find a marked difference. And, no, I am not talking about first gen kids or kids receiving financial aid (who tend to be even more university focused), nor am I talking about ED-applying athletes.

As for elite prep school circles, you are clearly out of touch. You may likely encountering parents from certain circles rationalizing “lesser” choices (not objectively, but as their kids define them) as equally desirable. Of course, in your time, they were; but you are missing the nuance here: these parents don’t really believe it — even if their parents did.

Sorta like the most popular movie a given year is the most intelligent one?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What are the T5 Lacs?

in no particular order
swarthmore
williams
bowdoin
pomona
amherst
wellesley

yes, there are 6 not 5

There are 5, Bowdoin should be taken off the list.

Wellesley easy from my private. Single sex not appealing to many.