Which among WASP would you choose to ED and why?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:oh sweet jesus who cares about these little lacs!

People looking for a career in IB or Consulting should absolutely care as some of these schools are stunningly successful in those spaces. They all happen to excel in placement into top grad schools, top law schools, and top Med schools as well. So I guess that any high performing kid looking for a high paying career outside of CS and engineering should have the top SLACs on their lists.

People used to have dreams. IB is a soul crushing waste of talent.

[Anonymous]

All of this finance bickering yet none of these students at WASP are getting a quant finance position, where the real money is made these days.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:[twitter]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Don't do ED if you are not really committed. I keep hearing more stories of regret and no college is a golden ticket.
I think AWS is a better acronym (and more modern in our tech-heavy world). Bluntly, Pomona hasn't really been a peer of the other 3 any more than Wellesley or Bowdoin. Depending on the academic subject and career field, it isn't necessarily the best of the Claremont Colleges either. Even just in the rankings game, AWS are the only LACs USNWR has ever ranked 1st and none of them has ever been ranked below 4.

Personally, Swarthmore was clearly my favorite visiting those schools. Its campus is beautiful and its proximity to a city is a big plus for me. It has good STEM options too.

Williams felt isolated even when it wasn't winter. Amherst was nice but the town wasn't great and I ended up preferring Northampton and Smith's campus to Amherst's. The 7 Sisters schools are excellent options and have great name recognition for LACs too.

Your entire Pomona commentary is strange. Overall, Pomona is the best 5C- there’s no competition unless your sole focus is economics or engineering. It has pretty clear academic reasons to be a peer and even superior often than other WASP schools.

Pomona has better outcomes than Bowdoin and Wellesley, similar outcomes to Swarthmore more than Williams (very Econ heavy).

+1, the line “Depending on the academic subject and career field, it isn't necessarily the best of the Claremont Colleges either” Was where I knew the PP was just speaking out of personal bias, because that is true of all the WASP. Williams isn’t #1 in almost any of the academic fields for lac => grad school, doesn’t make it a worse school, obviously. It also doesn’t have the best LAC department in every academic subject, nor do any of the WASP.

These days, Claremont McKenna is ranking #1 for LACs off to wall street and the average salary is very high, but it isn’t a holistic liberal arts college in the way Swat or Pomona are. It’s just a strange comparison- like trying to pin Dartmouth against Caltech.

Absolutely not, three Amherst, Williams, and Middlebury all place as well or better than CMC. You should be proud though, that is some pretty exceptional company for CMC.

Not if you actually look at data: https://www.collegetransitions.com/dataverse/top-feeders-banking. It is great that CMC is amazing at finance, but this is a particularly useless fact for a majority of liberal arts college students.

Here's a similar ranking for analyst placement for IB: https://www.peakframeworks.com/post/ib-target-schools

In the weighted ranking, you'll find Middlebury, CMC, Williams, and Amherst---in that order.

Why choose a list from 2023? Seems disingenuous.

Because that is the last time that PeakFrameworks updated their ranking. Nothing has changed in the past two years.

It added nothing to the discussion

I would say that it added additional confirmatory information that for IB and Consulting there are a half-dozen top SLACs which place extremely well. It also highlighted that for these types of positions Middlebury has risen to the point where it is as strong as any SLAC. Finally it highlights the fact that for kids shooting for careers in these fields the top SLACs also place as well (or better than) as many of the Ivy+ schools.

Middlebury results are skewed by kids with family connections taking care of their own. Williams and Amherst grads can break in to banking without these connections - huge difference

And your source for this is?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How would you evaluate Wall Street or Consulting outcomes for athletes at Colgate/Lehigh/Bucknell vs Williams/Middlebury/Amherst. My take was that the 3 Nescacs have significantly better outcomes, but DC had very impressive overnite visits at Patriot League schools and big selling point was alumni connections to land jobs. Does Williams (and Amherst) really provide that much better alumni help?

Here's some data for top consulting firms: https://www.collegetransitions.com/blog/from-college-to-consulting/

Top feeders to consulting industry (college: consulting rate per 1,000 grads):
Williams: 11.43
Middlebury: 8.66
Lehigh: 5.79
Amherst: 4.79
Bucknell: 2.52
Colgate: Not ranked

Pomona has a higher rate of consultants than Williams? That's really surprising and not talked about on this forum. I thought Pomona students were more like Swarthmore and academic?!

Very similar rates. CMC is tops when it comes to SLACs.

I didn't say they weren't. It's surprising Pomona and Williams even have comparable rates.

here’s the difference :

pomona is known for placing well in consulting

Williams is known for placing well in everything

Pomona places better than Williams in FAANG, most STEM disciplines, and the entertainment industry, not that Williams students are shut out of these fields. Both schools are stellar in PhD production across the board. But neither Pomona or Williams graduates are lacking in post-graduation opportunities in any field. It's more a question of what their graduates want to do and where do they want to do it. Ditto for Amherst, Swarthmore, and other top LACs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:[twitter]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Don't do ED if you are not really committed. I keep hearing more stories of regret and no college is a golden ticket.
I think AWS is a better acronym (and more modern in our tech-heavy world). Bluntly, Pomona hasn't really been a peer of the other 3 any more than Wellesley or Bowdoin. Depending on the academic subject and career field, it isn't necessarily the best of the Claremont Colleges either. Even just in the rankings game, AWS are the only LACs USNWR has ever ranked 1st and none of them has ever been ranked below 4.

Personally, Swarthmore was clearly my favorite visiting those schools. Its campus is beautiful and its proximity to a city is a big plus for me. It has good STEM options too.

Williams felt isolated even when it wasn't winter. Amherst was nice but the town wasn't great and I ended up preferring Northampton and Smith's campus to Amherst's. The 7 Sisters schools are excellent options and have great name recognition for LACs too.

Your entire Pomona commentary is strange. Overall, Pomona is the best 5C- there’s no competition unless your sole focus is economics or engineering. It has pretty clear academic reasons to be a peer and even superior often than other WASP schools.

Pomona has better outcomes than Bowdoin and Wellesley, similar outcomes to Swarthmore more than Williams (very Econ heavy).

+1, the line “Depending on the academic subject and career field, it isn't necessarily the best of the Claremont Colleges either” Was where I knew the PP was just speaking out of personal bias, because that is true of all the WASP. Williams isn’t #1 in almost any of the academic fields for lac => grad school, doesn’t make it a worse school, obviously. It also doesn’t have the best LAC department in every academic subject, nor do any of the WASP.

These days, Claremont McKenna is ranking #1 for LACs off to wall street and the average salary is very high, but it isn’t a holistic liberal arts college in the way Swat or Pomona are. It’s just a strange comparison- like trying to pin Dartmouth against Caltech.

Absolutely not, three Amherst, Williams, and Middlebury all place as well or better than CMC. You should be proud though, that is some pretty exceptional company for CMC.

Not if you actually look at data: https://www.collegetransitions.com/dataverse/top-feeders-banking. It is great that CMC is amazing at finance, but this is a particularly useless fact for a majority of liberal arts college students.

Here's a similar ranking for analyst placement for IB: https://www.peakframeworks.com/post/ib-target-schools

In the weighted ranking, you'll find Middlebury, CMC, Williams, and Amherst---in that order.

Why choose a list from 2023? Seems disingenuous.

Because that is the last time that PeakFrameworks updated their ranking. Nothing has changed in the past two years.

It added nothing to the discussion

I would say that it added additional confirmatory information that for IB and Consulting there are a half-dozen top SLACs which place extremely well. It also highlighted that for these types of positions Middlebury has risen to the point where it is as strong as any SLAC. Finally it highlights the fact that for kids shooting for careers in these fields the top SLACs also place as well (or better than) as many of the Ivy+ schools.

Middlebury results are skewed by kids with family connections taking care of their own. Williams and Amherst grads can break in to banking without these connections - huge difference

And your source for this is?

The same sources everyone else is using.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:All of this finance bickering yet none of these students at WASP are getting a quant finance position, where the real money is made these days.

I'm pretty sure that you are clueless because it you weren't you wouldn't even post something so irrelevant to this thread. I do agree with what you said but it actually hold true for undergraduates from pretty much anywhere because the vast majority of the truly high paying spots in quant finance (and high level AI) go to Phds. And, these schools do an outstanding job of placing kids into top Phd programs (including Math and CS) so maybe you are wrong after all. We just won't know for awhile.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:[twitter]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Don't do ED if you are not really committed. I keep hearing more stories of regret and no college is a golden ticket.
I think AWS is a better acronym (and more modern in our tech-heavy world). Bluntly, Pomona hasn't really been a peer of the other 3 any more than Wellesley or Bowdoin. Depending on the academic subject and career field, it isn't necessarily the best of the Claremont Colleges either. Even just in the rankings game, AWS are the only LACs USNWR has ever ranked 1st and none of them has ever been ranked below 4.

Personally, Swarthmore was clearly my favorite visiting those schools. Its campus is beautiful and its proximity to a city is a big plus for me. It has good STEM options too.

Williams felt isolated even when it wasn't winter. Amherst was nice but the town wasn't great and I ended up preferring Northampton and Smith's campus to Amherst's. The 7 Sisters schools are excellent options and have great name recognition for LACs too.

Your entire Pomona commentary is strange. Overall, Pomona is the best 5C- there’s no competition unless your sole focus is economics or engineering. It has pretty clear academic reasons to be a peer and even superior often than other WASP schools.

Pomona has better outcomes than Bowdoin and Wellesley, similar outcomes to Swarthmore more than Williams (very Econ heavy).

+1, the line “Depending on the academic subject and career field, it isn't necessarily the best of the Claremont Colleges either” Was where I knew the PP was just speaking out of personal bias, because that is true of all the WASP. Williams isn’t #1 in almost any of the academic fields for lac => grad school, doesn’t make it a worse school, obviously. It also doesn’t have the best LAC department in every academic subject, nor do any of the WASP.

These days, Claremont McKenna is ranking #1 for LACs off to wall street and the average salary is very high, but it isn’t a holistic liberal arts college in the way Swat or Pomona are. It’s just a strange comparison- like trying to pin Dartmouth against Caltech.

Absolutely not, three Amherst, Williams, and Middlebury all place as well or better than CMC. You should be proud though, that is some pretty exceptional company for CMC.

Not if you actually look at data: https://www.collegetransitions.com/dataverse/top-feeders-banking. It is great that CMC is amazing at finance, but this is a particularly useless fact for a majority of liberal arts college students.

Here's a similar ranking for analyst placement for IB: https://www.peakframeworks.com/post/ib-target-schools

In the weighted ranking, you'll find Middlebury, CMC, Williams, and Amherst---in that order.

Why choose a list from 2023? Seems disingenuous.

Because that is the last time that PeakFrameworks updated their ranking. Nothing has changed in the past two years.

It added nothing to the discussion

I would say that it added additional confirmatory information that for IB and Consulting there are a half-dozen top SLACs which place extremely well. It also highlighted that for these types of positions Middlebury has risen to the point where it is as strong as any SLAC. Finally it highlights the fact that for kids shooting for careers in these fields the top SLACs also place as well (or better than) as many of the Ivy+ schools.

Middlebury results are skewed by kids with family connections taking care of their own. Williams and Amherst grads can break in to banking without these connections - huge difference

And your source for this is?

The same sources everyone else is using.

I am pretty sure that pulling it out of his ass isn't the same sources that the other posters are using.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:All of this finance bickering yet none of these students at WASP are getting a quant finance position, where the real money is made these days.

I'm pretty sure that you are clueless because it you weren't you wouldn't even post something so irrelevant to this thread. I do agree with what you said but it actually hold true for undergraduates from pretty much anywhere because the vast majority of the truly high paying spots in quant finance (and high level AI) go to Phds. And, these schools do an outstanding job of placing kids into top Phd programs (including Math and CS) so maybe you are wrong after all. We just won't know for awhile.

Most of the PhD students getting into quant finance are from Research universities. You are much more likely to see a Princeton or MIT alum in the Princeton math PhD program than some williams alum. Williams students go to good math phd programs, but they're nowhere near the level of research university undergrads.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:[twitter]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Don't do ED if you are not really committed. I keep hearing more stories of regret and no college is a golden ticket.
I think AWS is a better acronym (and more modern in our tech-heavy world). Bluntly, Pomona hasn't really been a peer of the other 3 any more than Wellesley or Bowdoin. Depending on the academic subject and career field, it isn't necessarily the best of the Claremont Colleges either. Even just in the rankings game, AWS are the only LACs USNWR has ever ranked 1st and none of them has ever been ranked below 4.

Personally, Swarthmore was clearly my favorite visiting those schools. Its campus is beautiful and its proximity to a city is a big plus for me. It has good STEM options too.

Williams felt isolated even when it wasn't winter. Amherst was nice but the town wasn't great and I ended up preferring Northampton and Smith's campus to Amherst's. The 7 Sisters schools are excellent options and have great name recognition for LACs too.

Your entire Pomona commentary is strange. Overall, Pomona is the best 5C- there’s no competition unless your sole focus is economics or engineering. It has pretty clear academic reasons to be a peer and even superior often than other WASP schools.

Pomona has better outcomes than Bowdoin and Wellesley, similar outcomes to Swarthmore more than Williams (very Econ heavy).

+1, the line “Depending on the academic subject and career field, it isn't necessarily the best of the Claremont Colleges either” Was where I knew the PP was just speaking out of personal bias, because that is true of all the WASP. Williams isn’t #1 in almost any of the academic fields for lac => grad school, doesn’t make it a worse school, obviously. It also doesn’t have the best LAC department in every academic subject, nor do any of the WASP.

These days, Claremont McKenna is ranking #1 for LACs off to wall street and the average salary is very high, but it isn’t a holistic liberal arts college in the way Swat or Pomona are. It’s just a strange comparison- like trying to pin Dartmouth against Caltech.

Absolutely not, three Amherst, Williams, and Middlebury all place as well or better than CMC. You should be proud though, that is some pretty exceptional company for CMC.

Not if you actually look at data: https://www.collegetransitions.com/dataverse/top-feeders-banking. It is great that CMC is amazing at finance, but this is a particularly useless fact for a majority of liberal arts college students.

Here's a similar ranking for analyst placement for IB: https://www.peakframeworks.com/post/ib-target-schools

In the weighted ranking, you'll find Middlebury, CMC, Williams, and Amherst---in that order.

Why choose a list from 2023? Seems disingenuous.

Because that is the last time that PeakFrameworks updated their ranking. Nothing has changed in the past two years.

It added nothing to the discussion

I would say that it added additional confirmatory information that for IB and Consulting there are a half-dozen top SLACs which place extremely well. It also highlighted that for these types of positions Middlebury has risen to the point where it is as strong as any SLAC. Finally it highlights the fact that for kids shooting for careers in these fields the top SLACs also place as well (or better than) as many of the Ivy+ schools.

middlebury results are skewed by kids with family connections taking care of their own. Williams and Amherst grads can break in to banking without these connections - huge difference

I think that was true up to 10-15 years ago (and I am a Midd alum) but now I think the school stands on its own on The Street and the alumni network is very strong so that overcomes coming from nowhere.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:All of this finance bickering yet none of these students at WASP are getting a quant finance position, where the real money is made these days.

I'm pretty sure that you are clueless because it you weren't you wouldn't even post something so irrelevant to this thread. I do agree with what you said but it actually hold true for undergraduates from pretty much anywhere because the vast majority of the truly high paying spots in quant finance (and high level AI) go to Phds. And, these schools do an outstanding job of placing kids into top Phd programs (including Math and CS) so maybe you are wrong after all. We just won't know for awhile.

Most of the PhD students getting into quant finance are from Research universities. You are much more likely to see a Princeton or MIT alum in the Princeton math PhD program than some williams alum. Williams students go to good math phd programs, but they're nowhere near the level of research university undergrads.

https://today.williams.edu/announcements/williams-students-and-alumni-are-receiving-a-plethora-of-fellowships-and-scholarships-this-spring/
https://www.pomona.edu/news/2024/01/16-zoe-batterman-24-wins-churchill-scholarship
That same student...https://www.linkedin.com/in/zoë-batterman-071022171
https://math.williams.edu/majors/post-graduate-mathematics-major-plans/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:All of this finance bickering yet none of these students at WASP are getting a quant finance position, where the real money is made these days.

I'm pretty sure that you are clueless because it you weren't you wouldn't even post something so irrelevant to this thread. I do agree with what you said but it actually hold true for undergraduates from pretty much anywhere because the vast majority of the truly high paying spots in quant finance (and high level AI) go to Phds. And, these schools do an outstanding job of placing kids into top Phd programs (including Math and CS) so maybe you are wrong after all. We just won't know for awhile.

Most of the PhD students getting into quant finance are from Research universities. You are much more likely to see a Princeton or MIT alum in the Princeton math PhD program than some williams alum. Williams students go to good math phd programs, but they're nowhere near the level of research university undergrads.

Are you trying to say that top Swat and Williams Math undergraduates do not gain admission to top Math Phd programs? If that is what you are saying you would be wildly incorrect.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:All of this finance bickering yet none of these students at WASP are getting a quant finance position, where the real money is made these days.

I'm pretty sure that you are clueless because it you weren't you wouldn't even post something so irrelevant to this thread. I do agree with what you said but it actually hold true for undergraduates from pretty much anywhere because the vast majority of the truly high paying spots in quant finance (and high level AI) go to Phds. And, these schools do an outstanding job of placing kids into top Phd programs (including Math and CS) so maybe you are wrong after all. We just won't know for awhile.

Most of the PhD students getting into quant finance are from Research universities. You are much more likely to see a Princeton or MIT alum in the Princeton math PhD program than some williams alum. Williams students go to good math phd programs, but they're nowhere near the level of research university undergrads.

Are you trying to say that top Swat and Williams Math undergraduates do not gain admission to top Math Phd programs? If that is what you are saying you would be wildly incorrect.

At the level of peers at Berkeley, Stanford, Princeton, and MIT? Absolutely not. They get into the decent phd programs, but they don't go to Princeton or MIT for math.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:All of this finance bickering yet none of these students at WASP are getting a quant finance position, where the real money is made these days.

I'm pretty sure that you are clueless because it you weren't you wouldn't even post something so irrelevant to this thread. I do agree with what you said but it actually hold true for undergraduates from pretty much anywhere because the vast majority of the truly high paying spots in quant finance (and high level AI) go to Phds. And, these schools do an outstanding job of placing kids into top Phd programs (including Math and CS) so maybe you are wrong after all. We just won't know for awhile.

Most of the PhD students getting into quant finance are from Research universities. You are much more likely to see a Princeton or MIT alum in the Princeton math PhD program than some williams alum. Williams students go to good math phd programs, but they're nowhere near the level of research university undergrads.

Are you trying to say that top Swat and Williams Math undergraduates do not gain admission to top Math Phd programs? If that is what you are saying you would be wildly incorrect.

At the level of peers at Berkeley, Stanford, Princeton, and MIT? Absolutely not. They get into the decent phd programs, but they don't go to Princeton or MIT for math.

+1, it’s exceedingly rare to see an lac grade at a top research university for mathematics PhD. It’s simply difficult to get admitted when you’re competing with the best university students across the world.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:All of this finance bickering yet none of these students at WASP are getting a quant finance position, where the real money is made these days.

I'm pretty sure that you are clueless because it you weren't you wouldn't even post something so irrelevant to this thread. I do agree with what you said but it actually hold true for undergraduates from pretty much anywhere because the vast majority of the truly high paying spots in quant finance (and high level AI) go to Phds. And, these schools do an outstanding job of placing kids into top Phd programs (including Math and CS) so maybe you are wrong after all. We just won't know for awhile.

Most of the PhD students getting into quant finance are from Research universities. You are much more likely to see a Princeton or MIT alum in the Princeton math PhD program than some williams alum. Williams students go to good math phd programs, but they're nowhere near the level of research university undergrads.

Are you trying to say that top Swat and Williams Math undergraduates do not gain admission to top Math Phd programs? If that is what you are saying you would be wildly incorrect.

At the level of peers at Berkeley, Stanford, Princeton, and MIT? Absolutely not. They get into the decent phd programs, but they don't go to Princeton or MIT for math.

There are several from Swat at MIT as we speak. One of my kids (math major at a SLAC did summer research at an Ivy) current professors had a Swat undergrad followed by Penn. I know another who was Swat then Berkeley. I'm pretty sure that you are wrong on that one.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:All of this finance bickering yet none of these students at WASP are getting a quant finance position, where the real money is made these days.

I'm pretty sure that you are clueless because it you weren't you wouldn't even post something so irrelevant to this thread. I do agree with what you said but it actually hold true for undergraduates from pretty much anywhere because the vast majority of the truly high paying spots in quant finance (and high level AI) go to Phds. And, these schools do an outstanding job of placing kids into top Phd programs (including Math and CS) so maybe you are wrong after all. We just won't know for awhile.

Most of the PhD students getting into quant finance are from Research universities. You are much more likely to see a Princeton or MIT alum in the Princeton math PhD program than some williams alum. Williams students go to good math phd programs, but they're nowhere near the level of research university undergrads.

Are you trying to say that top Swat and Williams Math undergraduates do not gain admission to top Math Phd programs? If that is what you are saying you would be wildly incorrect.

At the level of peers at Berkeley, Stanford, Princeton, and MIT? Absolutely not. They get into the decent phd programs, but they don't go to Princeton or MIT for math.

+1, it’s exceedingly rare to see an lac grade at a top research university for mathematics PhD. It’s simply difficult to get admitted when you’re competing with the best university students across the world.

You have no idea how competitive Swarthmore students are when it comes to PhD admissions. It's not just a "lac." Swarthmore has long been considered the top feeder of any college, whether a LAC or a university, into the best PhD programs.
-Tenured professor, R1