2026 USNWR LACs

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Carleton professors ranked best in the nation for the 15th year in a row! That's got to count for something.

Williams being 12th is embarrassing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:[i]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:^Splitting hairs they clearly do belong.

Not at all, Bowdoin has not consistently been ranked at the top like Williams and Amherst. It has worse student quality and ED2. It’s a good school, just not at the level of AWS

Average USNWR rankings over the last 35 or so years

Williams
Amherst
Swarthmore
Pomona*
Wellesley*
Bowdoin
Middlebury
Carleton

Ranked by size of endowment size

Williams
Amherst
Swarthmore
Pomona*
Wellesley*
Bowdoin
Middlebury
Carleton

Get the correlation? There is no difference among any of these schools except for the size of their bag.

35 or so years? Where is the citation for this? U.S. News rankings have been around far longer than that.

US news ranking is continuously built off of endowment per student for LACs. There's really no tangible reason williams would be number 1 every year for decades.

That endowment ranking goes as follows:
Amherst
Swarthmore
Pomona
Grinnell
Williams
Bowdoin
Washington & Lee
Wellesley
Claremont -McKenna
https://www.collegeraptor.com/college-rankings/details/EndowmentPerStudent/

[Anonymous]

With the exception of Amherst, Williams, and Swarthmore, these colleges rise and fall like the tide. You may have a good year, and you may have a bad year. All depends on what USNews prioritizes in a given year. This year, there were no major changes to the methodology, so things were mostly stable with a few exceptions (Grinnell and Middlebury, for example). Next year will be different. Once you get near the top, there’s no where to go but down. That’s my PSA for today.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Carleton professors ranked best in the nation for the 15th year in a row! That's got to count for something.

Of course it does. Carleton is just as good as WASP in my view, especially for STEM. DC was torn between Amherst and Carleton, only chose the former because of the difference in financial aid ($20K vs. $0) and location (easy drive/train from DMV plus relatives nearby). Otherwise, not sure what the final choice would have been. Agree with PPs who've stated the differences in quality of UG education are negligible.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Carleton professors ranked best in the nation for the 15th year in a row! That's got to count for something.

Of course it does. Carleton is just as good as WASP in my view, especially for STEM. DC was torn between Amherst and Carleton, only chose the former because of the difference in financial aid ($20K vs. $0) and location (easy drive/train from DMV plus relatives nearby). Otherwise, not sure what the final choice would have been. Agree with PPs who've stated the differences in quality of UG education are negligible.

Carleton is as good as any school on the above list of 8 schools. Any of those schools is a s good as any of the others.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Oberlin is what makes me not put much stock in USNWR's rankings. Their endowment is 1.27B. Compared to the schools listed alongside them at #58- Gettysburg's is $314M, St. Lawrence's is $378M. Oberlin has had 4 Nobel laureates and has a world-renowned conservatory. I was hoping they would pop back up into the top 50, but to bump them even further down the list is ridiculous. You're just not going to convince me that my kid will get a better education at Berea College in Kentucky or Soka University (a dang cult) than at Oberlin.

I agree that Oberlin should be much higher, Really great phd placements, especially in sciences.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Oberlin is what makes me not put much stock in USNWR's rankings. Their endowment is 1.27B. Compared to the schools listed alongside them at #58- Gettysburg's is $314M, St. Lawrence's is $378M. Oberlin has had 4 Nobel laureates and has a world-renowned conservatory. I was hoping they would pop back up into the top 50, but to bump them even further down the list is ridiculous. You're just not going to convince me that my kid will get a better education at Berea College in Kentucky or Soka University (a dang cult) than at Oberlin.

I agree that Oberlin should be much higher, Really great phd placements, especially in sciences.

It’s surprising how little us news puts into the diversity of liberal arts colleges. Oberlin is super unique in having a conservatory.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Oberlin is what makes me not put much stock in USNWR's rankings. Their endowment is 1.27B. Compared to the schools listed alongside them at #58- Gettysburg's is $314M, St. Lawrence's is $378M. Oberlin has had 4 Nobel laureates and has a world-renowned conservatory. I was hoping they would pop back up into the top 50, but to bump them even further down the list is ridiculous. You're just not going to convince me that my kid will get a better education at Berea College in Kentucky or Soka University (a dang cult) than at Oberlin.

I agree that Oberlin should be much higher, Really great phd placements, especially in sciences.

It’s surprising how little us news puts into the diversity of liberal arts colleges. Oberlin is super unique in having a conservatory.

Not to mention amazing merit aid.

[Anonymous]

Oberlin has very limited appeal.

[Anonymous]

Congrats to all of the students who attend these schools. Wow!
I imagine a lot of folks are really suffering right now due to changes in student loan programs. While the impacts will inevitably be variable, kindly bear in mind this reality. Consider tempering celebrations, minimizing vitriol, and focusing on the pros of each institution. Community support and objectivity would be a refreshing change, I think. Let’s celebrate all of our future adults in this world, please!!!
(We don’t have access to the real data anyway, right?).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Williams = little Yale
Amherst = little Princeton
Swarthmore = little U Chicago

Bowdoin = little Dartmouth
Pomona = little Brown

Wellesley = Wellesley, no cheap imitation:
"I am inimitable; I am an original. I'm not falling behind or running late. I'm not standing still: I am lying in wait.”

LOL what the heck is happening on this thread??

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Pomona is slipping on every ranking. CMC is the new number 1 in the Claremont system

But it isn’t…

[Anonymous]

Pomona is a wonderful school from what I know about it. The kids who attend seem brilliant, absolutely incredible in fact, and should be extremely proud, as should their families and friends. It would be helpful to know why it stands out from other colleges rather than attacking it with negative and likely false hyperbolic statements. Please fulfill the point of this site. Let’s help each other!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think having the ties makes sense in some ways because those who think there is truly a lot of difference between 14 and 15 are morons. Is there a difference between 2 and 29? Probably. Between schools that are one or two notches apart. No.

2 and the 13s already are very different.

No

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think having the ties makes sense in some ways because those who think there is truly a lot of difference between 14 and 15 are morons. Is there a difference between 2 and 29? Probably. Between schools that are one or two notches apart. No.

2 and the 13s already are very different.

No

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