Carleton or Vassar or Wes?
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Anonymous
| All great schools. My DS went to Carleton and loved it so I’m biased, but it’s not for everyone. Truly with these small schools it comes down to whether you vibe with the people. Visit and see what feels right! |
Anonymous
| Those are all good and about the same, prestige wise. Let him visit and decide which he likes best. No need to steer towards one or the other. |
Anonymous
Not me. I married a Haverfordian! Loved Carleton and everything about it, though. Hoping my youngest has the ability and interest to go there. I’m still sad that my DD got in but didn’t go. |
Anonymous
For a social sciences field such as economics, Wesleyan and Vassar place much more highly than Carleton when considered by faculty publishing: https://ideas.repec.org/top/top.uslacecon.html |
Anonymous
If using that site be sure to filter out faculty who have left or retired, cause they don’t. It also doesn’t capture all who are currently publishing but rather those who use their site. But regardless I am more concerned with student outcomes. For placement into Econ PhD programs, Carleton is 13th, Vassar 41st, and Wesleyan not in top 50. https://www.collegetransitions.com/dataverse/top-feeders-phd-programs#econ |
Anonymous
| All great options, but Carleton is the answer. |
Anonymous
| Three great schools, but I would also pick Carleton. |
Anonymous
What's your basis for saying this? The site is updated monthly. |
Anonymous
Wut? |
Anonymous
That comment was clear. |
Anonymous
Both market themselves as “open curriculum,” but each has an asterisk. Vassar has a foreign language requirement, while Wes requires students who want to graduate with honors to take at least three classes in each of arts, humanities/social sciences, and science/math. |
Anonymous
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Depends on where the student wants a network. I'm a Vassar alum, and the students have a lot of opportunities to intern as well as work over the summer in Manhattan. For certain career paths, NYC is the perfect first-job laboratory. Although Vassar is a pipeline to top grad programs (I went on to Cornell), many SLACs are, whereas I think the opportunity to work a few years in NYC, first, is the real differentiator. If the student already lives in the tri-state area, this wouldn't matter, but I came from the South & it was a game-changer for me.
Can't speak to the other two schools. |
Anonymous
| Carleton has a great schedule. Starts in Sept. Has all the way from Thanksgiving into January off and ends in early June. |
Anonymous
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My kid looked at the same ranges of schools. All great schools, so it comes down to which one the kid likes better for whatever reasons matter to him.
Carleton was too cold and too far away for my kid. Loved the Vassar campus and got a good feeling from the people he met there; not crazy about the town around Wesleyen and didn't get as welcoming a feel from the visit. Ended up choosing a different, but similar, school that was Goldilocks for him. So, really the decision is going to be about how your kid felt about the schools. The education and opportunities will be similar from all. (Don't listen to people who rank them or call one or another as 'best' or "better.") |
Anonymous
Spot checking for schools of interest in the past. They might be adding monthly on request but they don’t delete automatically when someone moves or retires where I checked. I also checked the other way, seeing if they were capturing all the publications for faculty at a certain school. They were not, as their system used more of a push model from I could tell. Between the schools I was comparing it was off by a factor of about 10 in terms of measuring based on current research (ie published in the last decade.) Like a school with 10 publications in the last decade ranked higher output than a school with over 100. I’m sure it’s more accurate for some schools than others. |