| Apply to Yale for English |
New poster. Just to be brutally honest here, while I have heard of Williams, I do not have a positive opinion of their graduates based on working with multiple spanning their late career to early career. Of course this probably just reflects the individuals and says nothing about the institution. However, most universities are well known for their graduate programs in medicine, business, law, PhD programs, etc. Even Princeton offers PhD programs. This benefits the undergraduates because of the faculty, postdocs, and graduate students can contribute to undergraduate coursework or undergraduate research experiences. Also, most top faculty would only work somewhere with access to graduate students and postdocs. That being said, while an undergraduate teaching emphasis is nice at the LACs, the tradeoff is you cannot have top faculty and will only get teaching focused faculty. The LACs do not get any of the benefits of having the paired graduate programs and higher level trainees. You cannot expect a LAC to be prestigious or well known when it only has college students. Honestly, why should people be familiar with LACs that have very little going on? Just college students and teaching focused faculty. While universities are developing new therapies to target disease, training physicians, business leaders, and powerful lawyers. It just seems not worth knowing the LACs. |
| I wish I could mute individuals |
You can also quite reading the post. Works just as well. |
It was very obvious! Yet some are still weighing in as though this was a legit post… |
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Maybe OP is wondering where she should ED. I mean, I know Princeton does the Restrictive Early Action instead, but OP - do you feel like you have to choose this early in the game?
I agree with the others - just get in first. Many "real contenders" for Princeton do not get even in, just saying. |
By this impeccable logic, University of Wisconsin is preferable to both Williams and Princeton. It takes all kinds… |
It is certainly much better known than Williams. For the reasons stated above. |
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The only people I know who have gotten into either in the past five years are athletes or QuestBridge.
Stop talking about academics and get good at a sport. |
You kind of are right but are still wrong. Grad students just teach intro classes you need anyway. Williams has an issue of location more than anything. Getting a tenure track post there is an elite outcome and you get a lot benefit including extensive research funding. Unlike most PUIs, Williams and other top lacs have very light teaching loads and expect publications for tenure promotion. They do have top faculty, because academia isn’t a meritocracy and is a combination of luck and time. Some sub areas get 10 or fewer openings a year. It is not a given that a Princeton professor is better than a Williams faculty member. You can be very productive as a researcher at these top lacs, and some faculty members who are good grant writers will get postdocs. |
Sure, but the research output of a top LAC is still dismal compared to a major university. |
Well one has medical center and research institutes that operate wholly independent from the undergraduate experience? Whenever you makes these claims you need to remember that if there’s so much access to grad students and post docs, as you say, and research needs to get done quick, there’s near 0 incentive to include undergraduates in your research. |
Gosh, then why are these SLAC grads more likely, per capita, to obtain Ph.Ds at top research universities? You really don’t know what you are talking about. |
False. |
No that’s a true fact. |