After elite acceptance, how do you re to "Any advice?" ... "How'd ya do it?"

[Anonymous]

I stand corrected. I still don't think cross admit figures have changed that much between the non HYP Ivys and Williams and Amherst. If Parchment is to believed, 67% of cross admits betw Williams and Dartmouth choose Williams: http://www.parchment.com/c/college/tools/college-cross-admit-comparison.php?compare=Dartmouth+College&with=williams That really doesn't seem right to me but I'd bet that cross admit stats between the 90s and today hasn't materially changed. Then again who knows for sure...

Parchment has been around for quite a while.. 2007 or so? It'd be interesting to see patterns for recent years. Some students in Dartmouth recently asked a survey from enrolled students (http://www.dartblog.com/data/2017/02/013116.php) about the schools they turned down, and both Williams/Amherst were in the top 5 with 7.56% turning them down each. The results includes ED students who couldn't apply elsewhere (who represent 50% of the student body, similar to Amherst/Williams), so in reality, you're looking at around 15% of the students admitted RD turning down Amherst and 15% turning down Williams.

Dartmouth got a big spike in yield too, going to 61% last year vs. 52% the year before. Amherst's yield remained consistent at ~40%, and Williams at ~44%. If I had to guess, I'd guess that Amherst/Williams lose the cross-admit battle to Dartmouth today- not as major as HYPS, but still a loss.

[Anonymous]

Also, apologies for venturing off topic. I'm going to stop now. Just some points to think about. I just think the landscape for elite schools and their competitors looks different than it was even 10 years ago.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Also, apologies for venturing off topic. I'm going to stop now. Just some points to think about. I just think the landscape for elite schools and their competitors looks different than it was even 10 years ago.

I am not OP but many more people than just OP are reading this. In my view there is no need to apologize - those were very informative and well-argued posts even if they we're off main topic.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm a fairly recent Swarthmore graduate and have a multitude of friends at other LACs, including Amherst/Williams. The common experience is that our LACs are highly well-regarded in region, but not elsewhere. For example, it would be readily accessible for a Williams student to get a top notch job/internship in Boston, but considerably harder in LA or Seattle. This is different from the experience at the Ivies, whose grads are sought out not just in region but also by the whole world. Most top LAC grads chose to go to gradate school eventually to make up for that prestige/opportunity gap.

Furthermore, companies are bypassing visiting many of our schools for other larger, urban schools that have more students of similar caliber. What's the point of making the trek all the way to Williams/Amherst when you can recruit at much closer Harvard/MIT/Tufts (which now has a higher SAT average than both W & A)/Northeastern/Wellesley/etc? The on-campus recruiting at many top LACs is not happening by actual recruiters unaffiliated with the school, but by alumni of those companies. Williams and Amherst are fortunate to have incredible alumni connections, but Swarthmore is quite lackluster when it comes to career services and alumni connections. In any case, there is a risk involved, and putting it to "people that matter know" is being a bit simplistic.

LACs are in a troubled position. Their yields haven't gone up to the extent that other universities have. Students would frequently turn down the non-HYP Ivies for WAS (to a 50/50 percent), but that's rare today-
when it's between places like Brown and Dartmouth, cross-admits largely go there instead. WAS are largely competing against the universities ranked 15-25 now- places like Rice, Vanderbilt, Georgetown, etc- they usually lose to the universities ranked from 1-15. Salaries are very low for LACs too (https://www.kiplinger.com/tool/college/T014-S001-kiplinger-s-best-values-in-private-colleges/index.php?table=all). Compare Swarthmore (salary 52,500)/Williams (salary 54,100) to Duke (77,900) or Hopkins (69,800). Big difference.

I'm proud to be a Swarthmore alum, and I feel that I received an experience like no other, but if I have to separate my personal bias, I do think that the LACs are in a lower position among the top students than they once were.

Don't know how recently you graduated but for the last few years Google, Apple, Facebook, Goldman Sachs, Bain & Co and JP Morgan are among the companies that recruit heavily at Amherst and likely Williams and Swarthmore. Also, I don't think there ever was a time when close to 50% of cross admits were turning down Harvard to go to AWS. This year many of the NESCAC schools report record #s of applications with Bowdoin increasing 25% and Amherst rumored to have received nearly 11000 applications for 470 seats. Admission rates are getting close to 10% at those schools so I don't think they are in trouble. They may be forced to get larger though. However, I'd agree that the middle of the road small liberal arts schools are in danger especially those not on the coasts.

I graduated in 2011. No doubt there are grads from AWS working at the companies you mentioned, and several of those companies actively recruit on campus, but the point I was making is that it is often alumni recuiters who sponsor that: https://www.amherst.edu/news/calendar/node/680296 At the Ivies, you have both alumni and non-alumni recruiting events, and the recruiting lasts for upwards of a week compared to a day for the LACs. At Swarthmore, almost no major IB or BB firms visit us despite our proximity to a major metro area. When I search the colleges with a recruitment page on Boston Consulting Group (https://www.bcg.com/en-us/careers/join/default.aspx), the only LAC which shows up (as a combined group) is the Claremont Colleges. Even Williams/Amherst don't show up, let alone Swarthmore. The same goes for Deloitte, where the only LAC recruited, again, is Claremont McKenna/Claremont Colleges. McKinsey lists Williams/Amherst/Bowdoin/Wellesley as Northeast targets, Pomona/Claremont as West targets, and Swarthmore/Davidson/Middlebury as "other targets". No other LACs show up. On Bain's campus page, Williams, Amherst, and the Claremont Colleges are the only LACs with active recruiting. The Claremont Colleges are lucky in that they are in a less competitive region and they are one next to the other, making it compelling for an employer to target them as if a mid-sized university rather than a small standalone LAC. But Amherst/Williams/CCs are the exception, not the rule, and Swarthmore doesn't seem part of the exception.

Yes, top LACs are reaching record level of applications. I've heard Swarthmore will go down to a single digit acceptance rate this year for the first time. But a large reason for this is that colleges everywhere are getting more selective, leading to a loop in which students apply to more schools due to fear of not getting in. Also, acceptance rate can be manipulated. Bowdoin upped the ante on marketing this year, and Swarthmore has been embarrassing in how they've reached out to students. Amherst put a simple application essay in which you can submit a written assignment from a class; William's essay is entirely optional. Most LACs went SAT test optional as well. The real measure is the yield of students admitted without a binding commitment (I'll term this RD yield). Every single Ivy has a 40%+ yield for those candidates, with Harvard reaching a peak of 83%. The RD yields are lower at Amherst/Swarthmore/Williams- 26 to 30%. Furthermore, other universities which once had lower RD yields than these LACs, like NU, Duke, Rice, Vanderbilt, UChicago, and Johns Hopkins, have seen surges both in overall yield and RD yield. UChicago and Northwestern are especially telling, going from a ~30% overall yield to a 72% yield for UChicago and a 59% yield for Northwestern (the yields for AWS are 39-44% respectively). This is significant because the RD admits reflect the desirability of a school.

I definitely don't think AWS and other top LACs are in trouble overall. It's more of a relative statement against top universities. In an increasingly competitive and expensive market, how can top LACs convince students deciding between other top universities to choose them? Some LACs have found their answer by touting that they can offer the best of both worlds, such as Pomona with the Claremont Colleges/LA and Barnard with Columbia/NYC (these 2 LACs have the highest RD yield). Admitted students know of Amherst/Swarthmore's consortium but see upon visiting that it's nowhere near as convenient or well used. For rural, standalone colleges like Middlebury (RD yield 20%) or Colby (RD yield 22%), it's especially tough.

I agree with you on many points. The top SLACs will always appeal to a segment of the best and brightest HS students and will remain wonderful and enriching places to spend 4 years but yes the world is changing and they will have to unleash their rich endowments to find ways to compete.

UChicago is an interesting beast. It was a safety school back in the 90s for many of my HS classmates. Through a combination of great marketing and strategic use of ED, ED2, EA along with improving their undergraduate experience, they have goosed their yield numbers and their rating in US News. Kudos to them and to a lesser extent schools like Penn that have encouraged ED apps. But they've created a feedback loop that encourages early applications to the detriment of RD. It hasn't greatly depressed # of RD applications yet, but its only a matter of time. Why would large numbers of smart kids apply RD if their chances of admission are 2-3%? I know Amherst decided recently not to follow the UChicago model and won't accept more than a third of its incoming class ED. It could quickly and materially boost its yield numbers if it ever did.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

I stand corrected. I still don't think cross admit figures have changed that much between the non HYP Ivys and Williams and Amherst. If Parchment is to believed, 67% of cross admits betw Williams and Dartmouth choose Williams: http://www.parchment.com/c/college/tools/college-cross-admit-comparison.php?compare=Dartmouth+College&with=williams That really doesn't seem right to me but I'd bet that cross admit stats between the 90s and today hasn't materially changed. Then again who knows for sure...

Parchment has been around for quite a while.. 2007 or so? It'd be interesting to see patterns for recent years. Some students in Dartmouth recently asked a survey from enrolled students (http://www.dartblog.com/data/2017/02/013116.php) about the schools they turned down, and both Williams/Amherst were in the top 5 with 7.56% turning them down each. The results includes ED students who couldn't apply elsewhere (who represent 50% of the student body, similar to Amherst/Williams), so in reality, you're looking at around 15% of the students admitted RD turning down Amherst and 15% turning down Williams.

Dartmouth got a big spike in yield too, going to 61% last year vs. 52% the year before. Amherst's yield remained consistent at ~40%, and Williams at ~44%. If I had to guess, I'd guess that Amherst/Williams lose the cross-admit battle to Dartmouth today- not as major as HYPS, but still a loss.

It may be a simplistic argument but it seems obvious that yield numbers tend to be strongly correlated with the % of ED admits. Dartmouth takes 50% while Williams a bit less and Amherst even less with 33-35%. I'm curious if over time RD yield numbers at Dartmouth also increase as the perception of desirability (due to increases in yield) increase RD yield as well.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

I stand corrected. I still don't think cross admit figures have changed that much between the non HYP Ivys and Williams and Amherst. If Parchment is to believed, 67% of cross admits betw Williams and Dartmouth choose Williams: http://www.parchment.com/c/college/tools/college-cross-admit-comparison.php?compare=Dartmouth+College&with=williams That really doesn't seem right to me but I'd bet that cross admit stats between the 90s and today hasn't materially changed. Then again who knows for sure...

Parchment has been around for quite a while.. 2007 or so? It'd be interesting to see patterns for recent years. Some students in Dartmouth recently asked a survey from enrolled students (http://www.dartblog.com/data/2017/02/013116.php) about the schools they turned down, and both Williams/Amherst were in the top 5 with 7.56% turning them down each. The results includes ED students who couldn't apply elsewhere (who represent 50% of the student body, similar to Amherst/Williams), so in reality, you're looking at around 15% of the students admitted RD turning down Amherst and 15% turning down Williams.

Dartmouth got a big spike in yield too, going to 61% last year vs. 52% the year before. Amherst's yield remained consistent at ~40%, and Williams at ~44%. If I had to guess, I'd guess that Amherst/Williams lose the cross-admit battle to Dartmouth today- not as major as HYPS, but still a loss.

It may be a simplistic argument but it seems obvious that yield numbers tend to be strongly correlated with the % of ED admits. Dartmouth takes 50% while Williams a bit less and Amherst even less with 33-35%. I'm curious if over time RD yield numbers at Dartmouth also increase as the perception of desirability (due to increases in yield) increase RD yield as well.

Oh, Dartmouth just published their CDS. Here are the respective yields at the three schools for last year- Dartmouth, Williams, and Amherst.

Dartmouth: 10.4% acceptance rate. 1217 enrolled out of 2093 admits (58.1% yield overall). 565/1999 admitted ED (28.2% acceptance rate, 46.5% of class filled ED). RD yield: 652/1528 = 42.7%
Williams: 14.6% acceptance rate. 548 enrolled out of 1253 admits (43.7% yield overall). 257/727 admitted ED (35.4% acceptance rate, 46.9% of class filled ED). RD yield: 291/996 = 29.2%
Amherst: 12.9% acceptance rate. 471 enrolled out of 1198 admits (39.3% yield overall). 173/502 admitted ED (34.4% acceptance rate, 36.7% of class filled ED). RD yield: 298/1025 = 29.0%

It does seem that there is a considerable gap in RD yield between Dartmouth and Williams/Amherst, which has existed in the past, but to a lower extent (Dartmouth's RD yield last year was 37%; A/W were at 29-30%). Another interesting point is the percent of waitlisted students who chose to remain on the waitlist. At Dartmouth, 66.6%, At Williams, 37.7%, and at Amherst, 51.1%. I'd want to look at this in past years, but are some students applying to W/A mainly as a backup if the Ivies fail to come through?

[Anonymous]

Good points. Note if Amherst accepted 10% more of its class ED (like Williams and Dartmouth does) and further lowered its RD accepts and relied more on its waitlist (where yield would be close to 100%), it's overall yield would be 50+% too.

[Anonymous]

Because the reality is that you can do all that and still not get into an elite university.

Harvard rejects more valedictorians than it accepts, and you can imagine that other very good colleges are similarly selective.

So selective that it's often just a lottery.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid was accepted to Williams and Swarthmore. My favorite comment was "Oh, I never heard of those schools". Kept me humble.

I know those are great schools. It is an "east coast thing" though that the only people who have heard of these schools are boarding school families/east coast types.

I guess i'm not upper crust, I've never hear of Williams and Swarthmore.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm a fairly recent Swarthmore graduate and have a multitude of friends at other LACs, including Amherst/Williams. The common experience is that our LACs are highly well-regarded in region, but not elsewhere. For example, it would be readily accessible for a Williams student to get a top notch job/internship in Boston, but considerably harder in LA or Seattle. This is different from the experience at the Ivies, whose grads are sought out not just in region but also by the whole world. Most top LAC grads chose to go to gradate school eventually to make up for that prestige/opportunity gap.

Furthermore, companies are bypassing visiting many of our schools for other larger, urban schools that have more students of similar caliber. What's the point of making the trek all the way to Williams/Amherst when you can recruit at much closer Harvard/MIT/Tufts (which now has a higher SAT average than both W & A)/Northeastern/Wellesley/etc? The on-campus recruiting at many top LACs is not happening by actual recruiters unaffiliated with the school, but by alumni of those companies. Williams and Amherst are fortunate to have incredible alumni connections, but Swarthmore is quite lackluster when it comes to career services and alumni connections. In any case, there is a risk involved, and putting it to "people that matter know" is being a bit simplistic.

LACs are in a troubled position. Their yields haven't gone up to the extent that other universities have. Students would frequently turn down the non-HYP Ivies for WAS (to a 50/50 percent), but that's rare today-
when it's between places like Brown and Dartmouth, cross-admits largely go there instead. WAS are largely competing against the universities ranked 15-25 now- places like Rice, Vanderbilt, Georgetown, etc- they usually lose to the universities ranked from 1-15. Salaries are very low for LACs too (https://www.kiplinger.com/tool/college/T014-S001-kiplinger-s-best-values-in-private-colleges/index.php?table=all). Compare Swarthmore (salary 52,500)/Williams (salary 54,100) to Duke (77,900) or Hopkins (69,800). Big difference.

I'm proud to be a Swarthmore alum, and I feel that I received an experience like no other, but if I have to separate my personal bias, I do think that the LACs are in a lower position among the top students than they once were.

Don't know how recently you graduated but for the last few years Google, Apple, Facebook, Goldman Sachs, Bain & Co and JP Morgan are among the companies that recruit heavily at Amherst and likely Williams and Swarthmore. Also, I don't think there ever was a time when close to 50% of cross admits were turning down Harvard to go to AWS. This year many of the NESCAC schools report record #s of applications with Bowdoin increasing 25% and Amherst rumored to have received nearly 11000 applications for 470 seats. Admission rates are getting close to 10% at those schools so I don't think they are in trouble. They may be forced to get larger though. However, I'd agree that the middle of the road small liberal arts schools are in danger especially those not on the coasts.

I graduated in 2011. No doubt there are grads from AWS working at the companies you mentioned, and several of those companies actively recruit on campus, but the point I was making is that it is often alumni recuiters who sponsor that: https://www.amherst.edu/news/calendar/node/680296 At the Ivies, you have both alumni and non-alumni recruiting events, and the recruiting lasts for upwards of a week compared to a day for the LACs. At Swarthmore, almost no major IB or BB firms visit us despite our proximity to a major metro area. When I search the colleges with a recruitment page on Boston Consulting Group (https://www.bcg.com/en-us/careers/join/default.aspx), the only LAC which shows up (as a combined group) is the Claremont Colleges. Even Williams/Amherst don't show up, let alone Swarthmore. The same goes for Deloitte, where the only LAC recruited, again, is Claremont McKenna/Claremont Colleges. McKinsey lists Williams/Amherst/Bowdoin/Wellesley as Northeast targets, Pomona/Claremont as West targets, and Swarthmore/Davidson/Middlebury as "other targets". No other LACs show up. On Bain's campus page, Williams, Amherst, and the Claremont Colleges are the only LACs with active recruiting. The Claremont Colleges are lucky in that they are in a less competitive region and they are one next to the other, making it compelling for an employer to target them as if a mid-sized university rather than a small standalone LAC. But Amherst/Williams/CCs are the exception, not the rule, and Swarthmore doesn't seem part of the exception.

Yes, top LACs are reaching record level of applications. I've heard Swarthmore will go down to a single digit acceptance rate this year for the first time. But a large reason for this is that colleges everywhere are getting more selective, leading to a loop in which students apply to more schools due to fear of not getting in. Also, acceptance rate can be manipulated. Bowdoin upped the ante on marketing this year, and Swarthmore has been embarrassing in how they've reached out to students. Amherst put a simple application essay in which you can submit a written assignment from a class; William's essay is entirely optional. Most LACs went SAT test optional as well. The real measure is the yield of students admitted without a binding commitment (I'll term this RD yield). Every single Ivy has a 40%+ yield for those candidates, with Harvard reaching a peak of 83%. The RD yields are lower at Amherst/Swarthmore/Williams- 26 to 30%. Furthermore, other universities which once had lower RD yields than these LACs, like NU, Duke, Rice, Vanderbilt, UChicago, and Johns Hopkins, have seen surges both in overall yield and RD yield. UChicago and Northwestern are especially telling, going from a ~30% overall yield to a 72% yield for UChicago and a 59% yield for Northwestern (the yields for AWS are 39-44% respectively). This is significant because the RD admits reflect the desirability of a school.

I definitely don't think AWS and other top LACs are in trouble overall. It's more of a relative statement against top universities. In an increasingly competitive and expensive market, how can top LACs convince students deciding between other top universities to choose them? Some LACs have found their answer by touting that they can offer the best of both worlds, such as Pomona with the Claremont Colleges/LA and Barnard with Columbia/NYC (these 2 LACs have the highest RD yield). Admitted students know of Amherst/Swarthmore's consortium but see upon visiting that it's nowhere near as convenient or well used. For rural, standalone colleges like Middlebury (RD yield 20%) or Colby (RD yield 22%), it's especially tough.

I agree with you on many points. The top SLACs will always appeal to a segment of the best and brightest HS students and will remain wonderful and enriching places to spend 4 years but yes the world is changing and they will have to unleash their rich endowments to find ways to compete.

UChicago is an interesting beast. It was a safety school back in the 90s for many of my HS classmates. Through a combination of great marketing and strategic use of ED, ED2, EA along with improving their undergraduate experience, they have goosed their yield numbers and their rating in US News. Kudos to them and to a lesser extent schools like Penn that have encouraged ED apps. But they've created a feedback loop that encourages early applications to the detriment of RD. It hasn't greatly depressed # of RD applications yet, but its only a matter of time. Why would large numbers of smart kids apply RD if their chances of admission are 2-3%? I know Amherst decided recently not to follow the UChicago model and won't accept more than a third of its incoming class ED. It could quickly and materially boost its yield numbers if it ever did.

Because their parents cannot send them to the University of Chicago unless they receive merit aid. If they cannot afford the sticker price, and they do not qualify for need-based aid, then they cannot apply early decision.

[Anonymous]

Off OPs topic, but am surprised to read that people don't know Swarthmore or say that it has no recognition abroad (or Williams). Met more students at Oxford from Swarthmore than any other university (except Harvard). Williams well represented too. This was in '92.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid was accepted to Williams and Swarthmore. My favorite comment was "Oh, I never heard of those schools". Kept me humble.

I know those are great schools. It is an "east coast thing" though that the only people who have heard of these schools are boarding school families/east coast types.

I guess i'm not upper crust, I've never hear of Williams and Swarthmore.

It's not that you're not upper crust (although you undoubtably are), it's that you're ill informed and incurious.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Off OPs topic, but am surprised to read that people don't know Swarthmore or say that it has no recognition abroad (or Williams). Met more students at Oxford from Swarthmore than any other university (except Harvard). Williams well represented too. This was in '92.

This is purely anecdotal though. Truth is Swarthmore, Williams et al are not very well known domestically to anyone but the most educated and sophisticated people. As for abroad, they are practically unknowns.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm a fairly recent Swarthmore graduate and have a multitude of friends at other LACs, including Amherst/Williams. The common experience is that our LACs are highly well-regarded in region, but not elsewhere. For example, it would be readily accessible for a Williams student to get a top notch job/internship in Boston, but considerably harder in LA or Seattle. This is different from the experience at the Ivies, whose grads are sought out not just in region but also by the whole world. Most top LAC grads chose to go to gradate school eventually to make up for that prestige/opportunity gap.

Furthermore, companies are bypassing visiting many of our schools for other larger, urban schools that have more students of similar caliber. What's the point of making the trek all the way to Williams/Amherst when you can recruit at much closer Harvard/MIT/Tufts (which now has a higher SAT average than both W & A)/Northeastern/Wellesley/etc? The on-campus recruiting at many top LACs is not happening by actual recruiters unaffiliated with the school, but by alumni of those companies. Williams and Amherst are fortunate to have incredible alumni connections, but Swarthmore is quite lackluster when it comes to career services and alumni connections. In any case, there is a risk involved, and putting it to "people that matter know" is being a bit simplistic.

LACs are in a troubled position. Their yields haven't gone up to the extent that other universities have. Students would frequently turn down the non-HYP Ivies for WAS (to a 50/50 percent), but that's rare today-
when it's between places like Brown and Dartmouth, cross-admits largely go there instead. WAS are largely competing against the universities ranked 15-25 now- places like Rice, Vanderbilt, Georgetown, etc- they usually lose to the universities ranked from 1-15. Salaries are very low for LACs too (https://www.kiplinger.com/tool/college/T014-S001-kiplinger-s-best-values-in-private-colleges/index.php?table=all). Compare Swarthmore (salary 52,500)/Williams (salary 54,100) to Duke (77,900) or Hopkins (69,800). Big difference.

I'm proud to be a Swarthmore alum, and I feel that I received an experience like no other, but if I have to separate my personal bias, I do think that the LACs are in a lower position among the top students than they once were.

Don't know how recently you graduated but for the last few years Google, Apple, Facebook, Goldman Sachs, Bain & Co and JP Morgan are among the companies that recruit heavily at Amherst and likely Williams and Swarthmore. Also, I don't think there ever was a time when close to 50% of cross admits were turning down Harvard to go to AWS. This year many of the NESCAC schools report record #s of applications with Bowdoin increasing 25% and Amherst rumored to have received nearly 11000 applications for 470 seats. Admission rates are getting close to 10% at those schools so I don't think they are in trouble. They may be forced to get larger though. However, I'd agree that the middle of the road small liberal arts schools are in danger especially those not on the coasts.

I graduated in 2011. No doubt there are grads from AWS working at the companies you mentioned, and several of those companies actively recruit on campus, but the point I was making is that it is often alumni recuiters who sponsor that: https://www.amherst.edu/news/calendar/node/680296 At the Ivies, you have both alumni and non-alumni recruiting events, and the recruiting lasts for upwards of a week compared to a day for the LACs. At Swarthmore, almost no major IB or BB firms visit us despite our proximity to a major metro area. When I search the colleges with a recruitment page on Boston Consulting Group (https://www.bcg.com/en-us/careers/join/default.aspx), the only LAC which shows up (as a combined group) is the Claremont Colleges. Even Williams/Amherst don't show up, let alone Swarthmore. The same goes for Deloitte, where the only LAC recruited, again, is Claremont McKenna/Claremont Colleges. McKinsey lists Williams/Amherst/Bowdoin/Wellesley as Northeast targets, Pomona/Claremont as West targets, and Swarthmore/Davidson/Middlebury as "other targets". No other LACs show up. On Bain's campus page, Williams, Amherst, and the Claremont Colleges are the only LACs with active recruiting. The Claremont Colleges are lucky in that they are in a less competitive region and they are one next to the other, making it compelling for an employer to target them as if a mid-sized university rather than a small standalone LAC. But Amherst/Williams/CCs are the exception, not the rule, and Swarthmore doesn't seem part of the exception.

Yes, top LACs are reaching record level of applications. I've heard Swarthmore will go down to a single digit acceptance rate this year for the first time. But a large reason for this is that colleges everywhere are getting more selective, leading to a loop in which students apply to more schools due to fear of not getting in. Also, acceptance rate can be manipulated. Bowdoin upped the ante on marketing this year, and Swarthmore has been embarrassing in how they've reached out to students. Amherst put a simple application essay in which you can submit a written assignment from a class; William's essay is entirely optional. Most LACs went SAT test optional as well. The real measure is the yield of students admitted without a binding commitment (I'll term this RD yield). Every single Ivy has a 40%+ yield for those candidates, with Harvard reaching a peak of 83%. The RD yields are lower at Amherst/Swarthmore/Williams- 26 to 30%. Furthermore, other universities which once had lower RD yields than these LACs, like NU, Duke, Rice, Vanderbilt, UChicago, and Johns Hopkins, have seen surges both in overall yield and RD yield. UChicago and Northwestern are especially telling, going from a ~30% overall yield to a 72% yield for UChicago and a 59% yield for Northwestern (the yields for AWS are 39-44% respectively). This is significant because the RD admits reflect the desirability of a school.

I definitely don't think AWS and other top LACs are in trouble overall. It's more of a relative statement against top universities. In an increasingly competitive and expensive market, how can top LACs convince students deciding between other top universities to choose them? Some LACs have found their answer by touting that they can offer the best of both worlds, such as Pomona with the Claremont Colleges/LA and Barnard with Columbia/NYC (these 2 LACs have the highest RD yield). Admitted students know of Amherst/Swarthmore's consortium but see upon visiting that it's nowhere near as convenient or well used. For rural, standalone colleges like Middlebury (RD yield 20%) or Colby (RD yield 22%), it's especially tough.

I agree with you on many points. The top SLACs will always appeal to a segment of the best and brightest HS students and will remain wonderful and enriching places to spend 4 years but yes the world is changing and they will have to unleash their rich endowments to find ways to compete.

UChicago is an interesting beast. It was a safety school back in the 90s for many of my HS classmates. Through a combination of great marketing and strategic use of ED, ED2, EA along with improving their undergraduate experience, they have goosed their yield numbers and their rating in US News. Kudos to them and to a lesser extent schools like Penn that have encouraged ED apps. But they've created a feedback loop that encourages early applications to the detriment of RD. It hasn't greatly depressed # of RD applications yet, but its only a matter of time. Why would large numbers of smart kids apply RD if their chances of admission are 2-3%? I know Amherst decided recently not to follow the UChicago model and won't accept more than a third of its incoming class ED. It could quickly and materially boost its yield numbers if it ever did.

Because their parents cannot send them to the University of Chicago unless they receive merit aid. If they cannot afford the sticker price, and they do not qualify for need-based aid, then they cannot apply early decision.

You have to be very high income and low expenses to not qualify for any merit aid there.
If they want your kid they will figure something out. If your kid is more of a teach then I’m not so sure, but again, you’d have to have a very high income to get nothing and pay sticker price.

It’s a very hard school with very bright hard working kids going there though so it’s not easy to stand out in the applicant pool that is for sure.