How prestigious are Claremont McKenna and Washington and Lee?

[Anonymous]

And Kiplinger has W&L #9 and CMC #62.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Claremont McKenna admitted 8.9 percent of applicants to the Class of 2022. They had about 7,000 applications..

Washington and Lee admitted 21% of 5,855 students. https://columns.wlu.edu/485-students-join-the-wl-class-of-2022/. The Claremont Colleges are more selectiive.

Speaks more to the dearth of quality small LAC’s in the SW and SoCal than anything else. Average ACT scores are almost the same.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Employers? No chance. Many confederate flags in and around C’ville. Are UVA grads struggling with the association? Same for many southern schools. Part of a weird problem but hardly unique to Lexington. Lexington is a very cute little town, ignorant yahoos aside, and immediately adjacent to the campus.

Not at all. I know both W&L and UVA. W&L has Lee's horse, for heaven's sake! It truly is Southern, as are its sororities and frats. I do not understand its attraction. UVA on the other hand attracts students from all over the world. Confederate flags would never be tolerated. The University is cosmopolitan and international. You can't even begin to equate the two.

Lol....you're delusional. With 70% of students coming from VA it is very hard to be cosmopolitan and international.

No, you are. By your logic then, with 80% of Berkeley's students coming from California there would be a lack of cosmopolitan feeling? Have you ever been to Charlottesville? Or walked the grounds? 67% are Virginians but that includes a class with 35% minority and 10% first generation students. It also includes a new push for low-income students so you have Virginians from all walks of life and all sorts of backgrounds, including the Virginians who went to private boarding schools. Then there are the Jefferson Scholars. Also students from all 50 states and faculty, staff and students from 183 countries. In addition to the undergrads, there are 7,705 graduate students from all over the country and world in the law school, med school, business school, etc.

UVA is not particularly diverse. You tout 10% first generation students at UVA. UCLA is over 30%. For income diversity, only about 12% get Pell grants vs 35% at UCLA. Only about 4.2% of the most recent class at UVA are international. That isn't very high at all relatively speaking. VT and W&M are higher as a percentage of undergraduates.

You mention Jefferson Scholars seemingly without realizing that W&L has a similar program in the Johnson Scholarship, which is much more extensive in that it is awarded to about 10% of the entering class vs typically less than 1% for UVA Jefferson. How does W&L manage to do this? Little rinky-dink W&L has about a $1.6B endowment for 2,160 students, which is about $737K per student UVA would need an $18B endowment to match that, but this wouldn't account for the fact that W&L's endowment, unlike UVA's doesn't have to be shared with any graduate program other than law or a medical center or for athletic scholarships.

So anyway, I digress. I just think you should be more careful before you slag schools, particularly one as good as W&L. The world is a better place with a diversity of choices.

86% of the student body at W&L participates in Greek life. It is the only college I know of that actually posts the COSTS of Greek life along with its regular fees on its officiial page because it is ASSUMED that most students would participate. This "have and have not" separation creates a real gap between the scholarship low-income and minority students and the others because the former cannot afford to pay thousands a year to participate in a frat. or a sorority. I know. I taught there. Look at the three *** right here. https://www.wlu.edu/admissions/scholarships-and-aid/cost-of-attendance. LOOK at those costs riight on on the W&L website. THAT'S how much the Greek system affects Greek life. Then there is the problem of attracting minority students because of this division between the wealthy white legacies and other wealthy students and the scholarship students. Then there's the problem of the lack of quality housing in town. Remember the parties where the floors fell out or porches gave way? Or how about the eleven greek kids who drove out to a party house further out and got drunk and packed the eleven kids back into the car, had an accident, and a woman went through the windshield, died, and the young man who was driving had his life ruined? Drinking at W&L starts Thurs night and runs thru Monday morning. I would never send my child there. I don't understand why some think it is attractive. https://www.roanoke.com/news/virginia/drunken-driver-in-crash-that-killed-w-l-classmate-to/article_04e2fbc4-a08c-5b07-a8cc-1776a45d7521.html

Sure you did. And you’re here on this thread because you’re still weirdly obsessed. And you can’t imagine why anyone would like what you don’t like. You seem nice. And what’s wrong with posting the cost? Seems very transparent to me. The participation stat was the only number you need to see in order to understand the Greek presence. Would it be better to hide the cost? We know families who were stocker-shocked by big SEC fraternity costs.

OP, fake college professor aside, go see it. My daughter attends. I showed her the fake professor post and she just laughed. Nothing remotely resembling her actual experience. No collapsing porches or confederate flags or rich dummies and poor brains - just a bunch of smart, nice kids who love their school and know their professors well enough to share meals. It isn’t perfect. Minority and international diversity has been a challenge and it is something they are striving to improve. But she has had a fantastic experience. Shame on her for liking it! Fake professor says it’s terrible.

[Anonymous]

The town CMC is in is beautiful but it may be boring for a college student. It is not very college-y.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Claremont McKenna admitted 8.9 percent of applicants to the Class of 2022. They had about 7,000 applications..

Washington and Lee admitted 21% of 5,855 students. https://columns.wlu.edu/485-students-join-the-wl-class-of-2022/. The Claremont Colleges are more selectiive.

Speaks more to the dearth of quality small LAC’s in the SW and SoCal than anything else. Average ACT scores are almost the same.

That doesn't even make sense. There are 5 top 40 LACs in the same college town. W&L is the only top 50 LAC in Virginia. It has more to do with how much more desirable of a location suburban Southern California than backwater conservative Virginia.

[Anonymous]

Whoops, forgot about University of Richmond. But yeah, I don't think it's the lack of quality SLACs. There's Occidental and Soka as well, also in SoCal and ranked among the top 50 SLACs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The town CMC is in is beautiful but it may be boring for a college student. It is not very college-y.

Few places on earth are more boring than where Washington and Lee is.

[Anonymous]

This school has the name of Robert E. Lee on it. Whatever works for you, but I wouldn’t want to deal with that during a job interview (and 95 percent of employers haven’t heard of either of these schools, I would guess).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The town CMC is in is beautiful but it may be boring for a college student. It is not very college-y.

I went to CMC. The 5C colleges are extremely residential- they allow alcohol on campus, there is no real Greek scene, and almost everyone lives on, parties on, socializes on campus. I just didn't really interact with the town of Claremont very much. We would walk down to get bagels and smoothies, etc, sometimes go to the mall, sometimes go to the movies.

I would take Claremont over Lexington any day. If you wanted a nice dinner out- drive 20 minutes to Pasadena. Go to downtown LA for whatever. Go to the beach, go to the mountains.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Whoops, forgot about University of Richmond. But yeah, I don't think it's the lack of quality SLACs. There's Occidental and Soka as well, also in SoCal and ranked among the top 50 SLACs.

How many top fifty are within an eight hour drive of SoCal? Claremont and maybe Occidental? Almost all of them are within reasonable (though sometimes painful) drive from Philly, New York or DC. You can’t seriously assert that there’s a remotely comparable choice of competitive LAC’s.. My kids were cool with being a plane ride away but for many kids that distance is a non-starter.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This school has the name of Robert E. Lee on it. Whatever works for you, but I wouldn’t want to deal with that during a job interview (and 95 percent of employers haven’t heard of either of these schools, I would guess).

Poor guess. Look at outcomes. Kiplingers and The Economist both point out the remarkable impact of W&L. I think W&L came out first in their initial rankings. Of course all colleges have regional awareness, and I’m ashamed to admit I’d never heard of the awesome Claremont colleges before my kids began looking.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The town CMC is in is beautiful but it may be boring for a college student. It is not very college-y.

I went to CMC. The 5C colleges are extremely residential- they allow alcohol on campus, there is no real Greek scene, and almost everyone lives on, parties on, socializes on campus. I just didn't really interact with the town of Claremont very much. We would walk down to get bagels and smoothies, etc, sometimes go to the mall, sometimes go to the movies.

I would take Claremont over Lexington any day. If you wanted a nice dinner out- drive 20 minutes to Pasadena. Go to downtown LA for whatever. Go to the beach, go to the mountains.

You don't even need to go out to Pasadena to enjoy a nice dinner. Claremont has revitalized considerably and is becoming the next Pasadena of Socal. They're even expanding the LA Gold Line, which goes from DTLA to Pasadena, all the way to Claremont. It's a lovely college town with a bustling village, mountain views, weekend entertainment, and the existing train to LA for a change of pace. One of the best LAC college towns in my opinion.p

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This school has the name of Robert E. Lee on it. Whatever works for you, but I wouldn’t want to deal with that during a job interview (and 95 percent of employers haven’t heard of either of these schools, I would guess).

Poor guess. Look at outcomes. Kiplingers and The Economist both point out the remarkable impact of W&L. I think W&L came out first in their initial rankings. Of course all colleges have regional awareness, and I’m ashamed to admit I’d never heard of the awesome Claremont colleges before my kids began looking.

W&L did rank first in the Economist "Value Add" ranking, meaning actual income exceeds predicted income by the widest margin of all U.S. universities. It appears to be behind a paywall here: https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2015/10/29/our-first-ever-college-rankings

There is a similar ranking by the Center on Education and the Workforce https://cew.georgetown.edu/cew-reports/college-rankings/#interactive W&L ranks 4th. It makes adjustments for the mix of majors and selectivity. W&L actual median earnings were $77,600 and predicted earnings were $60,400, a "value add" of $17,200. CMC had actual median earnings of $63,600 and projected earnings of $59,500, ranking 307.

The original question was about the prestige of these schools. I don't like the word prestige because it is relative, but these are clearly highly rated LACs. Given how different and far apart they are, though, the better question might be which is the better fit. LACs are all about fit. This is one of the reasons selective LACs have such loyal alumni.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:Claremont McKenna admitted 8.9 percent of applicants to the Class of 2022. They had about 7,000 applications..

Washington and Lee admitted 21% of 5,855 students. https://columns.wlu.edu/485-students-join-the-wl-class-of-2022/. The Claremont Colleges are more selectiive.

CMC inflated SAT scores for years.

Huh? CMC's selectivity is under 10%. Pomona's dropped to 6.9% this year. https://www.pomona.edu/news/2018/03/16-introducing-pomona-college-class-2022.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/2013/07/24/why-forbes-removed-4-schools-from-its-americas-best-colleges-rankings/#7e58ecdb3521

Honey, that was 2004. No wonder no one knows about it. And the 2013 article you cite (brilliant!) quite clearly says the guy who did that is gone.

Can't anyone here read any more? The simple sentence above said CMC inflated SAT scores for years. CMC started in 2004 and got caught in 2012. That is 8 years and not that long ago. I'm not claiming to run a scoop saying they still are cheating and the guy is still there. What part of that is wrong and why are you entitled to patronize me with a "honey"?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm from New England and didn't hear of either school until living in VA. I'm now familiar with W&L but no nothing about Claremont....

It’s “know” not “no”, bro.