are Dartmouth and Brown easier than WASP schools?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Didn't realize "WASP schools" were still a thing in 2025.

What does that even mean? It’s an acronym.

An acronym for what please?

Williams, Amherst, Swarthmore and I’m not sure the P one.

Selective liberal arts colleges

Pomona- the most selective liberal arts college.

My kid is in the thick of applications right now. Bowdoin was slightly more selective this past year. However, Pomona and Bowdoin have the highest yield among the liberal arts colleges. I think Pomona's weather is far more appealing.

Pomona also has a large number of Californians. There is an element of self-selection in terms of applicants. If they want to stay in California and don’t get into Stanford… I’m sure the weather is part of it, and the terrific consortium.

Bowdoin has a high yield because of its rep for great dorms and food, and general qol.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It fully depends on what you do as a major. I don't think a Pomona Physics major is much different from a Brown Physics major, but a Brown math major will do more work than a Pomona linguistics major.

A Pomona math major will do more work than a Brown math major, I can assure you.

This is so not true. Brown’s undergraduate applied math is generally ranked #2 or 3 and pure math 5 or 6. Pomona has one math program and it isn’t even in the top 25. Brown placed 8th in the Putnam Math Competition last year. Pomona was not even the top 25. A quick perusal of the respective course catalogs shows Brown undergraduate courses > 8x that of Pomona. Roughly 1/2 of the pure math concentrators at Brown go on to top 5 Ph.D pure math programs. You are so wildly off base about this it’s laughable.

A department’s mathematical rigor isn’t based off of Putnam- that would mean Princeton would be much worse than basically all the programs where IMO winners prefer going (aka MIT). Pomona per capita sends more students to PhD programs. I’d love to see a stat on the top 5 PhD pure math thing- it also doesn’t say how many pure math concentrators there are. Typically brown is known for applied math as you stated first.

I don’t even agree with the Other poster, But this is nonsense

Princeton actually is much worse than other schools for STEM and particularly for math. Putnam Competition is starting to reflect that. Retaining TO has really hurt their ability to attract the best STEM students. Talk to Princeton professors. Like Harvard, Princeton now offers remedial math. Its heritage as a destination for the best mathematicians and physicists has declined quite a bit, too. Princeton is much more preprofessional than say MIT, Caltech, Cornell, Brown and Columbia. Princeton has a lot of recruited lacrosse types who dabble in a few low level math courses vs. the others cited above which have a higher quotient of truly brilliant folks who go on to get PhDs. Talk to faculty.

Stupid, just stupid

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Didn't realize "WASP schools" were still a thing in 2025.

What does that even mean? It’s an acronym.

An acronym for what please?

Williams, Amherst, Swarthmore and I’m not sure the P one.

Selective liberal arts colleges

Pomona- the most selective liberal arts college.

My kid is in the thick of applications right now. Bowdoin was slightly more selective this past year. However, Pomona and Bowdoin have the highest yield among the liberal arts colleges. I think Pomona's weather is far more appealing.

Pomona also has a large number of Californians. There is an element of self-selection in terms of applicants. If they want to stay in California and don’t get into Stanford… I’m sure the weather is part of it, and the terrific consortium.

Bowdoin has a high yield because of its rep for great dorms and food, and general qol.

They accept almost 300 students ED with a class of ~470. Plus they have questbridge match of 25 students. That’s 69% of seats chosen before they even begin selecting.

[Anonymous]

Is that correct? Pomona only accepts about 13% ED and Bowdoin 14%.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Is that correct? Pomona only accepts about 13% ED and Bowdoin 14%.

Yeah, which are good boosts compared to regular.

[Anonymous]

omg wtf no.

people on this board are crazy about teeny tiny LACs when hardly anyone outside the state they're in has heard of any of them. they get much fewer applicants because not that many people want to go.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The reality are all the Ivy's ae much easier once you get there than even flagship state schools.

Less classes, less expectation, no real grading, lots of fluff classes.

Ivy students take 10 less classes than students are flagship universities add in some APs and they are taking 15 less classes.

This is actually not true at all. While some ivies are known for grade inflation, others are very rigorous from a grading perspective. At Dartmouth, for example, only 4 to 8 students per year graduate with a 4.0.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:omg wtf no.

people on this board are crazy about teeny tiny LACs when hardly anyone outside the state they're in has heard of any of them. they get much fewer applicants because not that many people want to go.

Exactly. That's why SLACs have a 5-7% acceptance rate, because no one wants to go!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:omg wtf no.

people on this board are crazy about teeny tiny LACs when hardly anyone outside the state they're in has heard of any of them. they get much fewer applicants because not that many people want to go.

Omg wtf are you really this stupid? They are among the wealthiest and hardest to gain admission to schools in the country.

[Anonymous]

My kid is in the thick of applications right now. Bowdoin was slightly more selective this past year. However, Pomona and Bowdoin have the highest yield among the liberal arts colleges. I think Pomona's weather is far more appealing.


SoCal more appealing than Maine? To each their own!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It fully depends on what you do as a major. I don't think a Pomona Physics major is much different from a Brown Physics major, but a Brown math major will do more work than a Pomona linguistics major.

A Pomona math major will do more work than a Brown math major, I can assure you.

This is so not true. Brown’s undergraduate applied math is generally ranked #2 or 3 and pure math 5 or 6. Pomona has one math program and it isn’t even in the top 25. Brown placed 8th in the Putnam Math Competition last year. Pomona was not even the top 25. A quick perusal of the respective course catalogs shows Brown undergraduate courses > 8x that of Pomona. Roughly 1/2 of the pure math concentrators at Brown go on to top 5 Ph.D pure math programs. You are so wildly off base about this it’s laughable.

A department’s mathematical rigor isn’t based off of Putnam- that would mean Princeton would be much worse than basically all the programs where IMO winners prefer going (aka MIT). Pomona per capita sends more students to PhD programs. I’d love to see a stat on the top 5 PhD pure math thing- it also doesn’t say how many pure math concentrators there are. Typically brown is known for applied math as you stated first.

I don’t even agree with the Other poster, But this is nonsense

Princeton actually is much worse than other schools for STEM and particularly for math. Putnam Competition is starting to reflect that. Retaining TO has really hurt their ability to attract the best STEM students. Talk to Princeton professors. Like Harvard, Princeton now offers remedial math. Its heritage as a destination for the best mathematicians and physicists has declined quite a bit, too. Princeton is much more preprofessional than say MIT, Caltech, Cornell, Brown and Columbia. Princeton has a lot of recruited lacrosse types who dabble in a few low level math courses vs. the others cited above which have a higher quotient of truly brilliant folks who go on to get PhDs. Talk to faculty.

Princeton really bad for math is very funny.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:omg wtf no.

people on this board are crazy about teeny tiny LACs when hardly anyone outside the state they're in has heard of any of them. they get much fewer applicants because not that many people want to go.

Ok? That doesn’t mean people can’t talk about it. These are still very competitive institutions. The most applied to colleges are Berkeley and UCLA- a lot of people don’t want to go there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

My kid is in the thick of applications right now. Bowdoin was slightly more selective this past year. However, Pomona and Bowdoin have the highest yield among the liberal arts colleges. I think Pomona's weather is far more appealing.

SoCal more appealing than Maine? To each their own!

There’s so much to explore in SoCal. Maine is great, but there’s not the same level of biodiversity.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

My kid is in the thick of applications right now. Bowdoin was slightly more selective this past year. However, Pomona and Bowdoin have the highest yield among the liberal arts colleges. I think Pomona's weather is far more appealing.

SoCal more appealing than Maine? To each their own!

There’s so much to explore in SoCal. Maine is great, but there’s not the same level of biodiversity.

It’s just the late night fictional musings of the Pomona booster. Pay no heed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It fully depends on what you do as a major. I don't think a Pomona Physics major is much different from a Brown Physics major, but a Brown math major will do more work than a Pomona linguistics major.

A Pomona math major will do more work than a Brown math major, I can assure you.

This is so not true. Brown’s undergraduate applied math is generally ranked #2 or 3 and pure math 5 or 6. Pomona has one math program and it isn’t even in the top 25. Brown placed 8th in the Putnam Math Competition last year. Pomona was not even the top 25. A quick perusal of the respective course catalogs shows Brown undergraduate courses > 8x that of Pomona. Roughly 1/2 of the pure math concentrators at Brown go on to top 5 Ph.D pure math programs. You are so wildly off base about this it’s laughable.

A department’s mathematical rigor isn’t based off of Putnam- that would mean Princeton would be much worse than basically all the programs where IMO winners prefer going (aka MIT). Pomona per capita sends more students to PhD programs. I’d love to see a stat on the top 5 PhD pure math thing- it also doesn’t say how many pure math concentrators there are. Typically brown is known for applied math as you stated first.

I don’t even agree with the Other poster, But this is nonsense

Princeton actually is much worse than other schools for STEM and particularly for math. Putnam Competition is starting to reflect that. Retaining TO has really hurt their ability to attract the best STEM students. Talk to Princeton professors. Like Harvard, Princeton now offers remedial math. Its heritage as a destination for the best mathematicians and physicists has declined quite a bit, too. Princeton is much more preprofessional than say MIT, Caltech, Cornell, Brown and Columbia. Princeton has a lot of recruited lacrosse types who dabble in a few low level math courses vs. the others cited above which have a higher quotient of truly brilliant folks who go on to get PhDs. Talk to faculty.

Princeton really bad for math is very funny.

PP must not have A Beautiful Mind.