Reply to Why apply to an Oberlin/Kenyon/Grinnell

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Look, the bottom line is this:  Grinnell is much more highly ranked than any of the Ohio schools - it’s just outside the top 10, whereas none of the Ohio schools is even in the top 30.  Grinnell also has a much lower acceptance rate and yield.  Kenyon in particular is nobody’s first choice.

So I agree that you shouldn’t really consider them as peers.  [/quote]

Hmm. I just checked the most recent CDS of both Grinnell and Kenyon.  Coincidentally, they both have the exact same percentage of students reporting SAT and ACT scores (28% and 27%).  The median ACT score for both schools is 33.  The median SAT is 1460 for Grinnell and 1440 for Kenyon.  If we can use test scores as a reasonable proxy for academic caliber of the students, it's pretty damn close to a tie.  Certainly, they seem to be "peers."

US News definitely ranks Grinnell higher.  The endowment is huge, and this enables Grinnell to compete better on the metrics US News favors, which largely revolve around financial aid, Pell grants, etc.  Grinnell has more resources and therefore does a better job bringing in low income and diverse students, as well as with merit aid.  The stronger financial aid and need blind policy leads to more applications and lower acceptance rates, although this doesn't seem to translate into materially higher average test scores.

Grinnell has much more money and throws it around to attract students, but any rational person looking at these two schools would see them as peers with a lot of similarities.  In terms of academic reputation, faculty, etc., Grinnell probably has the edge with hard sciences but not elsewhere.  Grinnell also seems to suffer from a Swarthmore-like reputation of being a dull grind school.  Kenyon's campus life seems more vibrant, and one basically only hears positive things.

I understand the Grinnellian impulse to separate from the midwest "loser" table in the cafeteria and hang out with the cool rich kids from New England.  But you will still always be that awkward Iowa farm boy, who happened to have a rich uncle.

Rather than tear each other down, midwestern SLACs should appreciate one another.  It's a pretty special collection of colleges.[/quote]

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