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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]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. [/quote]

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.  [/quote]

PP didn't say cross admits were turning down Harvard but rather non-HYP ivied.[/quote]

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