Anonymous wrote:Amherst, Wiliams, and Bowdoin will weather the demographic cliff with their $2 billion endowments. Colby and Holy Cross have 2 of the best Presidents in higher education. IMO, Colgate had 3,000 app drop, Midd smaller decine but rankings have nosedived probably more than any other LAC. Forget Conn College, Trinity has seen much better days. Bucknell
Lafayette, and Lehigh fighting it out for kids who see Pennsylvania as a destination(yikes). Wesleyan and Bates carving out the really woke crowd. Lesser prestige schools like Hobart and St. Lawrence in tough spots.

The Midd ratings drop is nonsense but it probably makes a difference to prestige whores. It is totally phantom and brought about by a USNWR methodology calculation change, the same one that has Forbes rankings showing Midd with a 4000+ student body.

Anonymous wrote:^PP said HC sports are terrible they are not.

They mostly are, especially women's sports. They have strong ice hockey programs but eth top d3 are equivalent to HC womens. Lacrosse, Volleyball, track, etc. HC lags the top NESCACs by a considerable margin.

Anonymous wrote:Amherst, Wiliams, and Bowdoin will weather the demographic cliff with their $2 billion endowments. Colby and Holy Cross have 2 of the best Presidents in higher education. IMO, Colgate had 3,000 app drop, Midd smaller decine but rankings have nosedived probably more than any other LAC. Forget Conn College, Trinity has seen much better days. Bucknell
Lafayette, and Lehigh fighting it out for kids who see Pennsylvania as a destination(yikes). Wesleyan and Bates carving out the really woke crowd. Lesser prestige schools like Hobart and St. Lawrence in tough spots.

Not for nothing but I don’t think a lot of you have ever spent any time on Wesleyan’s campus. Unless by woke you mean DS can’t fly his Trump flag outside his fraternity house window without some pushback.

Amherst, Wiliams, and Bowdoin will weather the demographic cliff with their $2 billion endowments. Colby and Holy Cross have 2 of the best Presidents in higher education. IMO, Colgate had 3,000 app drop, Midd smaller decine but rankings have nosedived probably more than any other LAC. Forget Conn College, Trinity has seen much better days. Bucknell
Lafayette, and Lehigh fighting it out for kids who see Pennsylvania as a destination(yikes). Wesleyan and Bates carving out the really woke crowd. Lesser prestige schools like Hobart and St. Lawrence in tough spots.

Anonymous wrote:Hamilton, Middlebury, Bowdoin, Bates, Colby appeal to a small niche market. Sort of like a tree falling in the woods analogy. Trinity has been in decline for decades. Only 2 schools in that conference worth $90k a year and Amherst is a closet on east side of town in comparison to huge UMass.

These schools may not be up to your standards, but they are doing fine which is not easy for LACs in this market. Many NE and Mid-Atlantic LACs are headed into rough seas with the demographic cliff,,

Also one of the US' strengths is the variety of higher Ed options.Your kids might see themselves at Michigan or Penn, but there is no need to knock Bates or Middlebury. They are a good fit for another type of kid.

I do enjoy it when parents who hate liberal arts colleges jump into a thread about LACs to once again express the novel belief that only Williams and Amherst are “worth it.” We get it, if you think applying to all of the evil 8 is a reasonable strategy for Larlo, then you might be disappointed with Bates (or whatever). Kids do want to go to Bates, Colby, Hamilton, Conn. Coll., etc. And not just kids who went to Groton or Middlesex.

Hamilton, Middlebury, Bowdoin, Bates, Colby appeal to a small niche market. Sort of like a tree falling in the woods analogy. Trinity has been in decline for decades. Only 2 schools in that conference worth $90k a year and Amherst is a closet on east side of town in comparison to huge UMass.

^PP said HC sports are terrible they are not.

Anonymous wrote:Not a grad of any Patriot or NESCAC school but Patriot League schools would mop the floor with Amherst and Williams in football, basketball, and hockey. Less funded Olympic sports are a toss-up. Not one in LAC lane and most Ivies have the legacy of Holy Cross. HC is the only school that can claim 2 basketball titles 1 NCAA in 1947, NIT in 1950s. Holy Cross also has NCAA Championship trophy for baseball in 1954 with their 2025 baseball team competing against UNC and Oklahoma this past spring. Their men’s crew team is usually ranked in top 20 and men’s hockey is decent. HC doesn’t shy away from top,competition with football playing Northwestern, BC, Navy, Army, Syracuse and UCONN. Agree some of their other Olympic sports are underfunded. Currently 4 HC grads playing in NFL, 1 grad a star pitcher in MLB. In summary their history is fantastic for a select LAC with 3,200 kids. Trivia tidbit, Holy Cross football is undefeated vs mighty Georgia Bulldogs-3-0 with the three games in late1930s and early 1940s. Finally HC Football played UMiami in mid 1940s Orange Bowl. Only HYP can rival their high visibility and HC is the oldest non- Ivy rival of HY, Dartmouth and maybe Brown(URI). Storied athletic program at HC.

The Holy Cross booster is really tedious. Who cares about sports from 1954? It's not relevant or interesting.

I think Holy Cross is a great place, but the booster undermines it as a serious option with all this antiquated minutia.

Plus, OP did not ask about any Catholic schools. Holy Cross may play non-Catholic schools, but there are a lot of (non-Catholic) students who - for perfectly acceptable reasons -- would prefer not to attend a school like Holy Cross, with its strong Catholic culture.

Anonymous wrote:Amherst and Willams have some prestige but to compare Hamilton, Middlebury, and Bowdoin with the likes of Duke, Dartmouth, and Penn is lunacy.

Did you click on the link? It shows that in 1961, those colleges were grouped together when considering SAT scores.

Anonymous wrote:Amherst and Willams have some prestige but to compare Hamilton, Middlebury, and Bowdoin with the likes of Duke, Dartmouth, and Penn is lunacy.

At the time of the Life article, schools such as Penn and Duke didn't compare academically with schools such as Swarthmore, Haverford, Reed, Carleton, Hamilton and Oberlin.

Amherst and Willams have some prestige but to compare Hamilton, Middlebury, and Bowdoin with the likes of Duke, Dartmouth, and Penn is lunacy.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hamilton and Middlebury are fine schools but not in the same conversation of Amherst or Bowdoin and Williams.

Nonsense, all were bunched together at the top until 2019. There are only two changes since then.

1. An increase in the DEI weighting factors
2. The change in resources per student calculation to use the 12 month number rather than the fall number.

Nothing actually changed at any of these schools.

this is the most ridiculous post on the thread - it’s always been Amherst and Williams, then everyone else. Maybe Wes was included before they tailed off in the early 2000s

The poster is correct, go search for the archives.

Deep archives placed Amherst and Williams with universities such as Harvard, Princeton, Yale and Columbia; Hamilton with Brown, Cornell, Dartmouth, Stanford and Chicago; and Bowdoin and Middlebury with Penn and Duke:

https://books.google.com/books?id=ykQEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA100&lpg=PA100&dq=life+magazine+1960+college+admission+tufts+bowdoin&source=bl&ots=5BKi5WV8SQ&sig=GFl_LycVnJV8AGIXLX2P9kW97I0&hl=en&sa=X&ei=sO1TT4uPK-jm0QG8ifC3DQ#v=onepage&q&f=false

NESCAC Tufts, as well, appeared with this group.

Not a grad of any Patriot or NESCAC school but Patriot League schools would mop the floor with Amherst and Williams in football, basketball, and hockey. Less funded Olympic sports are a toss-up. Not one in LAC lane and most Ivies have the legacy of Holy Cross. HC is the only school that can claim 2 basketball titles 1 NCAA in 1947, NIT in 1950s. Holy Cross also has NCAA Championship trophy for baseball in 1954 with their 2025 baseball team competing against UNC and Oklahoma this past spring. Their men’s crew team is usually ranked in top 20 and men’s hockey is decent. HC doesn’t shy away from top,competition with football playing Northwestern, BC, Navy, Army, Syracuse and UCONN. Agree some of their other Olympic sports are underfunded. Currently 4 HC grads playing in NFL, 1 grad a star pitcher in MLB. In summary their history is fantastic for a select LAC with 3,200 kids. Trivia tidbit, Holy Cross football is undefeated vs mighty Georgia Bulldogs-3-0 with the three games in late1930s and early 1940s. Finally HC Football played UMiami in mid 1940s Orange Bowl. Only HYP can rival their high visibility and HC is the oldest non- Ivy rival of HY, Dartmouth and maybe Brown(URI). Storied athletic program at HC.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hamilton and Middlebury are fine schools but not in the same conversation of Amherst or Bowdoin and Williams.

Nonsense, all were bunched together at the top until 2019. There are only two changes since then.

1. An increase in the DEI weighting factors
2. The change in resources per student calculation to use the 12 month number rather than the fall number.

Nothing actually changed at any of these schools.

this is the most ridiculous post on the thread - it’s always been Amherst and Williams, then everyone else. Maybe Wes was included before they tailed off in the early 2000s

The poster is correct, go search for the archives.

Deep archives placed Amherst and Williams with universities such as Harvard, Princeton, Yale and Columbia; Hamilton with Brown, Cornell, Dartmouth, Stanford and Chicago; and Bowdoin and Middlebury with Penn and Duke:

https://books.google.com/books?id=ykQEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA100&lpg=PA100&dq=life+magazine+1960+college+admission+tufts+bowdoin&source=bl&ots=5BKi5WV8SQ&sig=GFl_LycVnJV8AGIXLX2P9kW97I0&hl=en&sa=X&ei=sO1TT4uPK-jm0QG8ifC3DQ#v=onepage&q&f=false