Asian-American applicants tend to do better in admissions to the NESCACs than to the Ivies, adjusted for the NESCAC vs Ivy admission rates. The reason for this is that, generally speaking, the Ivy brand is more highly valued among first-generation Asian American parents than liberal arts colleges. Perhaps to the same degree it is among the American general population; maybe more. The notion of a small, non-STEM-focused, non-university off in the woods of New England just does not seem to resonate nearly as much with Asian-Americans as it does among white, upper-middle-class, prep-schooled northeasterners. Which make up a decent chunk of the NESCAC student body.
The result if this cultural non-preference by Asian-Americans is that they are rarer as applicants and thus more highly valued as a quota-filling demographic, group. The neat trick that colleges do with their Asian-American students is classify them as "students of color" but not URMs. So if you see that a certain NESCAC campus is, say, 40% "students of color," you can expect a good portion of that to be Asian, and another good portion to be, say, affluent and often white-appearing Latin Americans. At most but not all NESCACs, the numbers of Black students are still pretty low.

For smart white prep school types but you get lots of kids from other parts of the country who want and dream of that small liberal arts education experience too.

Maybe things have changed, but my public high school in New England sent a lot of kids to the Maine schools and Williams.

But we don't know if OP is talking about a girl or a boy...

There's Vassar I guess.

Anonymous wrote:It's hard to say. People aren't all the same (duh) but there is a vibe of clubby-ness. You really have to visit and see for yourself. Also it can vary from school to school - Amherst is diverse but, when we visited, DC found it extremely pretentious and stuffy. Wesleyan is much more white but DC got a much friendlier and more open vibe from them.

There are a lot of similarities but the schools are still very different.

And then of course there's the other elite east coast liberal arts college that could be a NESCAC but eschews sports - Swarthmore. If you're looking into the NESCAC you should look into Swat too.

If you're looking outside of New England, there are plenty of other elite east coast colleges The Seven Sisters aren't in NESCAC, either.

It's hard to say. People aren't all the same (duh) but there is a vibe of clubby-ness. You really have to visit and see for yourself. Also it can vary from school to school - Amherst is diverse but, when we visited, DC found it extremely pretentious and stuffy. Wesleyan is much more white but DC got a much friendlier and more open vibe from them.

There are a lot of similarities but the schools are still very different.

And then of course there's the other elite east coast liberal arts college that could be a NESCAC but eschews sports - Swarthmore. If you're looking into the NESCAC you should look into Swat too.

So are they "clubby" with everyone trying to be prep schoolish, or open? After switching DCs from private to public, they are so much happier with the variety of kids in public. Truth is they're tracked, so it's not completely fluid socially. Don't get want to get stuck in a place where everybody does the same thing. Realize this is terrible over generalization.

They definitely have the vibe of being a continuation of New England prep schools but the student body is getting more diverse.

Take Trinity College e.g., that school is very definitely a white school carry over from NE prep schools.