Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:Just curious as I have a kid looking at Swarthmore. Is it not considered similar to Williams/Amherst in these conversations (most of which center on WAP and Bowdoin) bc of perceived intensity or something else?

yes, I think WASP is alive and well as top 4. I also think Midd and Bowdoin are really just a half a step behind. Very tough admits, really nice environments, great career outcomes. I personally would pick Bowdoin and Midd over Amherst. If a kid liked the vibe of one over the others, that's the way to go. They're that close in prestige etc

Midd is nowhere close — and declining. The only schools a 1/2 step behind WASPB are Harvey Mudd, Claremont McKenna, and Wellesley. Harvey Mudd and Claremont McKenna, though, are on the upswing, while Wellesley is on the downswing.

If Midd continues its decline it will be on the Colgate, Hamilton, Bates, Holy Cross, Reed tier. The focus should be on avoiding that, not pretending it is something it isn’t.

Even 10 years ago, Middlebury placed below schools such as Hamilton, Colgate and Reed by standardized scoring profiles:

The 610 Smartest Colleges in America - Business Insider https://share.google/d14fkeKxLYrazPQ8m

They're all pretty similar now:
Reed: 1310-1410-1490 (52% submitting)
Hamilton: 1460-1500-1530 (34% submitting)
Colgate: 1450-1490-1530 (23% submitting)
Middlebury: 1450-1500-1530 (28% submitting)
Bowdoin: 1470-1510-1540 (31% submitting)

In fairness to Reed, it is test blind: scores are not even looked at. So there is no incentive to study for them/take multiple times if that’s your first choice.

Reed is also just such a weird school. Very few students would thrive in that environment.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just curious as I have a kid looking at Swarthmore. Is it not considered similar to Williams/Amherst in these conversations (most of which center on WAP and Bowdoin) bc of perceived intensity or something else?

yes, I think WASP is alive and well as top 4. I also think Midd and Bowdoin are really just a half a step behind. Very tough admits, really nice environments, great career outcomes. I personally would pick Bowdoin and Midd over Amherst. If a kid liked the vibe of one over the others, that's the way to go. They're that close in prestige etc

Midd is nowhere close — and declining. The only schools a 1/2 step behind WASPB are Harvey Mudd, Claremont McKenna, and Wellesley. Harvey Mudd and Claremont McKenna, though, are on the upswing, while Wellesley is on the downswing.

If Midd continues its decline it will be on the Colgate, Hamilton, Bates, Holy Cross, Reed tier. The focus should be on avoiding that, not pretending it is something it isn’t.

Even 10 years ago, Middlebury placed below schools such as Hamilton, Colgate and Reed by standardized scoring profiles:

The 610 Smartest Colleges in America - Business Insider https://share.google/d14fkeKxLYrazPQ8m

They're all pretty similar now:
Reed: 1310-1410-1490 (52% submitting)
Hamilton: 1460-1500-1530 (34% submitting)
Colgate: 1450-1490-1530 (23% submitting)
Middlebury: 1450-1500-1530 (28% submitting)
Bowdoin: 1470-1510-1540 (31% submitting)

In fairness to Reed, it is test blind: scores are not even looked at. So there is no incentive to study for them/take multiple times if that’s your first choice.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just curious as I have a kid looking at Swarthmore. Is it not considered similar to Williams/Amherst in these conversations (most of which center on WAP and Bowdoin) bc of perceived intensity or something else?

yes, I think WASP is alive and well as top 4. I also think Midd and Bowdoin are really just a half a step behind. Very tough admits, really nice environments, great career outcomes. I personally would pick Bowdoin and Midd over Amherst. If a kid liked the vibe of one over the others, that's the way to go. They're that close in prestige etc

Midd is nowhere close — and declining. The only schools a 1/2 step behind WASPB are Harvey Mudd, Claremont McKenna, and Wellesley. Harvey Mudd and Claremont McKenna, though, are on the upswing, while Wellesley is on the downswing.

If Midd continues its decline it will be on the Colgate, Hamilton, Bates, Holy Cross, Reed tier. The focus should be on avoiding that, not pretending it is something it isn’t.

Even 10 years ago, Middlebury placed below schools such as Hamilton, Colgate and Reed by standardized scoring profiles:

The 610 Smartest Colleges in America - Business Insider https://share.google/d14fkeKxLYrazPQ8m

They're all pretty similar now:
Reed: 1310-1410-1490 (52% submitting)
Hamilton: 1460-1500-1530 (34% submitting)
Colgate: 1450-1490-1530 (23% submitting)
Middlebury: 1450-1500-1530 (28% submitting)
Bowdoin: 1470-1510-1540 (31% submitting)

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just curious as I have a kid looking at Swarthmore. Is it not considered similar to Williams/Amherst in these conversations (most of which center on WAP and Bowdoin) bc of perceived intensity or something else?

yes, I think WASP is alive and well as top 4. I also think Midd and Bowdoin are really just a half a step behind. Very tough admits, really nice environments, great career outcomes. I personally would pick Bowdoin and Midd over Amherst. If a kid liked the vibe of one over the others, that's the way to go. They're that close in prestige etc

Midd is nowhere close — and declining. The only schools a 1/2 step behind WASPB are Harvey Mudd, Claremont McKenna, and Wellesley. Harvey Mudd and Claremont McKenna, though, are on the upswing, while Wellesley is on the downswing.

If Midd continues its decline it will be on the Colgate, Hamilton, Bates, Holy Cross, Reed tier. The focus should be on avoiding that, not pretending it is something it isn’t.

Let's look at things over time. Here is the average ranking for the past 35 years of USNWR rankings

Williams
Amherst
Swarthmore
Pomona
Wellesley
Bowdoin
Middlebury
Carleton
Haverford
Claremont McKenna
Davidson
Wesleyan
Smith
Vassar

These rankings are very stable over time with only a couple of exceptions. Haverford started slipping a bit after their endowment debacle and then with the inclusion of DEI metrics starting in 2020. Middlebury slipped a tiny bit with the inclusion of DEI metrics in and then last year with the change in the student resources calculation which required them to calculate their resources per student using a students number which is 70% higher than it actually is.

The most interesting thing about pulling the data together was how stable the numbers are over a long period of time. Williams, Amherst, and Swarthmore are very stable. Wellesley, Pomona, Bowdoin, and Middlebury trade places back and forth until the DEI changes move Middlebury down a couple of notches in 2020. This also happened to Haverford likely because Middlebury and Haverford have smaller endowments relative to the schools above them and correspondingly fewer kids meeting the Pell grant numbers. Carleton, Haverford, CMC, and Davidson were also pretty stable with Carleton comfortably settled in at 8 occasionally swapping places with 7 in the above list and the others swapping with each other. Haverford is the only school among the long term top 10 which is experiencing a relatively steady trend downward over the past 10 years. It looks like their endowment debacle has finally left them unable to keep up with the resources of the top schools.

None of them

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just curious as I have a kid looking at Swarthmore. Is it not considered similar to Williams/Amherst in these conversations (most of which center on WAP and Bowdoin) bc of perceived intensity or something else?

yes, I think WASP is alive and well as top 4. I also think Midd and Bowdoin are really just a half a step behind. Very tough admits, really nice environments, great career outcomes. I personally would pick Bowdoin and Midd over Amherst. If a kid liked the vibe of one over the others, that's the way to go. They're that close in prestige etc

Midd is nowhere close — and declining. The only schools a 1/2 step behind WASPB are Harvey Mudd, Claremont McKenna, and Wellesley. Harvey Mudd and Claremont McKenna, though, are on the upswing, while Wellesley is on the downswing.

If Midd continues its decline it will be on the Colgate, Hamilton, Bates, Holy Cross, Reed tier. The focus should be on avoiding that, not pretending it is something it isn’t.

Even 10 years ago, Middlebury placed below schools such as Hamilton, Colgate and Reed by standardized scoring profiles:

The 610 Smartest Colleges in America - Business Insider https://share.google/d14fkeKxLYrazPQ8m

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Williams -> hypms grad
Amherst -> hyp grad
Swarthmore -> pms grad
Pomona -> hys grad

I see what you did there: you just wanted to connect pms to Swat.

That is…an interpretation. Swat is just well known for Science and Math

Anonymous wrote:Williams -> hypms grad
Amherst -> hyp grad
Swarthmore -> pms grad
Pomona -> hys grad

I see what you did there: you just wanted to connect pms to Swat.

Williams -> hypms grad
Amherst -> hyp grad
Swarthmore -> pms grad
Pomona -> hys grad

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Anonymous wrote:Not many top talent phds coming from the “good” lacs.

8 out of top 10 per capita are SLACs. You are an idiot.
https://www.collegetransitions.com/dataverse/top-feeders-phd-programs#total-phd

Okay? You didn’t combat my point. Please work on your reading comprehension.

New poster, here. You made a claim without any support about lack of “top talent” from SLACs. Do you have evidence for this assertion? I went from a top 10 SLAC to a fully funded top 5 PhD program. SLACs were extremely well represented in my cohort.

You will not find lac grads at the top PhD programs in STEM.

Evidence?

It's not true. My D went to Pomona and these were some of the PhD destinations from peers in his graduating class

Astrophysics Berkeley
Math MIT
Math Berkeley x 2
Math Stanford
Chemistry Princeton
Chemistry CalTech
Chemistry Stanford
CS Carnegie Mellon
MD PhD Harvard

Pomona has not had a math major go to MIT in the last Decade…

The one I know is in class of 2018 (Pomona) so, actually, they have.

So mythical people

Several people above have posted links to Pomona grads at MIT right now. You've lost this one, buddy. Beat it.

LinkedIn profiles with no photo and identifiable information. It’s really obvious these are bot accounts.

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jiahui-Yu-4

Right…

I also looked it up and yes, there was a 2018 math major from Pomona who went to MIT for a PhD in operations research.

https://ctl.mit.edu/news/mit-ctl-announces-2022-23-ups-fellowship-recipients

Here are a few more MIT STEM PhDs from Pomona within the last 10 years, based on a quick google search.

https://www.space.mit.edu/people/vera-berger/

https://www.pomona.edu/outcomes/alumni-career-stories/posts/scott-tan-16

https://openreview.net/profile?id=~Dmitriy_Smirnov1

https://suessgroup.mit.edu/group-members/

So, these are all ghost profiles?

Pomona has a ton of hypms grad students/alumnae. Prob one of the highest per capita of any school. I can’t believe someone would repeatedly try to assert otherwise.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’d choose Williams or Pomona for their special study abroad and fellowships with Oxford and Cambridge.

Imagine choosing a college solely for the opportunity to go to another college

💯

-100, we’re living in a time where connections outside the us can be extraordinarily helpful. It’s also not like Oxford and Cambridge are random schools in other countries.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’d choose Williams or Pomona for their special study abroad and fellowships with Oxford and Cambridge.

Imagine choosing a college solely for the opportunity to go to another college

💯

Pomona is trying to avoid a lawsuit by refusing to show their DEI admit percent for class of 2029, pathetic: https://www.pomona.edu/news/2025/09/12-pomona-college-class-2029-profile

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’d choose Williams or Pomona for their special study abroad and fellowships with Oxford and Cambridge.

Imagine choosing a college solely for the opportunity to go to another college

Having access to fellowships that don’t exist if you don’t matriculate to that school is a pretty smart reason to attend a college.

100%. From my understanding, Pomona students get selected for a free masters at Cambridge, and that seems like a fantastic opportunity. It’s amazing what the top lacs and universities provide for students.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’d choose Williams or Pomona for their special study abroad and fellowships with Oxford and Cambridge.

Imagine choosing a college solely for the opportunity to go to another college

Having access to fellowships that don’t exist if you don’t matriculate to that school is a pretty smart reason to attend a college.

+1 Amherst also has an Oxford direct enrollment program. DC plans to attend junior year.