Anonymous wrote:Nevertheless, the social experience offered by Middlebury College probably would have been superior to the Top 10 National University social experience due to the more intimate environment offered by Middlebury College and due to the proximity of great ski resorts in the area.

The social experience at the Top 10 National University was incredible according to the former elite prep boarding school student, but more intense.

Anonymous wrote:Most of DC's classmates at Amherst (himself included) chose it over schools ranked in the high teens and low 20s, like Georgetown, Michigan, UCLA, USC, and Vanderbilt, so probably somewhat in that range.

The admissions office says that Amherst loses cross-admits to every Ivy except Cornell.

Anonymous wrote:Nevertheless, the social experience offered by Middlebury College probably would have been superior to the Top 10 National University social experience due to the more intimate environment offered by Middlebury College and due to the proximity of great ski resorts in the area.

The social experience at the Top 10 National University was incredible according to the former elite prep boarding school student, but more intense.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:yes, because there are more kids of privilege at williams.

using older data from NYT, percentage of kids from top 1% (630k):
Williams College 18.1%
Massachusetts Institute of Technology 5.7%

They clearly must enroll a very high number of kids from the bottom say 60% in order to get the average net price down to $26k if your stats are correct.

If say 30% are full pay at $90k then that means nearly 70% aren’t paying much of anything in order to arrive at a $27k average net price.

Anonymous wrote:yes, because there are more kids of privilege at williams.

using older data from NYT, percentage of kids from top 1% (630k):
Williams College 18.1%
Massachusetts Institute of Technology 5.7%

Anonymous wrote:hear all this banter about WASP schools being comparable to ivies, but are they really? where should Williams, Amherst, and Pomona fall on an overall list - somewhere in the mid 20s after Georgetown, UVA, USC, Lehigh, etc?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:be careful when reading these rankings unless you're prepare/able to look at methodology.

for example, for salaries on the WSJ ranking, they use two numbers. here they are. if you thought it was something to do with "salary", you'd be wrong.


Salary impact (67%): This measures the extent to which a college boosts its graduates’ salaries beyond what they would be expected to earn regardless of which college they attended. We used statistical modeling to estimate what we would expect the median earnings of a college’s graduates to be on the basis of the exam results of its students prior to attending the college and the cost of living in the state in which the college is based. We then scored the college on its performance against that estimate. These scores were then combined with scores for raw graduate salaries to factor in absolute performance alongside performance relative to our estimates. Our analysis for this metric used research on this topic by the policy-research think tank the Brookings Institution as a guide.

Years to pay off net price (33%): This measure combines two figures—the average net price of attending the college, and the value added to graduates’ median salary attributable to attending the college. The value added to graduates’ median salary by a college was estimated on the basis of the difference between the median earnings of the school’s graduates and the median earnings of high-school graduates in the state where the college is located and across the U.S. in proportion to the ratio of students who are in-state versus out-of-state. We then took the average annual net price of attending the college—including costs like tuition and fees, room and board, and books and supplies, taking into account any grants and scholarships, for students who received federal financial aid—and multiplied it by four to reflect an estimated cost of a four-year program. We then divided this overall net-price figure by the value added to a graduate’s salary, to provide an estimate of how quickly an education at the college pays for itself through the salary boost it provides. Our analysis for this metric used research on this topic by the policy-research think tank Third Way as a guide.

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this is really about the distance a college propels a student. so a immigrant kid from stuy who goes to MIT - who also has a low Net Price - that's a great outcome.

a rich kid who would have done just fine at Middlebury or Vandy? who paid full price for either? and would also have been just as rich and connected if they went to UVM? less a distance traveled story. lower salary number. even though kid 2 here might be making more (with those great connections!) than kid 1.

What about Questbridge students, for example, who attend the top (20ish) SLACs essentially for free? At many of those schools Questbridge students make up a large percentage of the class. And are we to assume that no students of privilege attend MIT? You are obviously one of the many on the board who don’t understand the value of a small liberal arts education. That’s fine, they are not for everyone. But please don’t base your “analysis” on lazy assumptions that reflect your biases. One of the many reasons why this entire exercise is a fool’s errand.

Williams doesnt release questbridge numbers but say they've enrolled 500 since 2004, so 25 a year? I wouldnt call that a large percentage of the class. MIT enrolled 100 last year.

You're missing my point entirely since I was defending Williams, but just want to point this out. Williams is a far more privileged student body overall. That's just in the numbers.

Anonymous wrote:
What does that mean…Swat doesn’t really have engineering but you can do a 5 year program with Penn.

Like…what’s the point?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:be careful when reading these rankings unless you're prepare/able to look at methodology.

for example, for salaries on the WSJ ranking, they use two numbers. here they are. if you thought it was something to do with "salary", you'd be wrong.


Salary impact (67%): This measures the extent to which a college boosts its graduates’ salaries beyond what they would be expected to earn regardless of which college they attended. We used statistical modeling to estimate what we would expect the median earnings of a college’s graduates to be on the basis of the exam results of its students prior to attending the college and the cost of living in the state in which the college is based. We then scored the college on its performance against that estimate. These scores were then combined with scores for raw graduate salaries to factor in absolute performance alongside performance relative to our estimates. Our analysis for this metric used research on this topic by the policy-research think tank the Brookings Institution as a guide.

Years to pay off net price (33%): This measure combines two figures—the average net price of attending the college, and the value added to graduates’ median salary attributable to attending the college. The value added to graduates’ median salary by a college was estimated on the basis of the difference between the median earnings of the school’s graduates and the median earnings of high-school graduates in the state where the college is located and across the U.S. in proportion to the ratio of students who are in-state versus out-of-state. We then took the average annual net price of attending the college—including costs like tuition and fees, room and board, and books and supplies, taking into account any grants and scholarships, for students who received federal financial aid—and multiplied it by four to reflect an estimated cost of a four-year program. We then divided this overall net-price figure by the value added to a graduate’s salary, to provide an estimate of how quickly an education at the college pays for itself through the salary boost it provides. Our analysis for this metric used research on this topic by the policy-research think tank Third Way as a guide.

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this is really about the distance a college propels a student. so a immigrant kid from stuy who goes to MIT - who also has a low Net Price - that's a great outcome.

a rich kid who would have done just fine at Middlebury or Vandy? who paid full price for either? and would also have been just as rich and connected if they went to UVM? less a distance traveled story. lower salary number. even though kid 2 here might be making more (with those great connections!) than kid 1.

What about Questbridge students, for example, who attend the top (20ish) SLACs essentially for free? At many of those schools Questbridge students make up a large percentage of the class. And are we to assume that no students of privilege attend MIT? You are obviously one of the many on the board who don’t understand the value of a small liberal arts education. That’s fine, they are not for everyone. But please don’t base your “analysis” on lazy assumptions that reflect your biases. One of the many reasons why this entire exercise is a fool’s errand.

Anonymous wrote:hear all this banter about WASP schools being comparable to ivies, but are they really? where should Williams, Amherst, and Pomona fall on an overall list - somewhere in the mid 20s after Georgetown, UVA, USC, Lehigh, etc?