Keilexandra

The problem I think many are having is with the bolded adjective. AWS are indeed the most prestigious elite LACs, but not to the degree that "far" implies.

bclintonk

All three are outstanding LACs and you can't go wrong with any of them. That said, there is a difference. In a nutshell, it's this:

Strength of entering class:

School / % with 700+ SAT CR / % with 700+ SAT M
Williams / 64% / 60%
Amherst / 63% / 60%
Middlebury / 49% / 48%

Prestige among academics:

School / USNWR PA rating
Williams / 4.7
Amherst / 4.6
Middlebury / 4.3

Middlebury's scores on these measures are outstanding. But Williams and Amherst are clearly a cut above, as measured by strength of the entering class and standing among their peers.

tk21769

>> Amherst and Williams are far more prestigious than Middlebury.

No doubt this was true in 1959. But today?
It depends on your "tribe" I suppose.

Social exclusivity, once as important to prestige as academic merit, has been turned on its head. Now it's a negative. It's just so outré these days to exclude Negroes and Jews from your country club, or to make "scholarship boys" go up the back stairs. So class snobbery is dying, if not stone cold dead. Indeed, there hardly exists a well-defined upper class anymore. There are middle class people, and rich middle class people. They all have to work for a living because they all have debts; they all struggle equally at choosing the ideal wine for ribs.

Years ago, if you went to a top New England prep school and wanted a small college not an Ivy university, Amherst and Williams were the obvious, exclusive choices. The college population is much larger today. The most selective schools draw from a much broader cross section of the population. Outside narrow segments of that population, few people know anything about any of these small schools. There is much weaker consensus about what is respected in a college. If it's not social exclusivity, what is it? The number of Ph.D.s it produces, or its Peace Corps volunteers? Surely it is not a couple points in a grocery store magazine ranking. Even the cited spread in the SAT bands is a weak claim to distinction. In your 10-student freshman seminar, that might mean 6 students are brilliant and 4 are merely very smart, instead of 5 and 5. Or it might just mean that one more kid was a heavily coached, gilded pain in the ass. The Peer Assessments are even more dubious. Nobody really knows to what extent they are based on first-hand knowledge and not just an afterglow of the "halo effect".

Middlebury has a reputation not only for all-around quality, but also for superior strength in a couple of niche areas (foreign languages, environmental science.) What's the uncontested strength at Williams? Art History? So if an auctioneer at Christie's thinks Williams is the most prestigious LAC in America, terrific. Today there is enough competition among a dozen or more schools that you can sensibly choose one based on a strength like that (assuming you really know what you want), or on the elusive quality called "fit". For the best students it might be Middlebury, Amherst, Haverford, Williams, Reed, a women's college, Carleton, Grinnell, etc. It depends on YOU.

RML

Please define "prestigious".

arcadia

Those same 2000+ academia heavyweights, when rating colleges this year, elevated Middlebury's peer assessment score to an all-time high. The same is not true for Amherst. When you're at the top, you have nowhere to go but down.

ncram65

Hey, I think the world of Amherst and Williams. And if I were to choose today, I'd probably choose Williams.

But to say that Amherst is so much more prestigous than Middlebury that it should override an individual's personal preference for one of these schools over the other is silly. I'd encourage a kid to go to Harvard instead of UMass based on prestige, but to go to Amherst over Middlebury on that basis? Ridiculous.

Amherst is hardly "famous". To be honest, all three of these LACs are obscure in the big picture. If you want to go to a school with a big reputation, go to Harvard. Or if you want to go to school that everyone has heard off, go to Harvard (or Notre Dame). If you want to go to a school that will provide you with a first class undergraduate education any three of these LACs will do the job.

A student's options after college will be WAY more affected by what he or she did while at the school than by which of the three he or she attended.

RML

Amherst is hardly "famous". To be honest, all three of these LACs are obscure in the big picture. If you want to go to a school with a big reputation, go to Harvard.

My point exactly.

d'smom

Middlebury is every bit as good. I lived in Upstate NY very close to Williams(about 45mins away) and the Middlebury name was every bit as big there as the Williams name. Both are great school and have the same kind of reputation.

You really should go to the one that you feel has the best fit for what your needs are.

Middlebury, Williams, and Amherst represent some of the finest that the NE has to offer just as Carleton, Grinnell and Oberlin would represent the mid-west best followed by Pomona, Claremont Mckenna in the West etc.....

rom828

d'smom makes the best point. Fortunately, there really is no "best" school, or maybe even "best" fit. I'm hoping that DS could be happy and successful on several of these LAC campuses. Here in the South when I mention that DS is looking at Williams and Middlebury MOST don't know where they are! And these are well-educated people; just not as familiar with LACs. I am thrilled that there are SO many GREAT schools. If you are just looking for prestige then you'll be chasing an elusive target.

bclintonk

Top northeastern LACs aren't on very many people's radar screens here in the Midwest, either. Except for a few Northeast transplants and some doctors, lawyers, and college professors who themselves come out of pretty elite academic backgrounds, you're likely to draw a blank stare if you mention a school like Williams, Amherst, or Middlebury. The quickest explanation that people connect with: "It's a really good small liberal arts college, similar to Carleton." Not that everyone in these parts knows Carleton, either, but for those who do it gives them a point of reference. The names of the schools don't carry much weight in themselves.

Harvard, Yale, Princeton, to a lesser extent Columbia---those names ring bells. But even some of the Ivies---Brown, Dartmouth, Penn---are likely to draw the same blank stare as Williams. Cornell is a little better known because they're sometimes good in hockey.

middsmith

"all-time high" "at the top, nowhere to go but down" ;-).

Btw, I believe USNews believes in ordinal standing. So when Amherst drops, it wouldn't be pretty for Middlebury.

arcadia

There's a difference between being at an all time high and being at the top. One implies room to grow, the other does not. Surely they teach you such things at Amherst?

Well Amherst dropped this year, and it was "pretty" for Middlebury.

middsmith

I was taught a drop means there's room to grow back. All time high means it will go down. Expect a PA correction for Middlebury in the future. ;-)
You got it slightly backward. See, different schools teach different things.

trollnyc

I don't think anyone who is aware of Amherst/Williams will not be aware of Middlebury, all being good LACs. No one will think they are FAR MORE prestigous...

arcadia

An all time high doesn't mean it will go down. Quite the contrary--it means that it's reaching new heights. When the S&P hits an all time high, it still has room to go higher. When you're ranked number one, you can't be ranked higher than that. Odds are that you'll eventually be number 2, as Amherst demonstrated this year.

The good news for Amherst is they now have room to improve. Middlebury has been on an upward trajectory and still has 3 spots to go ;-)