If we’re splitting hairs they aren’t on quite the same tiers (top-10 Midd vs. top-20 Grinnell and top-25 Oberlin), but they are all elite. If we counted the entire top 25 as one tier (or 5-25…), then yes, they would be on the same tier. I doubt the difference in ranking has to do with geography. Midd has been top-10 for a very long time, too, and usually top-5, so they didn’t just figure out how to game the rankings.
(there seemed to be some Midd-bashing going on, so I figured I’d stick up for them.)
Neither Oberlin nor Grinnell can match the mountain grandeur of Midd, and their student bodies are a bit more crunchy/liberal than Midd, but academically they’re outstanding – no doubt about that.
Think of all the things you could do with that $100,000, either for yourself or for your kid. If Midd ends up being the choice, it should be because the kid can’t see himself anywhere else.
I think USNews is the best major ranking out there for evaluating overall undergraduate-level quality, though I have my own ranking too. (top 50ish anyway…)
Alumni achievements – partly attributable to the school, but mostly to the individual IMO. The school does educate them (we hope…) and helps to hook them up with their first job at least – the school at least does those two things.
@PurpleTitan you seem to have missed the point. I’m not questioning the substance of what they claimed, nor am I questioning why they would post anonymously, I’m questioning your judgement for using an anonymous 8-year old comment with absolutely no verification whatsoever (not even anecdotal support) as reliable source.
Perhaps 8 years from now, when someone wants to claim that Williams has been killing puppies, they’ll use this comment to support their claim.
Part of the problem here is that everyone has their own perception of how much money is “ok” to spend to buy Product A, which you subjectively like better, than Product B, which is objectively roughly equal in value to A. Imagine the following hypothetical: you’re deciding between two winter coats to buy, they look similar, both will keep you warm, but you like the styling of one of them better than the other. Presumably everyone would feel ok in principle with spending more money to buy the coat you subjectively like better, the question is just how much more? I’d guess that just about anyone would be willing to spend $10 more, and some people (but not nearly as many) will spend $100 more.
But how I pose the question makes a difference in the answer. If I just ask, do you think it’s ok to spend more money on a similar coat just because I like it better, most people will probably say yes. But if I ask, do you think it’s ok to spend $100 more on a similar coat just because I like it better, than many of the people who’d spend $10 but not more than that, will answer the question no. Most of those people are at least subconsciously thinking of what they personally would do with the extra $90 and allowing that to drive their answer. But if the person asking the question doesn’t need that $90 for something else (like this week’s groceries or the heating bill), then the answer by the person who does need the $90 really isn’t all that relevant.
All of which is to say to the OP, only you know how spending more on Middlebury will affect your family’s finances and feelings. Answers from other people, whose finances and values you know nothing about, won’t really help you assess whether the extra money is worth it TO YOU.
@urbanslaughter: If someone was able to say that they saw puppies being killed at Williams with a degree of specificality (naming the office/lab doing the killing), then I’d say that’s worth looking in to, wouldn’t you? Or would you say “that was nine years ago; how dare you bring up an old allegation of puppy-killing”?
To folks at my public magnet HS, what most would consider split hairs would be considered a chasm, especially among some within the top half of my graduating HS class, Midd was definitely top shelf elite, Grinnell somewhere in between, and Oberlin was considered respectable…but not elite.
Weirdly enough, many Oberlin alums from my era(mid-late '90s) and earlier would take some umbrage at the idea of Oberlin being elite due to their feeling that such attitudes go against their radical progressive personal politics and feel the inherent hierarchical ranking of colleges is antithetical to the educational/intellectual process along with their perceptions of American egalitarianism they believe in.
A few have even written to express such sentiments to the Oberlin alum mags in articles discussing alum concerns about Oberlin’s administration moving to up its USNWR rankings and doing more to soften their edges so they are increasingly branding themselves closer to the NE elite LACs.
In any event, OP’s son should focus on what he really wants from his college experience and seriously assess whether Midd is worth $100k more than Grinnell or Oberlin. For some students, it could be, for others, no. Only OP and the son really know the answer to that $100k question.
The idea of top 10 schools being in a different tier is (IMHO) simply a function of people unable to manage numbers that are higher than their number of fingers.
US News used to rank “tiers” of 50 colleges each - so “tier 1” was 1-50, “tier 2” was 50-100, etc. This is my recollection from when my son was applying to colleges in 2001 - Reed was 3rd tier at the time and accepted 70%+ of applicants, but it was the same Reed that exists today.
Some colleges are academically stronger than others but it occurs along a spectrum, not with clear breaks, and there is no magic about top 10, top 20, top 30, etc.
Middlebury, Grinnell, Oberlin are peer schools academically – no matter how a magazine chooses to rank them. If it were my kid I’d lean toward the one with the most diverse student body – because a whole lot of learning takes place outside the classroom. and given their locations there is not going to be much diversity value added from surrounding communities. But that’s just me.
While reading your description of the views of some of your Oberlin classmates/alums from your era, I picture them saying “Down with prestige, quality, and being the best we can be! Let’s give average effort and become mediocre!”
I know that’s probably not what they’d actually say, but it made me chuckle.
Prestige is overblown, but it can be based on quality performance over a long period of time. I imagine it can also outlast quality: the advantage has vanished, but the rep persists.
But prestige doesn’t make a school great; it should be, and hopefully is, the other way around.
And, of course, lack of prestige doesn’t mean a lack of quality. Sometimes quality can take time to be noticed and adequately appreciated.
But confirming actual quality differences – vs. differences in rep/prestige – seems pretty difficult at the undergrad level. Certainly the schools have different relative strengths – Oberlin in music and Midd in languages, for instance – but in terms of overall quality, it’s blurry.
If schools are in the same zip code in terms of how we generally consider school quality, as I think these three are, then the biggest variables should be fit and cost. Prestige can break a tie, but it should definitely only enter the equation to do that.
Regarding the first group you describe, your HS classmates: their perception didn’t follow reality – there’s no large chasm between M and G and O. But they can be forgiven; at that age I was a hype monster too. hehe
It wasn’t only hype…but a symptom of the HYPSMCC and SWAMP(include W if female and Reed if one looks beyond admission difficulty/USNWR rankings) or bust mentality taken to extremely unhealthy extremes by many at my public magnet HS.
THIS underscores how screwed up and disconnected USNWR rankings are from a given institution’s undergrad academic strength/rigor.
Ironically, despite that ranking, Reed is commonly viewed among those at my public magnet and most employers I knew who employed Reed graduates as on par with schools like Swat, UChicago, Cornell, etc. Reed is top-shelf elite as far as they were all concerned.
Yeah, Reed is the biggest asterisk in the US News ranking. I consider them to be a top-25 LAC, and I imagine most people who know and care about LACs do too.
@arcadia: The elite professional school matriculation ranking is from an old WSJ article, but they likely haven’t changed as someone compiled a more recent ranking of elite MBA program feeders and it looks roughly the same and there is a recent compilation of the top 20 feeders in to law, med, and b-schools that also shows roughly the same schools.
Here it is:
Middlebury alums are more represented in elite professional schools but Grinnell and Oberlin alums are more represented in PhD programs.
I read somewhere that most people end up living within 50 miles of where they went to college or where they grew up… so which school is in an area he might want to live in?
My opinion is that while 20k total isnt too much to spend, those schools seem so similar in prestige/ offerings that I’d save the money for a down payment on a house or grad school or something after college. All are excellent schools.
My experience with my own kids and friends kids has been they think they want to go far away to school, but in reality and in hindsight they wish they were closer… My second son is about 1:15min from home and that has been perfect- we can bring him up things that he needs occasionally and coming home for holidays or a long weekend is stress free. There is a lot to be said for that.
In imagining being in this situation, I would do all the sensible suggestions that have been described, like look closely at the curriculum & academics, try to figure out where he’d thrive.
As a thought experiment I would pose… what would your son do with $100,000 if he were to go to Grinnell or Oberlin. And, would you be willing to give him $100,000. If so, would there be stipulations & what would they be.
Well that stat doesn’t apply to me or my son, though my daughter is still within range of her college… but then she attended school in NYC. I doubt that stat really applies to rural or small town colleges. More people live in or near cities than not, and more students attend their in-state public than not, so that 50-mile radius stat is going to be heavily influenced by all the urban/suburban dwellers who are attending local commuter schools.
I think it probably is a factor for anyone attending college in a major urban center – NY, Boston, LA, DC, Houston, Atlanta – etc. – simply because it is easy students to get jobs near their schools when the graduate. But someone attending Middlebury or Grinnell is unlikely to stick around post-grad – where would they work?
@PurpleTitan If you look at the various college ranking services out there, Middlebury ranks higher than Grinnell. Hence my “nationally recognized” comment. It does offer that.
Personally, I put heavy pressure on our son to not choose Middlebury last year and I really had to go to bat. Middlebury didnt offer any of the subjects he was seriously leaning towards and he had other great options. I don’t think there is enough of a value difference to justify choosing Middlebury based on what one would get at one versus another, but if the OP likes it better and money is no object, go for it.
A close friends DD went to Grinnel for UG, then to JHU for med school. Loved Grinnel. But, and this is the big one, my son would have disliked the environment. He needed suburb or urban. Because f his field, he will never return to SE FL. I get it.
