An Outsider's Guide to National LACs

College Search & Lists
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I can’t speak to attitudes about LACs in the midwest but I can speak to the western US. Out here, the LAC is a relatively unknown creature in my experience. At least in my view, the top ones, or most well known to the LAC crowd based mostly on selectivity and reputation are, north to south, Whitman, Reed, the Claremonts and Occidental. If you go east a bit more you pick up Colorado College. There are several others that are fine institutions, many of which I know pretty well having had family and friends attend (e.g., Puget Sound). When I was a kid, Puget Sound had a stellar local reputation but over the years that has (again just in my view) slipped a bit. The rise of the University of Washington’s national reputation along with the sharp increase in its selectivity seems to have overshadowed many other schools in the PNW. It may have something to do with that. I’m not sure.

I myself do not include small or small’ish privates like the Jesuits in the LAC category because I think they are different kinds of institutions. Caveat: I don’t know Soka, I don’t know Mills (especially now that it’s part of Northeastern) and I don’t know much about the schools in the inland western US other than Colorado College. I know plenty of really bright people from schools like, for example, Rocky Mountain College (one guy from there who is crazy smart), Carroll College, College of Idaho and Evergreen State but I don’t think of those schools as in the same tier as those I listed.

One thing I’ve noticed in my neck of the woods is that familiarity with LACs, particularly knowing things like Whitman students being academically equivalent to kids at UW or that Middlebury College isn’t a made-up school name from a TV show, has to do with sophistication. The closer you get to Seattle (or Bellevue on the east side of the lake), the less explaining you have to do about why your kid is going to Amherst. You get a skip of distance in any direction from those places and you’re going to get blank stares until you find yourself in Portland.

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Apropos of the thread’s topic, here is the vaunted Daily Rank Dept’s T50 best small colleges in the US:

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Rather than do its own work, it appears to somehow combine US News, Niche and IPEDS. They didn’t include Reed, Pitzer or Colorado College in the West, which is a mistake. They also didn’t include Mount Holyoke College, which is also a mistake. I count 8 Midwest schools, including St. Olaf.

This grouping, which nobody should take too seriously, also shows why the “small college” designation is a little imprecise. Elon has little if anything in common with Whitman College and many of the other schools on the list.

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Washington &Lee is missing as well

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Glaring omission, indeed. Good catch.

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“Yep. This thread pretty much defines National vs. Regional from the point of view of Easterners. If they have heard of it and would send their kid there, it’s National. If they haven’t heard of it or wouldn’t send their kid there it is “Regional.” It has more to do with class, race, and local signifiers of status than it has to do with actual national vs. regional student draw or reputation among graduate schools or employers nationwide.”

This is a convenient narrative, as the kids say. But as far back as the 1970’s when I was on a study abroad program, the kids from SMU- who claimed it was “the hardest university in the country” were perplexed by the kids from Georgetown - a college they had never heard of. And the claim “it’s the top Catholic school in the country” got a guffaw- as if a “Bible College” could compete with an actual university like SMU! If you are from a part of the country where there are no Catholics, but Bible Colleges abound, you can understand the confusion, no?

I don’t see that this has changed much, even with social media, and even with kids/families being willing (in some cases by not all) to look outside one’s own region. If mom and dad met at Mizzou, and every aunt and uncle are proud grads, successful ones at that- are you really going to bother seeking out a “hidden gem”, whether it’s a flagship university (someone else’s flagship), private U, or a liberal arts college??? You’re going to tell kids in Cincinnati OH or St. Louis Missouri that they should be looking at U Delaware which has a fantastic chemistry department?

The CC population is an outlier in so many ways. But to pretend that the regional “provincialism” is a Northeastern phenomenon is to really ignore what happens all over the country. Try explaining to an LDS kid in Idaho that Beloit or Lawrence would be a fantastic fit for him/her. Or suggest to a kid in Florida that Carleton has EVERYTHING they are looking for.

I’m not buying the class or race argument either. I don’t think there’s a “racial” component if a family in Boston decides they aren’t interested in exploring Lake Forest. The likely explanation is that on the long drive to Illinois they will pass 50 colleges of similar size with similar offerings. Why not get off the interstate earlier, have dinner, and turn around and head home?

To me, the only truly national U’s in this country are the military academies- by design, by policy, and by reputation. Even if a family doesn’t know someone personally who is a graduate of one of them, they likely drive over a bridge, pass a statue, see a trophy case at the local HS from 30 years ago, which is a memorial to someone from their region who served and died in uniform. And the people who knew that person are still telling the stories of what an outstanding young person he or she was before they left their town/city/county for “The academy”.

A West Point grad from my city died in a VERY tragic battle about 15 years ago during a war most people liked to pretend wasn’t taking place. The stories from his math teacher, his cub scout troupe leader, the disabled children he taught to throw a football- these have become legend. The academies are national and of stellar reputation because people understand there is no back door. Every student sitting in a lecture hall or lab got there the hard way; and once they are out, they’ll continue to go about their business in uniform the hard way.

The debates over “do people in NY consider Denison a national LAC” really fall into the “who cares” bucket.

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I also don’t see Richmond.

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Agree with most of that, particularly your central point that regionalism is hardly a northeastern problem. In one of the many “the Midwest LACs don’t get enough love” threads, I made the point, and make it here again, that blaming provincial attitudes and making it more about rep and lore than substance downplays if not outright ignores the fact that the schools in the northeast have been at it for a long time and maybe they’ve done something to deserve the attention. And it’s not like there isn’t a pecking order in every region. Who do you ever hear argue that LSU and Vanderbilt are academic equals?

I’ll track it down later, but years ago the head of Whitman College, a fine school itself, proclaimed publicly that they aspired to be or fashioned themselves after the model of the New England liberal arts college. It’s less about a love fest and more about a core group of those schools (but not all of them) being very good at what they do AND being OG.

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If any region should complain it’s the South and South’ish region. Omitting Richmond and W&L is straight up cluelessness.

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Just for giggles (and incidentally, to bump the thread), culled here from Forbes’ America’s Top Colleges, are its top 50 LACs for 2027:

  1. Williams
  2. Bowdoin
  3. Pomona
  4. Amherst
  5. CMC
  6. Wellesley
  7. W&L
  8. Middlebury
  9. Colgate
  10. Swarthmore
  11. Colby
  12. Wesleyan
  13. Haverford
  14. Hamilton
  15. Harvey Mudd
  16. College of the Holy Cross
  17. Bucknell
  18. Trinity
  19. Davidson
  20. Barnard
  21. Lehigh
  22. URichmond
  23. Lafayette
  24. Bates
  25. Smith
  26. Dickinson
  27. Vassar
  28. Grinnell
  29. Kenyon
  30. Carleton
  31. Colorado
  32. Pitzer
  33. Union
  34. Connecticut
  35. **Gettysburg
  36. **Occidental
  37. Kalamazoo
  38. Franklin & Marshall
  39. Wofford
  40. Scripps
  41. Rhodes
  42. **St. Olaf
  43. Wheaton (IL)
  44. Oberlin
  45. Macalester
  46. Skidmore
  47. Wabash
  48. Sewanee (U. of the South)
  49. Bryn Mawr
  50. Centre College
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NESCAC Spoken Here:
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That be the ROI-heavy Forbes ranking. Here is the USNews ranking (the top 30 anyway), which attempts to include academic quality/rep. It comprises mostly the same suspects, only re-ordered a bit. I removed the service academies:

1 - Williams
2 - Amherst
3 - Swarthmore
4 - Bowdoin
5 - Claremont McKenna, Pomona, Wellesley
8 - Carleton, Harvey Mudd
10 - Barnard, Davidson, Grinnell, Hamilton, Middlebury, Smith, Vassar, Wesleyan
18 - Washington & Lee
19 - Colgate, Richmond
21 - Bates, Colby, Haverford
24 - Holy Cross
25 - Macalester
26 - Mount Holyoke
27 - Bryn Mawr, Bucknell, Colorado College, Lafayette

:joy: (it’s Friday… I’m feeling frisky…)

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Wow Oberlin is so great it gets two slots :slight_smile:

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Something must be wrong with that list. Also from Forbes, if filter with small colleges, the list is like this (after Union College). Gettysburg and Furman are missing from that list.

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My own view is that Bates, Vassar, Oberlin, Mac are ranked too low, especially Vassar #27 (please). Bryn Mawr is always ranked too low and is so again here. Lastly, not having room for Whitman in the T50 is a stunning oversight.

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Oops. One of those "O"s should have been Occidental.

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Anybody know how College Raptor ranks colleges?
I just ran across that site and was curious.

https://www.■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/college-rankings/

Williams(19) and Amherst(23) are the first ones I saw. With the high rank of Babson, I assume economics/salaries play a role.

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When you use ROI or a reasonable facsimile thereof, you’ve already defined your ranking as knocking down colleges which produce artists, poets, writers, filmmakers, community activists, social workers, public defenders, staffers who write environmental policy in all 50 states, etc.

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Mine was done purely by inspection and undoubtedly missed a lot of names that did not catch my eye.

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Totally agree. The thing about Whitman, though, is that it has a lot very substantive alumni ties to the Seattle tech community and companies hire from there. John Stanton, one of Seattle’s billionaire wireless guys, is an alumnus, a member of the board of trustees and sits on the Microsoft board. Jody Allen is another alumnus that comes to mind. Definitely an example of a LAC that produces people who go into various fields of commerce.

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The highest weighted factor in the Forbes ranking is median salary. Whitman has the lowest listed median salary among all ranked colleges in the state of Washington. While the college may have area tech connections, there is no engineering, and only 4% majored in CS in most recent IPEDs year – that’s not enough to have much impact on the overall median.

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140

Should be great for donations though!

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