Right. In the real world, grad schools admit people and firms hire people, not schools.
So unless you want to go to grad school in something esoteric that BC doesn’t have a department in (like archaeology), you’re not going to be disadvantaged.
This is a little dated but the focus should be on outcomes.
Here are the top feeder schools into the prestigious grad schools:
http://hubpages.com/education/Wall-Street-Journal-College-Rankings-The-Full-List-and-Rating-Criteria
A few points and then I’m going to bow out here, as I sense that a good portion of this thread is now being driven by emotion, which is a waste of everybody’s time and doesn’t help the OP one bit.
- Thank you @ClarinetDad16 - that list is consistent with my general understanding, and it's not clear to me from the article that the analysis or ranking even factored in a 'pro rata' or relative student population adjustment. Williams is high on the list, and it has a small fraction of the student body that has Harvard and many others on the list. So on a proportionate basis, the LACs may do even better if the Journal didn't think to make that adjustment. This point GOES RIGHT TO THE HEART OF THE OP's original question about grad school admissions. FACT.
- @OnTheBuble - you keep saying I have no facts or backing and implying at least that you do, when the opposite is true. You just keep saying "trust me" and then engage in a lot of hyperbole and snarky comments and rhetorical comparisons that mean absolutely nothing. Williams and Pomona are harder to get into. Fact. Some people in the world who make hiring/admissions decisions know that to be the case. Fact. Some do not. Fact. Of those who know, some care. Fact. Some don't. Fact. Whether they should or should not care is a matter of opinion.
- 50 smartest colleges: BC is 51. Great. Pomona and Williams are 15 and 17, respectively. Even better. For future reference, tell the whole story lest you lose credibility.
- @PurpleTitan, I think your post misses the point. Of course people hire people and not schools. But extending that logic means it doesn't matter whether you attend Harvard or Central Washington University. In many, many, many contexts, it does matter very much. I think the better view is that BC is close enough to Williams and Pomona that it probably doesn't matter. That is a point with which I would agree entirely.
- I've said over and over that BC is a great school. It is. There are graduate schools and employers who would view a Williams or Pomona degree more favorably over a BC degree, just as they might view a Harvard degree more favorably than a Vanderbilt degree. Why? Because of their perception that W or P were harder to get into, and in some cases, their perception that the rigor is higher at one over the other (again, the Boalt list, and lists like it, is not fantasy, but instead fact).
- Finally, @OnTheBubble, maybe you didn't attend. But I"m willing to bet you have some connection - perhaps a kid attending or something. It's rare for people to get this wound up about these topics without some personal skin in the game. Either that or you must have had a terrible experience with a LAC.
IMO BC (even with the honors program) is not viewed as “elite” as Williams or Pomona. But there is more to life than prestige. If BC offers the OP what he/she is looking for in terms of things like size of school, location, bigger time sports, programs of study etc. then it BC might well be the best place for him/her. If a person does well at BC, he/she will have plenty of choices for grad school or job opportunities after graduation.
@happy1, I agree with every word of your post.
@MiddleburyDad2 I will be as polite as I can, you have no idea what you are talking about in post #24. To be honest, I didn’t want to reply again on this thread except a kid is getting very bad advice from you.
Boston College ranks #14 in the very accurate and highly regarded LinkedIn Rankings for both Investment Banking and Corporate Finance, neither Williams or Pomona make the Top 25.
Pomona has 4 alumni out of 12,000 working at Goldman Sachs in finance, Williams has 22 out of 18,000 Alumni. I don’t see anything impressive there.
If you would actually look at facts you will see BC’s representation in various fields, regions of the country and companies are among the best of any school in the country. Just look on LinkedIn to get a dose of fact.
@OnTheBubble, it seems you don’t read my posts very carefully. Ive said at least five times now that the differences between these schools is marginal and meaningless and that the OP should go where he wants. How is it that you’ve missed that?
It also seems that as people refute your claims (like the one about admission difficulty and grad school placement), you just move on to another point.
You belabor the point about citing facts, and then your very first (and only) attempt at offering a fact is to tell me that a ranking on the professional equivalent of facebook is “very accurate and highly regarded” and supports the idea that Williams is not a good generator of investment bankers. Ok.
BC has over 9,000 undergraduates; and Williams has less than 2,000. Counting people up in absolute numbers is not going to make a very thought-provoking point here. I’m sure in absolute terms there are more BC people out there doing just about more of everything. Who cares? Maybe there are a lot of BC kids at low-level positions at iBanks. I don’t know and I doubt you do either. I do know that if you don’t know that Williams College has a well-worn path to Wall Street, then you’ve no business debating this point with me.
And, frankly, it doesn’t matter because the OP didn’t ask about that. Rightly or wrongly, the kid asked which schools carried more prestige, which is based on subjective perception, but which perception is at least partially affected by demonstrated admission difficulty. Anyone who knows anything knows W & P are harder to get into. Period. He also asked about graduate school admissions. Some opinions were shared and some evidence was put forth that W&P are better in that category too.
Other than the admissions stats and maybe grad school placement stats, numbers which support MY positions, we are not arguing mathematics here pal. You’d do best to wrap your brain around that reality.
Finally, I almost fell out of my chair at your suggestion that your continued participation in this thread is for altruistic reasons. The mods deleted it, but your first post in response to the OP was dismissive and belittling, showing that his mere question struck a nerve with you. The very suggestion that you care what this kid does is absolutely ridiculous my view, as is your insistence that you have no personal connection to BC.
I’ve worked with iBanks my entire career, and I’m now a professional private equity investor, and you’re going to throw LinkedIn at me and tell me that my experience isn’t indicative of reality? Really? My experience is reality.
Good luck.
@MiddleburyDad2, we’re mostly in agreement, but I do want to point out one thing: Williams’s ED admit rate is around 50% and they fill roughly half their class through ED. I do rate Williams highly, but that’s why I don’t put a lot of stock in to selectivity (though I grant that many people do).
Did I miss what OP wants to major in? Maybe that makes a difference?
BC honors is definitely on a different “level” than BC not honors. I would expect it to be at least close enough to Williams and Pomona as to make the difference negligible.
In my (humanities) department at an Ivy institution, I see our doctoral program applications every year. Our faculty do not place a strong emphasis on undergraduate pedigree. Instead, they look for signs that the applicant has taken the right UG courses, and succeeded in them, to give them a foundation upon which they can develop their own research agenda and perform well in course work. They want to see well written writing samples, with clear thought processes, and of course, strong GRE scores. A Jesuit education in an honors program will clearly prepare one for that.
@iak789 never said anything about Wall Street or finance. What s/he said was:
IMO the answer is no, going there will not hinder your grad school opportunities.
Further,
If you actively prefer BC, are in the honors program, love being in Boston, money isn’t a factor, I see zero reason to choose Williams or Pomona.
@PurpleTitan , I must admit that the W 50% ED rate is higher than I would have expected. A couple thoughts:
- ED in the elite D3 context is the functional equivalent of D1 recruiting "special admits", except in elite D3 recruiting, you still need the grades and scores. So with that group at Williams, their credentials are still stellar. But with the coach putting you on the magic 'list', your chances of getting in are much, much stronger, because Williams turns down stellar kids left and right. There is no similar track at a D1 school like BC. Early Decision at BC is just that: for people who want to demonstrate that BC is their #1 choice, and I expect their ED % is higher too. Bottom line is that I suspect, but don't independently know, that a good % of that 50% are recruited athletes.
Still surprising that it’s that high. Wesleyan’s numbers just came out, and their regular admit rate was something like 17.5 % and taking out ED it was something like 14% … which gives you the idea of what ED rates do to the overall rate.
D1 schools are notorious for excluding their special admit. numbers from their aggregate numbers, using the logic that their recruits are in a very special situation (which they are) and that those numbers mean little to the average kid applying (which they don’t).
- Whether ED or not, we probably agree that the Williams applicant pool doesn't have a large percentage of people taking a "flier" on applying to Williams who are not close to being qualified to be there. A big name school like BC does. That's why UCLA gets 100,000 applications and Rice gets a fraction of that number. So there are flaws with going straight admit % - I admit that. A lot of people have never heard of Williams. Everyone has heard of BC, and among everybody, there are kids who have no chance, but who don't know that and who throw in a "what the hell" application.
@OHMomof2, agreed.
I, myself, have a personal bias for the LAC model as far as the quality of education goes. Frankly, I think it’s better.
But I’m not about to debate that … there is no debating it. It’s a personal view, but for that reason, I’d pick W or P over BC, but in the OP’s shoes, BC makes sense.
What grad schools? That may make a difference. In the arts and sciences, I can see an edge going to Pomona/Williams. Not much of one, but some. In business, probably tied or even edge to BC. Law, medicine, I have no idea.
@OnTheBubble I agree that prestige isn’t that important. I don’t agree that it doesn’t exist, any more than I agree that beauty doesn’t exist. Unless of course you’re willing to go on record that there’s no aesthetic difference between Kathy Bates and Selma Hyak, or that Harvard and Kentucky are held in same regard by most people. Can’t measure those either. Plato would take issue with your views as well. 
@MiddleburyDad2 So do I. But it seems that OP prefers BC for several reasons and it’s not like OSU or something with 45k students. Presumably honors delivers some LAC-like qualities.
One usually only sees this much intensity in a thread where the differences are miniscule (“Sayre’s Law”.) In this case the differences are not that miniscule. Boston College (despite the name) is not a small college outside Boston. It is a medium-sized university with over 4,000 graduate students sharing the same 330 acre campus with double that number of undergraduates. The prestige question is sort of irrelevant.
@MiddleburyDad2 I gave plenty of evidence refuting your point that Williams and Pomona are no more prestigious than Boston College in the real world. In looking through each of your posts they are nothing but opinion nicely packaged as fact. No graduate school or employer would ever differentiate the three schools. The real world works differently.
I did my part showing there is virtually no difference in the student body and that in a highly competitive area of the job market, possibly the most at the current time, BC overshadows both in prestige.
I say again I did not attend BC.
BC also isn’t that urban. More so than Williams certainly, but it’s a basically suburban campus.
“One usually only sees this much intensity . . . where the differences are miniscule (‘Sayre’s Law’).” (#40)
I was interested to see where this would go, but then you referenced the physical aspects of the schools. Should the premise be that the differences in the prestige of the schools are miniscule, then the intensity level would serve to substantiate the referenced hypothesis.
Williams and Pomona are larger feeders to a list of top grad school programs based on WJS inquiry of the grad programs themselves. Established. This, even though BC annually pumps out 4x the number of grads of either W or P. Or maybe BC kids just don’t like graduate school.
This was funny though:
“BC overshadows both in prestige.”
You mean that thing we can’t measure and that doesn’t really exist?