LOL.
Yes, that is the droll corollary, if you will, of Sayre’s Law, that you can usually rest assured after the dust settles, that the argument was between two extremely similar propositions. This thread was an exception to that corollary.
yes, a huge exception.
“that is the droll corollary [commentary?]” (#46)
Droll? CC? You will have to excuse me. It’s been a while.
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What MiddleburyDad is saying about general perception is correct: To most people in academia, Williams and Pomona are more prestigious than Boston College.
But that doesn’t limit a BC student or a BC grad, because BC is also good.
How this topic brought Williams and Pomona into it instead of HYPSM, Chicago, Columbia, Penn, etc. – since they are private universities like BC, not LACs – is beyond me.
The thing that makes debates like this unresolvable is because prestige is in the eye of the beholder.
Among the Boston Catholic community, BC is the very tip-top; you can’t do better than be an Eagle. This is true with ND and many Catholics as well. And ND is known for its alumni network. Likely BC in Boston/East Coast as well.
Meanwhile, West Coasters put Pomona in the same tier as the WAS LACs and there are other people who lump all LACs together: Williams, Pomona, Earlham, Oberlin, and Denison are all the same to them. They don’t know and don’t really care which are more selective.
Who’s right? All of them. The world is funny like that.
@PurpleTitan I completely agree that prestige is subjective and, with that in mind, I should’ve phrased the question differently: will going to BC honors over Williams disadvantage me for graduate school?
No, no it will not. It’s all about what you do at these schools. Will you be a better you at BC or Williams? Where is your tribe?
It wont disadvantage you as long as you graduate with a high GPA, score well on the GRE, and find a faculty mentor who can write recommendations and steer you toward the appropriate graduate programs on your field.
I would give a similar answer as before. I do think that Williams or Pomona would give a bit of a bump for grad school all things being equal But all things are never equal. And of course nobody here can predict how well you will do at any of the schools you are considering. If you will be happier at BC, if you do better at BC (because you are happier with where you are, what you are studying etc.) etc. then IMO that school will serve you better in the long run.
Just as I don’t think HS students should go through 4 years of HS miserable because they are trying to craft the “perfect” college application of classes/ECs etc, I also don’t think anyone’s four years of college should be only geared towards getting into "the best: grad school.
Grad school is very/too broad. Grad school in what? Law school? B-school? Science PhD? Some Masters?
What each looks for is very different. In any case, BC will offer you enough opportunities to do well in all those paths.
The very nature of your question shows me you don’t have much understanding of what is involved in getting into graduate school. That is not demeaning to you at all, you are in high school! I had less of a clue than you at that age.
So first of all, having been very involved in this area for a while, at least for the sciences, I can tell you that the difference in going to an LAC vs. a research university is usually none, especially in some areas. In fact, a research university often offers more opportunities to do research at the highest level with the most modern equipment, which LAC’s rarely have. For example, I was lucky enough to have my name on three papers in the 2 most prestigious chemistry journals, one of them as first author. The first was published before I graduated and the second was in review. No LAC would have had the specialized piece of equipment we used. This was certainly very important in my getting into a top 5 grad school.
Before all the LAC people go nuts, yes I know that they do research in the sciences there and that they publish. But the output is a fraction of what research universities do, even on a per capita basis, and the lack of Ph.D. level research means they very rarely have the equipment on campus to do a lot of the research that goes on these days at the cutting edge levels. That doesn’t mean they don’t do some excellent work, because many do. It just depends on what your hopes and goals are as an undergrad. For me it turned out to be a big deal. For many others it is not.
And not all areas of study at an LAC would suffer in this comparison, in fact most won’t. Even in the sciences you would be fine. My point is that getting into top grad schools requires that you have A) a great GPA, especially in your major; B) High GRE scores, and C) excellent recommendations, especially from a prof in your field and hopefully someone you have done some work with. C is where the LAC usually has a big advantage over a huge school like a state flagship, but at BC you should be able to do this as well, again especially within your major.
If achieving A B and C will be easier for you in the atmosphere of an LAC, and you think you like that better overall, then go there. If you think you like the breadth and some other aspects of BC better, go there. But for goodness sake forget all this prestige nonsense. For the schools you are talking about, it doesn’t exist, at least not in grad school admissions. Any school in the top 100 of both lists of USNWR are considered fine places to get an education, and the committee will then only look at A B and C, plus aspects such as applicable research done. Students from top schools like Ivies and top LACs usually do better in grad school admissions because they were higher achievers to begin with. For example, there is a very high correlation between what SAT score you got and what GRE score you get.
But let’s take a student at a much lower ranked school, let’s say Pitt, which is a fine school but not prestigious like Harvard, etc. If that student has a higher GPA than the Harvard student and does a little better on the GRE’s, most likely that Pitt student is getting into Stanford or Yale grad school before the Harvard person. Especially if he did some solid research work at Pitt Medical Center. BC is way up there on the rankings list, you will be fine if you choose it. If you choose Williams or Pomona, you will also be fine. In either scenario it is a matter of having high stats and superior performance in the ABC’s and then doing something to stand out from the rest of the crowd a bit. Not all that different than undergrad admissions in general, but the particulars are different because now you are focusing on a specific area of study. That matters.
Generally speaking, med school, law school, MBA-school and some others, like vet and dental are called professional schools rather than grad schools. But of course the OP might not realize that, so you are right to ask the question that way. I just point it out for edification if needed. And it would be nice to know if they had a specific area in mind, although as a high school student it wouldn’t mean much anyway, since about 2/3 change majors at least once.
The op never asked anybody to rank these schools. Merely asked if BC would somehow handicap him. Anybody who says yes is assuming there is some situation where a BC grad would not get a second look…which seems very farfetched.
@PurpleTitan Sorry for the ambiguity; I meant a PhD program.
@fallenchemist Thank you!
For a PhD, again, unless it’s in some field where BC doesn’t have a program like archaeology or maybe some fields that tend to draw from a certain group of schools (linguistics? philosophy?), you’re just as well off there as any other top 100 uni or LAC, as @fallenchemist said.
@moooop , actually, I think the OP kinda did ask that. Where the discussion went off the rails, which was as much my fault as the other guy’s, was getting into the inane specifics of investment banking and corp fin.
Right or wrong, he did want to know about opinions concerning the relative prestige of the three schools. It’s his question to ask.
And he also wanted to know how the three play out in terms of “umph” in his eventual grad school applications. Notwithstanding @fallenchemist 's excellent reply, I think the OP’s question on this point is a fair and common one to ask.
So, indirectly at least, yes, I think the OP was asking us to rank these schools. That’s almost precisely what he was asking us to do, and people have real opinions on those topics. I’m not sure about your assumption about what others would assume if they said W or P is better for the OP in some regard.
Of course, as I pointed out several times, as did others, they are close enough that it shouldn’t matter. But there are some differences among those schools, including admission difficulty. Does that matter? Hard to say. The answer, I suspect, is somewhere between maybe and probably not. 
Just to distill my point to it’s essence, even though details do matter, it is this:
It is what and how you do once you get to any of these schools that matters for post-undergraduate plans, completely swamping any issues of ranking, selectivity, prestige, etc. Picking the environment which, for you, maximizes your ability to perform at top levels and enjoy the overall experience is what should be driving the decision making process, assuming affordability of all (always have to throw that last in).
@fallenchemist , I completely agree, especially at the margins. If going to school X will result in you having a low GPA where going to school Y will result in a high GPA, then one should go to school Y. Of course. You don’t want to be at the bottom of your class consistently for 4 years. Not only would that hurt grad school chances, I think it would suck just as an experience.
On the other hand, I think it’s too simplistic to say that it doesn’t matter. I know for a fact that it matters in law school admissions. While LSAT score really drives that one, where you come from undergrad is often factored in, and for law school admissions not all GPAs are created equally. My example of Boalt is instructive. A kid applying with a 3.5 GPA from Swat is going to be viewed more favorably than a kid with a 3.8 from LSU. That is a pretty verifiable fact.
Williams Pomona or BC? Probably a negligible, if any, adjustment among those three.
@MiddleburyDad2, law school admissions is quite different from PhD program admissions (as I noted above).
This is because law schools are primarily concerned with staying up in the law school rankings and getting their grads hired by Big Law while PhD programs are primarily concerned with turning out good researchers who publish.
Because of that, stuff like prestige, per se, just doesn’t factor in. What does factor in is proper training and research as an undergrad. That may be a concern at a third-tier directional, but not in this case. What may help is working with renown faculty in a field, but they rarely would be at a LAC anyway.