Chance me for Colleges :) [TX resident, 3.94GPA, 1510 SAT, top 10%, $15-20k, poli sci]

Chance Me / Match Me
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Yep, I would agree and it seems to be a popular generalization about the two schools. People often cite a great deal of overlap in the student application pool as well. Nothing in my travels at each place suggests that those generalizations are not well founded. Of course, I’m not the one who attended, but listening to my kids talk and getting to know their friends, yeah, I’d say Brown and Wesleyan are very similar in terms of student body. I think there’s probably no safer Ivy to choose if one is convinced that Wes is a good fit. If you’re looking for a hair to split, then maybe, maybe, Wesleyan is a smidge more politically active, though this whole Gaza business has been no less intense at Brown than at Wesleyan. In fact, it might have been more blown up at Brown. Still, Wesleyan has that reputation, and it’s not entirely undeserved (though almost always exaggerated).

Of course, size and location presents some differences, but I really like both places. We all really like Providence a lot and score it as a place we could actually live (well, I score it that way). I also like many things about Middletown, but would probably never find myself randomly choosing it as a place to live. Brown has a really nice campus and, when combined with College Hill generally, presents a physical location that is exceptionally nice and to my liking. Again, Wesleyan is very nice IMHO but I’d probably give the nod to Brown on the overall variable of “place”, as I would over really any of the NESCACs.

Of course, Brown is an Ivy League school, which commands brand power like Porsche. Though I hasten to add that it has been my observation that the NESCAC brand, intentionally or not, has become a real thing. You hear kids 3,200 miles away from New England say, “do you think I could get into a NESCAC school?” or “good enough to play NESCAC?”. It has a ways to go before it catches up with the Ivy League, but it’s not nothing.

I know next to nothing about Brown’s gravitas in public policy and am aware of the things @circuitrider said in his post about Wes’. Neither of my kids have spent much time in that space, so I’ll not try and make a comparison there.

Wes is smaller, which I always think is a plus, but Brown is not exactly a state flagship. Still, you will experience Wesleyan (as you would any LAC) on a slightly more human scale, but Brown does not feel impersonal.

Small random anecdote: we were walking together on Brown’s campus one day, and we ran into another family whose kid was matriculating to Brown. With her was her sister, who was attending Wesleyan.

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While I’m in the camp of people who understand that people can be happy at different types of places, UT vs. really any northeastern LAC seems like such an extreme difference that it’s hard to imagine there not being a clear preference.

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Thank you so much, this is very kind!!

It’s mostly based on my feelings about each school. About ten-fifteen were too expensive, so they were crossed off the list immediately. When I got into UT, it seemed like an obvious forerunner, but getting into three top LAC’s right after each other made me reconsider. I am definitely leaning towards UT, but I do have some fit questions that make me consider an LAC as well

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I do think that, at least in my part of Texas, we have little-to-no knowledge of the NESCAC brand, and most people have not heard of it; as evidenced by the fact that not a single person I’ve told about Wesleyan has ever heard of it before

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of course, you have to decide if that’s important to you.

I think the coasts and major cities are very different in that respect. but even here, when you get outside of Seattle, it can really vary. In my experience, the more educated the crowd, the less that’s an issue. Case in point, a CEO I used to work for who is from the Dallas FW area and is back living there now on a big ranch. He went to college and law school in Texas. His kids went to school in Texas. When he asked me where my D went to school, his response was, “very good school.”

But look, there are people all over Washington who don’t realize that Whitman is a great school and historically harder to get into than UW. The people who do understand this tend to be people whose opinions matter to me.

From the outside, Texas seems to be its own ecosystem and I’m not surprised at all that a small liberal arts college in New England doesn’t register. Then again, it registered enough for you to apply to it and similar schools.

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I don’t live in Texas, but I do live in a major metro area in a state to the east of it. :slight_smile: I have, however, lived in other parts of the country and have family who were raised and/or still live in other parts of the country.

I think there are some parts of the country where there are people who are very driven and status-oriented around colleges. I suspect that most of the northeast, the big coastal cities on the west coast (especially the Bay area), and pockets of places like Chicago, Kansas City, etc. would fall within this. These might be places where parents were focused on getting into the right daycares, starting the right ECs to get in the right high schools (or moving into the right school zones), and trying to figure out the ways to maximize success to Top X schools from USNWR (whether national universities or liberal arts colleges), whether the thoughts were that explicit or just oozed through the atmosphere unspoken. These are probably places where it’s not too difficult to find a college counselor or to figure out who you should ask if you were looking for a college counselor.

In other parts of the country, certainly in parts of the deep south, that is not the case. It’s generally about the Big State Us or at least teams who are playing football or basketball on tv. Where I work, the vast majority of the people have at least undergraduate degrees, and most have graduate degrees. Because I’ve been on various interview committees, I know we have one person who went to Chicago, one to Cornell U., one to Pomona, and one to Duke. And nobody on the interview committees commented on those undergrad institutions (in the interview or in post-interview discussion.) I’m not a big better, but I’d bet money that nobody on our HR team has ever heard of NESCAC, and that 99% of the employees where I work would be stunned to learn that kids are falling over themselves trying to get into schools they’ve never heard of that have big price tags and low admission rates. For them, a resume showing Drake vs. Colby means nothing in terms of any academic differences. When people in my city (of all social classes, but especially $$$$$ classes) ask where you went to school, they’re not asking about your college…they’re asking about your high school.

All of this to say, there are people who like to research (ahem). And high schoolers finding out about USNWR rankings and scanning fora and Reddit start to hear about other options. So it’s not that places like Wesleyan or Washington & Lee are not respected. It’s just that they’re not given more respect than other schools that some on CC would find less prestigious. But for people who are interested in being in those geographic areas (Bay Area, Seattle, northeast, etc), then those names definitely have more cachet. But it’s not universal.

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This is 1000% true. I went to W&L and live on the west coast and have a sibling who attended Colby who lives in the midwest. I almost never meet someone who has heard of my college and if they have, they are from the east coast or Texas. My son’s college counselor hadn’t heard of W&L. My sibling in Ohio reports the same thing with Colby.

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I don’t find any of that surprising. I’m not sure anyone on my HR team has heard of those schools either. But I also know that Microsoft hires Whitman, Pomona and Claremont kids all the time. So does Apple. Some opinions are better than others in my experience.

One dimension to add here is one with which I grew up and still see and hear a fair amount, and that is the (again uninformed) idea that small private must be better than large public because it’s small private and the large public is viewed as governmental and basic. I don’t agree with this, but trust me when I tell you that when I was younger there was a commonly held view that the kids who attended, say, UPS , Lewis & Clark and Reed, or perhaps a school in California like Santa Clara or St. Mary’s, were a cut above those of us at big state U (in my case, UW). And that in a state in which the flagship university is generally held in high regard. I know people who graduated from Seattle University who think they received a more “elite” education than did I because of that same (dumb) public/private distinction.

So, there are plenty of uninformed biases out there to spread around.

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Absolutely. I’ve had my own biases/prejudices that needed to be revised on this very topic.

I wanted to post again because I don’t want @jameshawkings to get the impression that Colby or Wesleyan aren’t really great schools if he wants to come back to the south. They are terrific options. So is UT. It’s a matter of finding the school that’s the right fit for him.

So even if a friend or future employer isn’t aware of the academic reputation of a Colby or a Wesleyan, my experience on interviewing committees has shown me that an applicant’s alma mater has pretty much zero effect on hiring decisions. What’s been important is how well-informed the applicant is about the field, how the applicant communicates and reasons, how the applicant problem-solves, etc. The people on the interviewing committee haven’t cared if the person has gone to Regional State U., Flagship U., World-Famous Private School, or Little-Known Private School. It’s been about the quality of the applicant in the interview (and performance task, if appropriate). So if a small northeastern college is the right fit or a big state flagship is the right fit, I think OP will be successful either way.

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Yeah, I’d like to go back to the topic of fit for a moment. I recall way back about 150 posts ago when there was a very triggering discussion about religion at Wesleyan. You were the only adult in the room when it came to your response. I immediately thought “Wow, the Wesleyan adcom is going to love this guy.” And I was right.

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This is a really helpful perspective. Thank you. I truly appreciate this.

I’m at least planning on law school after undergrad right now, so I do think that the people most likely to see my undergraduate resume would be familiar with the academic reputation of top LACs.

I really appreciate the thoughts about area specialization, because I do think that’s a big part of it. for example, I do think there are parts of Texas where people would value LACs or try to play the admissions game, or try to “get into the right schools” and the right ECs and stuff, and I do think that LACs would be more on their radar

I want to visit Wes if possible, to gauge the vibes, and look at what seems to be a good fit; but neither UT nor Wes are like an exact match, both of them have some kinks that I would want to satisfactorily work out before I committed

I also think that, especially for a liberal arts degree, the difference in opportunities between the two has got to be pretty slight… I understand if it’s like McCombs vs (does Wesleyan even have business??) but it sounds like, to most employers, that distinction is slight at best

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this has always been my experience, with the occasional mention of HYPSM

Until I got into my… junior year?

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This is so kind thank you:)

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No it does not. Wesleyan does have a very popular economics department that emphasizes proficiency in data analysis, how markets operate and how they shape society. In that sense, it would be very similar in content to what you would find in the arts and science division of a large, flagship public university. Management consulting firms are among the largest employers of graduating Wesleyan seniors in recent years.

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OP, as others have said, you’ve been exceptionally thoughtful and thorough in your college search, and I have no doubt that you will do well wherever you end up. As two more data points, my Texas-raised D22 and D26 were/are auto-admit for UT, and but both prefer smaller schools - D22 is at Rice, and D26 will likely end up at a LAC. If a smaller school is a better fit for you, I wouldn’t hesitate to choose that option over UT.

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Went to the UT admitted students day for LBJ school. It was absolutely fantastic and quickly convinced me and my parents. To future students looking at LBJ (because I couldn’t find anything about it online):

  1. 90-student target undergrad size
  2. 7:1 faculty to student ratio
  3. Tons of government/internship opportunities available both directly through the school and outside
  4. Easy to double major due to simple course requirements
  5. At least five different, already in-place alternate study programs (the ones I remember are at Oxford and in DC)
  6. Noncompetitive due to small nature/lack of honors stratification

I could go on. We were already leaning towards UT for other reasons, but this sold me. Super exciting program that seems very well-planned and like a perfect fit, especially because I was looking for the small environment already. Thank y’all so much for all the help!

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