Amherst College is physically close to town, but it’s a very inward facing campus, whereas someone once compared the Wesleyan buildings to a sleeve that’s been turned inside out. 
Amherst
Wesleyan
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Yeah, it is weirdly possible to visit Amherst the college without really even encountering Amherst the town, despite the physical proximity. But that could be a plus or minus depending on your vision for a small liberal arts and science college experience.
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I mean sort of? But even more so for UMass
Yes, I didn’t mean to suggest it is unique to Amherst. The town is just so close that I find it interesting.
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You can’t take them personally. You’re a name on a paper with stats, and some way to know you - whether LORs and essays, etc. But they don’t know you.
They have a zillion qualified kids - and they can only take so many. Some may choose based on your finances. Others in that you offer something they don’t have - from where you live to an instrument you play in the band to whatever stood out to them.
We’ve seen kids in at Berkeley and out at SDSU. We’ve seen kids in at MIT but not BU.
They aren’t seeing you a person - they are reading a profile and trying to figure out - does it work.
Colby is obviously not an easy in - and it shows, anyone can choose you. Will they? It’s unknown - but one thing it isn’t - is person.
Congrats on Colby -do you want an LAC (that few have heard of) or would you rather be closer to home, even at a lower ranked or larger school? That, and budget are the types of things to think of.
But I’m not sure - you’re not going home often - that a Colby distance vs. 2 hours closer - should be a deal breaker, etc.
Good luck with the rest.
While I do agree that liberal arts colleges are less well known than national universities, might we be taking this point a little too far? Top graduate schools are aware of Colby, top employers are aware of Colby… I prefer national univerisities, myself, but Colby is highly regarded by people who know and matter. When we get their resumes, we put them in in the “smart student” category. I can’t be alone on an island.
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I didn’t say it wasn’t known - I said less known and I raised the question about less prestigious as a rank because OP has a ‘rank’ list but noted that maybe Maine is too far.
Sometimes you have to dial in a scenario to help OP’s see the tradeoffs - one way or another - they’d need to make. If distance is a huge consideration, they might decide an Oberlin or Denison, appearing later in U.S. news, makes more sense.
That’s why I phrased like I did.
When I think of “well known”, personally I only care about employers, graduate schools, and other educated people. I don’t give a fig if an uneducated person has never heard of a school. That is completely irrelevant to anything that would affect my life.
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Doesn’t every college out there say there are not quotas from specific schools? My kid from a average public school in Georgia was one of many getting admitted to Smith.
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If the adcom has a history with a particular school, I agree - they’ll go “all in”. But, going back to the OP, they basically sum it up like this:
I’m not seeing the love.
I think sometimes some colleges just like certain high schools. Looking at Maia when C26 was applying, a few of the colleges have admit rates significantly higher from our high school than their overall admit rate. There are others where that doesn’t happen, so I don’t think it’s just a reflection of the cohort. These are not schools that C26 was considering but as an example our school does really well (relatively) with Penn, JHU and Cal, but not the case with Yale and UCLA where it’s at or below those schools’ average. Further down to the schools C26 applied to, as examples UIUC and Pitt seem to like our school a lot too. Maybe that’s the case with your school and Smith?
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I think some caution is in order in light of sample size issues. Like, kids at my S24’s HS were convinced Yale was all but blackballing them based on their SCOIR database, then 3 kids were admitted in his cycle. It was probably all just a fluke.
That said, I do think there can possibly be some sort of effect through yield models. Like, if a college has been observing relatively good yield from its offers to highly qualified applicants from a certain HS, it may be less likely to preemptively waitlist/reject such students than it would be for similarly qualified applicants from a different HS where it has been observingly relatively poor yield.
Maybe. I wouldn’t say I can prove it, but I’ve seen enough of what you might call hints of this effect that I think it is at least a plausible hypothesis.
Agreed. The only reason we’re even having this discussion is because the Mac rejection seemed so unexpected. The reality is that with a class size of 40 kids with no real track record to compare them to, the school is doing well with a handful of t20 admits.
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Well, I don’t think it’s only yield that factors in, not all schools care that much about it. For one I was confidently told “that school knows we send well-prepared students so they are happy to make offers here”.
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Will you be sure to update us? I was happy to hear about Colby -and hope you got good news from some of the others too.
I think that honestly, reaches are weird - especially for the LAC -they want a certain ‘something’ to round out their classes and I think it sometimes causes odd patterns in the results. We try to read into it a lot here -but I’m never really sure there is anyway to predict these!
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Rejected lol. Accepted to Colby and Hamilton, waitlisted Wesleyan, rejected everywhere else.
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Kinda forgot about this, sorry. I was also accepted to Hamilton, Waitlisted from Wesleyan, and rejected everywhere else.
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Correct 
You have two very fine acceptances! 
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