Where’s Middlebury??
(Rhetorical)
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It is weird that Midd doesn’t get treated by Forbes as a small college. I think it should be 13th ahead of Davidson based on the full Forbes list. Overall Midd has come out much better this year for rankings: top 10 LAC again in Niche.
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I can’t access the article. Why don’t they treat Middleberry as a small college?
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Maybe compare the two methodologies - perhaps they are different even though the publication is the same?
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Weird that Middlebury isn’t included - it’s a LAC and has an enrollment of 2800.
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What jumps out at me is that most of the schools are small liberal arts colleges, then there is CalTech - a top engineering school - in the top 10. Farther down the list is Rose Hulman, another dedicated engineering school. It is almost as though Forbes is comparing apples and oranges.
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Me too. I look at rankings as a starting point in a school search, and the objective is less to find a top 10, and more to avoid a bottom 150, and then drill down into grimble like class size, graduation rates, starting salaries, grad school placement, etc. when evaluating schools. To me, fit trumps ranking.
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This again is inevitable when doing generic rankings. Other notable issues include that not everyone could even consider women’s colleges, and some of these colleges have things like business or engineering, but not others. And of course exactly how much any of these colleges will cost any given individual is sometimes a large variable.
But in a world where generic rankings exist, I think it is helpful to at least have different generic rankings available, which can then maybe help people reflect on the actual utility of any one generic ranking.
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Strange indeed that Middlebury isn’t on this list. In the combined university and LAC ranking, Middlebury is #52, directly behind #51 Wesleyan. So if included in this list, it would come in at #12.
Also, in Forbes’ profile of Middlebury, they state that Midd has a student population of 4,813, including 4,137 undergrads. What might be at play here is a change in how enrollment is calculated, which party accounted for Midd’s decline in USNews last year (as it likely will again this year).
They may be including all the students who attend the summer language schools, Bread Loaf School of English, and MIIS in California.
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Re Middlebury not being listed, this is a great example of why rankings shouldn’t be considered definitive.
No offense to any of the colleges on the list, but you will be hard pressed to find many people who think Conn or Kalamazoo are better than Middlebury.
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Indeed.
I have suggested these lists can sometimes be useful as ideas-generators, but part of that is NOT using them as ideas-excluders.
So Middlebury, or indeed other small colleges, NOT being on this list is to me not particularly important information about those colleges.
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Haha love that! The Claremont Colleges really do have such a unique setup, and I totally get the ski-and-beach-in-one-day appeal. It sounds like the perfect student lifestyle. Harvey Mudd shirts definitely stand out., I’m sure you get some fun reactions at the gym.
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From the OP: “These schools, with fewer than 4,000 students each, offer top academics, plus greater access to faculty and more protection from federal funding cuts, than at big research universities.”
Middlebury at 4,800 would not be in the cohort.
Middlebury has an enrollment of 2800. If the survey is also counting the Monterey campus (just graduate students in a highly specialized program, who have little contact with the Vermont campus), it would still come in at under 4000. If they’re counting summer institutes, well, that doesn’t really make sense as those students are not enrolled in degree programs at all. It would be like counting summer high school programs at colleges that host them.
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I was just referencing the above post which stated:
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Small college and small class size are the same? This week while following S25’s start of classes I was shocked to see students having trouble finding seats even in supposedly expensive private schools with smaller enrollments compared to public schools. My guess is picking a popular major at small colleges can still lead to big lower division classes.
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Looks like Forbes got the info from IPEDS, which has these numbers in the general enrollment profile for Middlebury.
The more detailed enrollment section lists only students enrolled in fall (so actual Middlebury undergrads, not summer language school students).
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Yet where’s the fact checking?
The sad part is, I don’t recall anyone at the gym recognizing the school name 
For students that cannot get one of the limited slots at the Naval Academy, the three maritime schools (NY/SUNY, Massachusetts, Maine) are great alternatives towards an officer’s commission in the Navy. As is Kings Point/Merchant Marine.
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