How do Necsac schools compare to Ivy league in terms of things like Endowment, Academics, Sports, and Job placement.
Per-student endowments are higher at the Ivies overall.
Academically, they sport the usual “private U vs. private LAC” pros and cons. I think the NESCAC is just as strong as the Ivies at the top and in the middle, but the bottom Ivies are stronger than the bottom of the NESCAC in my opinion (Conn College and Trinity).
Athletically, they play at different levels. It is probably easier to play on a varsity team at a NESCAC school than it is to do so at an Ivy. In terms of school spirit, it depends on the school, not the conference or division.
“Per-student endowments are higher at the Ivies overall.” (post 1)
By per-student endowment, it’s not evident that a clear generalization can be made:
Princeton
Yale
Harvard
Amherst
Williams
Bowdoin
Dartmouth
Penn
Hamilton
Middlebury
Colby
Columbia
Brown
Cornell
Wesleyan
Trinity
Tufts
Connecticut College
Bates
(Reach High Scholars.)
Relative to their sizes, the NESCACs are just as wealthy, if not wealthier, than the Ivy League since they don’t - as a group - have vast teaching hospitals, med schools and other nonprofit research institutes attached to them, sharing the same resources. OTOH, they’re not as well known outside the US, or even beyond the East Coast as far as ordinary, middle-class people are concerned. Universities with their own grad schools obviously have a huge advantage in job placement because they can always delay the entry of significant portions of their graduates into the workplace by keeping them in school longer. The Ivies also tend to present bigger targets for recruiters, but, you have to be careful to compare apples to apples since many Ivies, including Penn, Yale and Cornell, offer professional degrees at the undergraduate level that LACs typically do not.
It’s also important to note that the NESCACs, because each is so small, feel very connected to each other. That is to say that, while Cornell graduates may not feel a particular bond to Columbia graduates, Colby and Middlebury graduates will feel connected. This extends to job interviews and networking.
Actually, merc, in that list, the Ivies are ranked 1, 2, 3, 7, 8, 12, 13, 14 – average rank of 7.5
The NESCAC schools are 4, 5, 6, 9, 10, 11, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19 – average rank of 11.82.
We can say that most Ivies have higher per-student endowments than most NESCACs.
But the Ivy League undergrads must share some of those resources with grad (and higher) level students. That makes it foggy.
What’s the real question here, overall satisfaction and suitability? On a student level, there are NESCACs where you won’t feel any endowment issues and Ivies where you can, in some ways. But they aren’t usually main reasons to select a college. You want to vet your possible department, the range of courses and how many profs with your interests, and research opps, get some idea of the quality of career services. If sports are important to you, see what your actual opportunities are, to play.
Endowment per student is not relevant unless there is a deficiency. Trust me visit any NESCAC, and you will see housing, facilities and food as good or better than an Ivy. The Ivy league schools have excessive endowments that mean nothing to the average undergraduate. Endowment per student is a silly metric unless of course buildings are falling down, teachers go unpaid and the only thing for lunch is creamed corn.
OP, how do you expect to benefit from the internal hedge funds that many Ivy League run?
One thing, you will do more work at a NESCAC and the grading policies are harder. The classes are much smaller and you will keep up with your work or else.
As far as endowment valuations go, some schools have significantly undervalued assets. One Catholic school in NY has an endowment 3 times reported because of the value of its rare books collection that is insured for $100 million and carried at cost.
“Endowment per student is not relevant unless there is a deficiency.” (#7)
Agreed. All the NESCACs and Ivies have high endowments compared to the average college nationally.
I don’t get this inclination by people to group by sports league. There’s a big variation among NECSAC schools and huge variation among the Ivies. And schools outside those leagues that look at some but not others, etc.
Do very many Ivy undergrads attend their own institution for grad school?
A few points
- the vast majority of graduates of Ivies go to work after undergrad, not grad school. So there is no delay- no ivy is keeping its students in school longer by hiding them in their (extremely prestigious and hard-to-get-into) grad programs. And even when those graduates do return to grad school eventually (and most do), the vast majority attend universities that are different than where they attended undergrad.
- Class sizes are not typically that much smaller at LACs than some ivies. Penn and Princeton, for example, both have student to faculty ratios of 6 to 1 and 68% of Penn classes will be fewer than 20 students and 72% of Princeton classes will be smaller than 20 students. Similarly, Amherst has a student to faculty ratio of 8:1 and 71% of its classes will have fewer than 20 students. Both Penn and Princeton have a larger percentage of classes over 49 students than Amherst but for the vast majority of classes at all three schools, classes will be pretty small and similarly sized. http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/university-of-pennsylvania-3378?int=colleges:arrow http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/princeton-university-2627 http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/amherst-college-2115
- Grading is not somehow magically harder at LACs than ivies. I know that at Swarthmore, anywhere else it would have been an A. But Cornell kids like to say that too. And Princeton kids who graduated within the last 6 years can't stop talking about grade deflation. At the end of the day, grade inflation is a problem everywhere- at the ivies and the little ivies alike (http://www3.amherst.edu/~astudent/The%20Student/2006-2007/issue12/opinion/05.html).
- Finally, there is no way to measure the bonds between colleges and their graduates but I would say that Ivy bonds are pretty darn strong. There are a ton of 'ivy only' alumni events in major cities around the world and the alumni clubs of each individual school often host events in partnership with other schools. Penn and Yale's host an LGBT event for pride month. Penn, Princeton and Yale have held wine and cheese cocktail hours. A lot of alums (sometimes more alums than students) still come back for the Penn-Princeton game and obviously "The Game' between Harvard and Yale attracts everyone who has ever even passed through their campuses. Graduates of ivies can be a little competitive and judgmental of one another but at the end of the day, in my experience, there still exists a bond for most.
What I’m really trying to get at is that you can’t compare the ivies and the little ivies as a group because they’re all sooo different from one another. They are very similar in that they’re all great schools-- but grouping them by athletic conference and then trying to draw definitive conclusions about how one group is versus another won’t yield any particularly enlightening results.
From your linked student letter above on grade inflation.
I didn’t know that grad schools (and professional schools?) receive such a report. If true, that’s interesting because it underscores the advice generally given here to get the “highest gpa possible” for medical schools, at whatever school.
Is a 3.5 from, say, Yale, any more or less valuable in that context than one from Wright State? Grade inflation and lower rank vs “easiness” of the school and higher rank sets up an interesting choice if gpa is “all that” for med school (and maybe grad and law and biz schools too, but I don’t hear them spoken about as valuing GPA over everything as much).
There may be a ton of variation of difficulty of achieving a high GPA by major even at the same school, in any case.
[Anybody interested in actual empirical examination of grade inflation should check out this site](http://www.gradeinflation.com/). Lots of national trends, excellent information design, and at the bottom, you can check historical GPA averages at many well-known colleges.
The data aren’t complete because many schools stopped providing GPA information, but it’s well done (the author was a Duke professor) and presumably accurate.
So according to collegedata.com, Penn’s class sizes are:
2-9 students: 28% of classes
10-19 students: 40% of classes
20-29 students: 14% of classes
30-39 students: 5% of classes
40-49 students: 3% of classes
50-99 students: 8% of classes
Over 100 students: 3% of classes
And Amherst’s are:
2-9 students: 32% of classes
10-19 students: 39% of classes
20-29 students: 19% of classes
30-39 students: 6% of classes
40-49 students: 3% of classes
50-99 students: 2% of classes
So while 68% percent of Penn’s and 71% of Amherst’s classes are under 20 students, 14% of Penn’s and 5% of Amherst’s classes are over 40 students, which in my opinion is a really large class and a sizable difference in percentage. I’m guessing the benefits of a LAC is that you’re less likely to be in large classes, rather than more likely to be in smaller classes. Also, I find it interesting that lower faculty-student ratio doesn’t translate to having smaller classes at Penn than Amherst. Do not all faculty teach? Also, do you know if these class-size figures for Penn and Princeton factor in graduate students?
In my experience, there is a difference between seminars and lectures (and some lectures may have only 10 students sign up but the prof still lectures like he’s lecturing 100) and between lectures of 80 or smaller (where profs can engage most of the students and know their names) and lectures of 150 or bigger.
Note also that, as 3 classes of 250 would have more students than 60 classes of 10, those big lectures could lead to a decently high proportion of a student’s time in big lecture classes even though they make up a tiny percentage of classes.
@jademaster It is common for many professors to only teach one section, and do research with the rest of their time. The same goes with “celebrity” professors who may do even less teaching. I had a “celebrity” econ professor who lectured one section, and had the responsibility of course logistics like determining grade curves, supervising GSIs, etc. given to another professor. Arrangements like this may explain how a higher faculty-student ratio does not necessarily translate to smaller class sizes.
Hi @jademaster – i do agree that you are more likely to come across a larger class at Penn/Princeton than at Amherst. However, you could graduate from an Ivy having never taken a class of over 40 students if larger classes aren’t environments in which you learn best. And at the end of the day, the overwhelming majority of classes at all 3 institutions will be under 40 students. Thus, I don’t think there is great merit in comparing the little ivies vs the ivies because they’re all so different and your experience at each will vary widely depending on how you approach your education.
All professors at Penn do indeed teach but there are some benefits to larger lectures for students, faculty and administrators that make them desirable to have as options- even if penn has the resources to eliminate them. A few examples: Some students prefer a little bit of anonymity. From a teaching perspective, there won’t be a huge difference between a chemistry class of 39 and a class of 51 students but from a student’s perspective it means not being arbitrarily cut out of a class due to a class size cap that won’t actually impact the quality of the learning. The law of diminishing returns starts to come into play in terms of keeping some classes smaller when they aren’t discussion based and where having a larger sample for a grading curve can actually make for a much more representative outcome. But yes, Penn/Princeton do have more larger classes than Amherst.
The question of celebrity professors will vary from school to school to be certain. I can only say that in my experience, the celebrity professors and the regular professors were very accommodating and highly accessible.
Princeton’s Fall 2016 course schedule lists 6 econ courses with maximum enrollments of over 100. That’'s over 10% of the listed courses. ECO 100 maxes out at 450 students. It does have 19 discussion sections with 24 students max, but presumably they get Professor Harvey Rosen only for the lectures.
Some LACs have no courses with 50 or more students.