<p>Where would Dartmouth fall if it were put in the same ranking system as Amherst, Williams, Swarthmore etc?</p>
<p>I’m not touching that with a 50 foot pole.</p>
<p>Right in there with Amherst and Williams, ahead of Swarthmore.</p>
<p>Good call big brother</p>
<p>Dartmouth would pwn teh non-n00bz…</p>
<p>I’ve got a 50 foot pole…</p>
<p>double entendre?</p>
<p>Big Brother how about a 100 foot pole? :p</p>
<p>I think it would be in the top tier along with PAWWWS.</p>
<p>See <a href=“WSJ in Higher Education | Trusted News & Real-World Insights”>WSJ in Higher Education | Trusted News & Real-World Insights; for a decent relative comparison.</p>
<p>Actually this question was posed to the editor of USNEWS a few years ago and he did say that he thought that given the metrics Dartmouth would probably be #1.</p>
<p>^ If I had to guess, I would concur with him too.</p>
<p>By SAT scores, Dartmouth would rank competitively with the top LACs. That’s an important component of the US News rankings.</p>
<p>However, the rankings also address “financial resources”. Dartmouth is a wealthy school, but the top LACs are even wealthier, as measured by endowment per student. Furthermore, the endowment dollars are stretched thinner at Dartmouth, because Dartmouth supports many expensive programs that LACs typically don’t (e.g. medical school, business school, engineering school, graduate-level research in all disciplines, Division I athletics). </p>
<p>In other words, the top LACs have more $$ per student, and can direct all of their $$ towards the support of undergraduate arts and sciences. Dartmouth has fewer $$ per student, and a lot of other programs to support. So Dartmouth probably would not match the top LACs in the “financial resources” category.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, Dartmouth also would not fare as well under the faculty resources category because of the larger class sizes. I have no doubt that if Dartmouth were ranked with the LACS, it would be in the top 3; but this would require some massaging of the crietria on the part of US News</p>
<p>There are clearly some categories where Dartmouth scores better as a “National University” than as a “National Liberal Arts College”.</p>
<p>For example, Dartmouth probably scores very well in terms of class sizes, relative to most universities. But as suggested above, Dartmouth probably wouldn’t stand out in this regard relative to LACs, where small classes are the norm. As far as class size is concerned, it’s much harder to compete with schools like Williams (where tutorial classes have enrollments capped at two) than with big universities like Cornell.</p>
<p>Here’s another example. Dartmouth’s strongest category in the US News rankings is probably “alumni giving rate”. This rate is around 50%, which is extraordinary for a National University; I believe Dartmouth scores #2 in this regard, behind only Princeton. But if Dartmouth were included in the LAC rankings, a 50% giving rate would be unexceptional – top LACs commonly have rates exceeding 60%. Alumni giving would become a glaring weakness for Dartmouth, rather than a powerful asset, if it were switched to the LAC rankings.</p>
<p>The reality is that Dartmouth just doesn’t fit in the LAC rankings. If you look at the top 25 LACs, the total enrollments vary from about 1200 (Haverford) to 2900 (Wesleyan). Dartmouth, with 5800, seems way out of the ballpark.</p>
<p>I’m thinking 3</p>
<p>the fact that dmouth has a lot of lac characteristics is definitely one of its most appealing aspects.</p>