The Wall Street Journal features an Amherst study which shows that rainfall and hot temperatures have an effect on college tours! Co-authored by a senior, an economics professor and head adcom, Mattew McGann, the article includes a nice shot of the new College Greenway:
The hidden factor in choosing a college: Did it rain on your tour?
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On a slightly less profound note, Wesleyan does NESCAC proud as 14th out of 15 ranked colleges graduating the most “celebrities” (no doubt driven by its nationally ranked College of Film and the Moving Image (CFMI):
Colleges That Graduate The Most Celebrities
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I remember touring Wesleyan with my daughter, and it was cold and rainy. I was impressed with our tour guide, who looked totally underdressed for the weather. But she led us throughout the campus. It was not a deciding factor for us, hey weather happens!
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Posting this here since several NESCACs are mentioned in this article on the struggles of the small liberal arts college model:
“The thriving LACs share several common features. They tend to be the wealthiest (by endowment per student), the most selective, and the most nationally branded. Colby’s application surge followed a multi-billion-dollar campus investment and a deliberate strategy to raise its national profile. Williams, Amherst, and Bowdoin—the so-called “Little Ivies”—maintained their high yields and saw strong application growth (124 percent for Williams, 95 percent for Bowdoin, 60 percent for Amherst). Pomona, Middlebury, and Davidson also held or gained ground. These schools are running the same prestige flywheel that benefits Harvard and Stanford: lower acceptance rates generate more media attention, which drives more applications, which pushes acceptance rates lower still.
The struggling LACs form a larger and more diverse group. Oberlin, Kenyon, Reed, Union, Connecticut College, Dickinson, Colorado College, and Scripps all saw their yields decline—in some cases dramatically. Their application growth, while positive, lagged far behind the category average. Several saw their acceptance rates rise, the opposite direction from the broader trend at selective schools. These institutions are not in crisis—their academic programs remain strong, their campuses are well-maintained, and their graduates do well. But they are losing the enrollment competition for the students they most want.”
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I think my only pushback is the very glancing attention paid to the obvious: that SLACs are overwhelmingly located in the old industrial East, the section of the country with the biggest population decline over the space of the last half-century. So, most of them are doing a great job of playing a weak hand. The author also ignores the very clear handmaiden role played by the USNews polls over the space of the past 40 years which quite explicitly equated “quality” with “money”, and perhaps more importantly, bracketed out the most prestigious LACs from the most prestigious R1 universities in a way that was itself an unwritten commentary on their desirability.
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Not to mention the fact that this is not serious scholarship, methodology, research, etc. It’s a narrative from a commercial admissions counseling company.
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I mean, if people here (whose opinions I really do respect an awful lot) want to discuss the whole subject of whether small colleges are fading and why. I’d be up for it. But I agree, I’d much rather hear from them than this guy.
EDIT: But, as with all discussions on this thread, they would have to focus on NESCAC or NESCAC adjacent colleges.
EDIT: For example, are these small, selective, relatively well-endowed colleges in the process of “fading” or are they merely drifting back to their pre-1960s niche as “cottage industries catering to the rich”?
Good news from Williams:
“Ninety-three percent of graduates from the class of 2025 are employed, continuing education, pursuing a fellowship, or serving in the military as of last December, according to the report. The ’68 Center compiled the data from online survey responses, publicly sourced information via platforms like LinkedIn, and data from the fellowship office. This year’s survey has a “knowledge rate” of 74 percent, with 433 out of 586 graduates accounted for.
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That’s not “the Little Ivies”, FWIW.
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Is a knowledge rate of 74% good? They’re missing data for a quarter of the class.
Middlebury has released a similar outcomes report with a 96% knowledge rate.
One would think it’s harder to track down graduates who aren’t employed (or who aren’t looking).
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Yup, the author was incorrect on that count. I took much of the blog post with a grain of salt but it did make some good points as well.
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There is a table on Ivy-Wise that shows the admit and yield rates of a bunch of schools. Here’s the NESCAC:
But to put these yield rates in some context, here are what I believe to be very good schools that don’t have super high yield rates (current year only) :
Brandeis - 17.35%
Bucknell - 27.85%
Cal Poly - 25.69%
Carlton - 34.77%
Elon - 11.35%
Emory (Main Campus) - 37.3%
Harvey Mudd - 36.7%
Lafayette - 21.16%
Lehigh - 27.41%
Mac - 21.52%
SMU - 14.97%
Vassar - 29.95%
Villanova - 24.68%
Wake Forest - 37.93%
Also worth noting that many very good state flagships have relatively low yield rates.
ETA: it didn’t pull over Wesleyan’s yield data correctly.
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So much depends on what colleges are a particular school’s “overlaps” (a combination of the schools that share the largest number of applications as well as cross-admits.) It is my understanding that Wesleyan’s overlaps can be divided into three different buckets:
- Athletic competitors (primarily NESCAC, but it could also include other DIII colleges like Vassar, Smith and Holyoke)
- b. Other schools with open curricula (primarily, Brown and Vassar) and
- “Regional powerhouses” (Harvard, Yale, and Brown).
I’m only guessing that the same is true of Amherst.
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I was curious and went to the site but it was walking into Times Square with all the flashing ads, popups and fake “contact Microsoft - you’ve been breached” so I’m staying out.
It seems to have been cribbed from this 2019 Forbes article:
The 15 Top Colleges With The Most Hollywood Stars
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I don’t know enough about typical survey response rates to know if 74% is “bad.” It might be worth noting that the Williams survey was collected in December, and the Midd data is from March. I am impressed that 96% of the class responded–that seems extremely high for any survey.
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All so hard to say except, I suppose, the obvious cases. We know very well why Harvard has a super high yield. I’m not sure I know why Bowdoin’s yield (and I mean no disrespect here - I love Bowdoin College) is significantly higher than Amherst’s, whose yield is on par with Colby and Hamilton, below Middlebury’s, and not on par with its rankings mate, Williams College. All of the things that apply to Williams that would help or hurt yield seem to equally apply to Amherst, except that you’d think it’d be Williams that takes more of a yield hit due to its very rural location. But that doesn’t seem to be the case.
Maybe some colleges do a better job of “closing the deal”. Maybe some schools enjoy a greater concentration of applicants who are “true believers” (for lack of a better description) - those applying to the SLACs very much on purpose and not part of some bigger prestige hunting expedition such that when Penn, Yale or Dartmouth come through it’s “bye bye Amherst” or “bye bye Wesleyan”. Or maybe they all get the same applicants but the ad coms at some of the schools are better than their counterparts at spotting which kids really want to come to a small private college over everything else so that they have better realization on their offers.
I think it varies. One would think Carlton should have a higher yield because it doesn’t have near the LAC competition in its region of the country as compared to the NESCAC, and yet for all their greatness as a school their yield is also well below that of Bowdoin.
This. I mean, if for whatever reason, all the SLACs are reverting back to their pre-1965 mean, Williams would be very much in the “true believer” vein along with Middlebury, Hamilton, and probably Colby. As far as you can get on the other side of the spectrum, lies Tufts.
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For a couple of very big reasons, I shouldn’t even have them on the list.
Try this as a thought experiment: “Tufts no longer suffers from Tufts Syndrome.”
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