Wow. That’s pretty astounding. Here’s my query: How many of Wesleyan’s Black matriculants were Amherst rejects (if any?)
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I’d like to see the diversity breakdown excluding international students, which is more consistent with data usually reported.
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In U.S. News rankings of undergraduate-only engineering schools, Harvey Mudd comes in third behind #1 Rose-Hulman and #2 Franklin W. Olin. But neither Rose-Hulman nor Olin show up in the LAC rankings, while Mudd does.
I suppose Mudd’s LAC listing rests on their science and math departments.
https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/engineering-overall
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I believe Wesleyan specifically brackets out “domestic students of color” and international students seem to add an additional 9-10% students of color:
Class Profile, Admission & Aid - Wesleyan University
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One could take the position that the peer review, which is 20% of the rankings, is a popularity contest (just a different audience.)
Are you talking about admitted or enrolled? For enrolled, the CDS will ultimately have that data for class of 2028.
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It’s right here: Total Undergraduate Enrollment Racial and Ethnic Identity, Admission & Aid - Wesleyan University
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Thank you. Are you able to find 27? I couldn’t.
No, not on the website. I assume it’s in the 23-24 CDS?
It is all formulaic, so presumably if you were willing to pay for the unlocked version you could see how Wellesley, CMC, Army, and others ended up edging out Mudd in their formula. My guess is there is no one story, that it will be a different mix of factors depending on which higher-ranked college you are looking at. But I am not willing to pay so I can’t confirm that guess.
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I note that is a Carnegie Classification issue. The Carnegie system classifies Mudd as a Bacclaureate College: Arts & Sciences Focus college, so it goes into the US News LAC list. Rose-Hulman and Olin are Special Focus Four-Year: Engineering and Other Technology-Related Schools, so US News treats them as Specialty schools (this also includes conservatories and such).
This in turn is dictated by the CIP Codes, specifically the first two digits, aka the CIP2. As I understand it, for Rose, almost all their degrees are either in 14 (Engineering), or 11 (Computer and Information Sciences), and for Olin I believe it is only 14. Mudd only has STEM, but does have degrees in various other sciences and math, and that is enough to spread around their CIP2 codes such that they end up with that other classification.
All this is interesting but I am not sure really tracks what most people associate with a “Liberal Arts College”. Like, no HASS majors (Humanities, Arts, or Social Sciences) at all seems not very liberal-arty. But that is the label that US News has traditionally used.
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I found the 71% figure. It’s from the 2023-24 CDS, and represents the class that entered fall 2017. These students were juniors when COVID-19 hit, and a large percentage of the class (133 students, or 21%) took at least one semester off, graduating in February or June 2022 instead of June 2021. So they weren’t counted in the “four years or less” figure. Ultimately 93% of that class graduated.
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In the ranking formula, USNWR methodology uses a rolling 4 year average of the 6-year graduation rate.
Graduation rates (16%): This is a four-year rolling average of the proportion of each bachelor’s degree-seeking entering class (fall 2014 through fall 2017) that earned a bachelor’s degree in six years or less.
https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/how-us-news-calculated-the-rankings
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We attended a Wes admissions visit day last year where we heard something similar about four years of each subject, including physics specifically. I would venture that other peer schools may take a similar but less regimented approach (we visited several other nescacs and none mentioned physics specifically, though all stressed challenging courses and depth). And of course not everyone admitted to Wes took physics (79%), but it seems a good guide for those who want to attend to heed this information.
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Well it took longer than I expected…The first celebratory post about Williams being ranked 1 in USNWR has appeared in the Williams Families FB group. As an alum of a SLAC that had a precipitous decline, I am not amused. 
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Been there. 
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I can take an educated guess. It’s probably due to Mudd’s relatively low endowment per student, which likely means that Mudd offers less financial aid, has fewer Pell Grant recipients, and graduates its students with more debt than other T10 LACs. Mudd somewhat compensates for this by offering its graduates nearly the highest average salaries among all colleges and universities. I’d wager that if Mudd had a similar per-capita endowment to MIT or CalTech, it’d be near closer to the top. I don’t mean that as a reflection of Mudd’s intrinsic worth compared to other LACs; it’s just that filthy rich STEM schools like MIT and CalTech are well positioned to excel in most of the objective measurements used by those in the ranking business.
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I looked at Wesleyan’s and their 2023-24 CDS shows an 80+% 4-year grad rate while the 2022-23 shows 89+%, the latter of which is more in line with Wesleyan’s typical numbers. I assume it’s the same issue. But if it is due in large measure to COVID, I’d think everyone would see a similar drop in 4-year grad rates.
I think it’s a safe assumption. Agree, as well, that Wes seems to go out of its way to provide in-depth information relating to admissions, making the thread and discussion from a few weeks ago suggesting otherwise a bit perplexing.
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I feel like Haverford is one of those schools, like Wes, like Vassar, like Smith, like Barnard, and a few others, that gets thrown around the top 20 kind of willy nilly. But I’ve always held it in high esteem, it’s always been super hard to get into and especially among people who understand this cohort of schools, it is a very well regarded name in higher ed.
Fun fact: my D’s grad school advisor, who is one of the senior people in her department (and a widely acknowledged titan in the field), is a Haverford guy. In fact, he has a big voice in admissions and said one of the things he liked about her application was that she was a LAC kid and for that reason he assumed she’d be a good writer.
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Viewers of this topic who would like to see how some NESCACs were regarded well before U.S. News became prominent in rankings may be interested in this Life Magazine article:
By SAT score tiers, these are the NESCACs that appeared:
Tier 1 (for perspective, this level included four Ivies)
Amherst
Williams
Tier 2 (this level included three Ivies and Stanford)
Hamilton
Tier 3 (this level included Duke and UPenn)
Bowdoin
Middlebury
Tufts
Hamilton College - “As good as the Little Three” p.100.
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