Note that Trinity withdrew from QuestBridge participation in 2016.
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Hamilton is also a Questbridge and Posse Partner College.
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You are right, and so are Trinity, Colby, and Wesleyan.
<Stares expectantly at Amherst, Bates, Bowdoin, Tufts, and Williams>
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Bowdoin was one of the initial Posse Boston partners. They dropped out of the relationship because students of all income levels are allowed to apply and Bowdoinâs priority was(still is) to bring in disadvantaged students.
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Posse sent itâs first Posse to Vanderbilt in 1989. Bowdoin accepted its first Posse cohort in 2000, and ended their affiliation in 2004. So they werenât an initial member, though they were relatively early members.
Itâs highly unlikely that they ended their affiliation because they preferred to accept low income students. The percent of students receiving any financial aid was higher in 2003-2004 than it was in 2006-2007. So Bowdoin was NOT replacing the 10 Posse Scholars with 10 low income kids.
According to Bowdoin âwe couldnât resolve successfully the philosophical differences we had with the national Posse program about financial aidâ.
What that means is not clear. They could have been arguing over how the remaining costs would be covered (Posse Scholarship only covers tuition), or something else. All that we know, though, is that Bowdoin liked Posseâs philosophy in 2000, but by 2004, they no longer agreed with it. Maybe there was a change in the people in charge.
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Iâm not sure why you cherry picked the two years of Bowdoinâs FA, but the reality is the proportion of students receiving FA has increased at Bowdoin each of the last two decades (which is also true of many of its peer schools.)
Bowdoinâs (general) philosophy is to give need based aid rather than merit aid, and Posse is a merit scholarship. Hence the âphilosophical differences.â Denison ended its Posse affiliation for similar reasons. Denison splits from the Posse Foundation - The Denisonian
I am not criticizing Posse Foundation, and I know you are involved with them. But there has always been some industry criticism levied towards Posse because students without financial need can participate, which is different than Questbridge and some other large dollar scholarships, like Gates. Other schools have pulled out of their Posse partnership for other reasons (Rice, Grinnell.) Posse can select students however they want, but obviously thatâs not a match with every college and thatâs ok.
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Iâm confused.
According to their website, Posse began accepting their first veterans into the program in 2012 and the first college to sign up was Vassar not Vanderbilt:
Also, just to bring things up to date, Wesleyan stopped its affiliation with Posse in 2022 after partnering with them for ten years (not sure why the Posse website still pictures Wesleyan prominently in a photograph):
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This will be my last post on this.
Iâm just saying that Iâm a bit more familiar with whatâs going on with Posse, especially those which were part of the Chicago Posse program (Grinnell and Denison). Among other things, Iâve been a volunteer interviewer and mentor for them (Posse Chicago) since 2019, and I actually know the faculty member who was the Posse mentor for Denison. There is what is said, and there are the actual reasons.
I know the demographics and profiles of Posse scholars, I know the selection process, and I know what, if anything, replaced the program. The political processes are not always what is announced in public. No college will admit that it is dropping Posse because their admission rates are now low enough that they feel that they can choose âbetterâ URMs, that local politics are pressuring them to focus on low income students from their state, or that they donât want to share the selection process with an outside organization.
I didnât âcherry-pickâ the data - the percent of students receiving aid during the years that Bowdoin partnered with Posse was between 44% and 45%, and that dropped to 39% in 2005, and remained 40%-41 % until 2010 (when it started increasing). The average financial aid package did not change much as percent of COA across all those years. So whatever they claimed, Bowdoin did not âreplaceâ their Posse Scholars with any low income students. Although Bowdoin âreplacedâ Posse with QuestBridge, research has demonstrated that simply pairing with QB does not result in an increase in economic diversity A Quest for Equity? Measuring the Effect of QuestBridge on Economic Diversity at Selective Institutions | Research in Higher Education
Posse added the Veterans Program in 2012. before that, it was only high school graduates, and that started in 1989. You are correct that Wesleyan did drop itâs affiliation with the Veterans program because Veterans, who nominate themselves, were not requesting to go to Wesleyan. Makes sense, actually - a 22 year old army veteran is rarely a good fit for a LAC, which is primarily 18 and 19 year old recent high school graduates.
I donât work with the Veterans program, so I donât follow whatâs going that much (just the Posse Cities), and missed the fact that the LACs were dropping out of the program. Posse also hasnât updated itâs main website, either (other news I generally get to my email, but I do forget some of it).
Perhaps Wesleyan will join again, this time as apart of the regular program (or maybe the Posse Arts Program), since one of their most famous alumni has partnered with Posse.
BTW, the article that you cited seems to be claiming that there are no LACs partnered with Posse at all, which is very much not true (there are 35 partner LACs at the moment).
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Well, there seems to be a disconnect between Posse as a program for high school students and Posse for veterans. Youâre correct that returning vets are always going to find it easier to integrate themselves within an R1 university environment because of the plenitude of graduate and married student housing. But I like how one of the Posse alumni put it:
âSo much of my Posse experience was really a Wesleyan experience."
And, thatâs hard to duplicate at the R1 level. A small community where different experiences are valued. As a mentor put it
âGetting to know people and sharing life experiences, those kinds of things helped all of us to understand each other a lot better than to sit around a horseshoe-shaped table looking at each other,â (Professor of Chemistry Andrea ) Roberts said. âThere are certain things that Posse national requires that I just donât think work.â
People can argue forever about different ways R1 universities can approximate the LAC experience, but in your heart of hearts, I think we all know know that, essentially, they canât.
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For class of 2028, Wesleyan admitted 16 veterans (8 as transfers). Veterans are remian an important target of many of the more selective LACs which are seeking to increase veteran representation on their campuses.
As always, props to Wesleyan for their relative transparency in the admission process.
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Just saw this photo of Middleburyâs new first-year dorm, which is still under construction. Love the classic design.
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Ah, the spitting image of Battell Hall.
As long at the interior isnât also a spitting image of Battell, it will be great.
My kid spent her first year in Battell, or at least the fall and January terms (the Spring Of COVID). Evidently, though, although the dorms are the worst, but the social life in Battell was always the best. Not as many parties, but lots of close friendships and fun social activities. Most students ended up really loving their time there, even though it was in crappy condition.
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I donât think Battell was the inspiration (unless of course that was sarcasm).
I think itâs more incorporating design elements of Munroe and Forest.
https://www.engelberth.com/on-the-fast-track-forest-hall-at-middlebury-college/
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And, of course, only a mother panther knows her kittens. 
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Whatever the inspiration it is a beautiful campus.
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Itâs also beautiful at every season.
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Tufts, Middlebury, and Amherst make top 100 in Timeâs âThe Best Colleges for Future Leadersâ
TIME and Statista analyzed the resumĂ©s of 4,000 top leaders in the U.S.âpoliticians, CEOs, union leaders, Nobel winners, and more across sectorsâto assemble a list of the universities and colleges where they received their degrees. The list, which is weighted for school size, is led by so-called Ivy Plus schools, with Harvard University dominating the field. Many top schools training future leaders also have notable business and law programs, or are large research universities.
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That was an interesting list - Miami University (Ohio) beat all of NESCAC 
Also thought it was interesting that Smith College was the top LAC (also interesting that Smith, Holyoke, and UMass-A joined Amherst in the list - 4/5 of the 5 college consortium).
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It makes sense that universities with multiple graduate programs fare better on this list.
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