I bet Colby’s yield is high because of their price caps for hh income tiers up to $200K. VERY reasonable net price. It’s likely the best-priced school for those who are accepted. Go, Colby, leveling the playing field!
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I bet their yield is high because they accept a huge portion of their class ED, accept very few people RD, and then take people off the wait list only if they commit.
But I guess we’ll never know because they refuse to publish a common data set.
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That is so annoying. I wonder how their institutional reporting group spends their days. 
But we do have the data to calculate yield. For class of 2028:
- There were 630 matriculants: https://news.colby.edu/story/hail-class-of-2028/
- Admitted students roughly 1,343 (19187*.07)
- So yield is 46.9% (630/1,343)
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NESCAC Men’s Golf:
After two rounds, Hamilton leads the field, but only by one stroke. Top three teams three teams thus far: Hamilton, Trinity and Amherst.
The NESCAC Championship is being hosted by Williams at the Williamstown Taconic Golf Club. A beautiful course. These young men are lucky to be able to do this.
I had no idea Colby didn’t publish a CDS. I obviously never looked for it.
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And Amherst comes back to win NESCAC men’s golf:
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NESCAC Track Championships were this past Saturday. For teams, the winning programs were the Williams women and Middlebury men. Individually on the women’s side, hats off to Conn College junior Grace McDonough. She took the individual title in both the 1500 and the 5000. Her 1500 time is the fastest in all of D3 this season, and a NESCAC meet record.
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2025 Watson Fellows by Institution
Connecticut College: 3
Bowdoin: 2
Hamilton: 2
Wesleyan: 2
Colby: 1
Middlebury: 1
Note that Trinity and Tufts are not partner schools, and therefore their students were ineligible for consideration.
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I’ve read through much of this broader NESCAC thread and was hoping to get some feedback on these schools for my HS junior son (graduating 2026).
We are from a strong public in the northeast and he has no hooks.
GPA UW 3.9 with highest rigor
1510 SAT 760 Math, 760
11 APs (plus multivariable calc) upon graduation - 3 5s so far
Wants to study applied math, probably some economics and possibly minor in music.
Music is his strongest EC; highly advanced classical musician across 2 instruments and will be submitting an arts supplement.
About him - very outdoorsy - loves adventure, skiing and hiking, etc. left leaning but not activist, sporty but not a “bro.” Does not want an intense or grindy experience. Wants a strong community and access to professors, etc.
We visited the following schools and had this impression:
Hamilton - Very nice school but didn’t love the 2 sides of the campus, felt a bit more humanities focused
Colgate - Really liked and good in applied math/econ but concerned about the Greek/Bro vibe
Colby - Hard to get a read honestly?
Bates - LOVED the vibe and community feel but worried the program may not be the best fit.
Bowdoin - Good in music and has a MathEcon combined major which is a good fit. Worried too much of a prep school/boarding school vibe (or maybe it was just our tour!)
Middlebury - Have extended family who went to Midd but still need to pay a visit; have heard NARP runs strong and can be a bit cliquey. Also seems a bit more writing/language oriented.
Would love to hear feedback! Concerned that an ED admission might give him the best chance but have heard anecdotally that Bowdoin for example doesn’t give much of a bump but Middlebury and Bates are huge into ED. RD is a tough admit across the board.
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I would be surprised if there is any meaningful difference between ED chances at a given school (among this set) for an unhooked male from the northeast, said differently I don’t think it’s possible to game this by thinking his ED chances are necessarily better at X school than X (among this set.) If affordable, he should apply ED to the school he likes best.
What ‘program’ are you referring to here?
For Bowdoin, it’s not my sense that there is a prep school vibe, but plenty of students from prep schools (my D attended fairly recently.) All of these schools have relatively high proportion of full pay/affluent students.
What are his career goals? Does this interdisciplinary major appeal because he is interested in grad school for economics?
All the listed schools meet these criteria.
At Colgate the Greek situation is a turn off IMO, especially since the school is isolated with not much to do off campus, especially the first year or two. Would he be ok socially if he weren’t in a frat (whether approved or underground?)
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Hamilton’s academic strengths would align especially well with your son’s interests. Hamilton’s data science major — a major not widely available at LACs — could be paired with its national-level economics department as an applied domain. Hamilton’s planned computer science center, with “best-in-class technologies and resources,” also may be of interest.
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Thanks for the reply. With Bates, I worry about the small size and being seemingly less math-y. For example, Bowdoin is the same size but seems to be a bit more math focused.
Career goals - maybe quant finance? Econ graduate work? Could also see him going the physics path…
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I do worry about the Greek situation. Son definitely has major FOMO. He would love an outing club, etc.
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IMO quant finance is difficult in general, and relatively more difficult than even IB from this set of schools. But I defer to those who are more experienced in these worlds @hebegebe? @catcherinthetoast?
Hopefully @homerdog comes on to share their thoughts. All of these schools have active, relatively large outdoor clubs. I think the largest club at Bowdoin in terms of participation is the outdoor club, and that could be true at some of these other schools too.
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As a Dad to an incoming Bates freshman who MIGHT do a math major, your post made me wonder about the differences between Bates and Bowdoin. I went to ChatGPT to give me an initial cut.
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I would expect the econ dept will be involved with Bowdoin’s new AI and humanity center (Reed Hastings just gave $50M to start it up), and the math dept may ultimately be as well…and by involved I mean interdisciplinary types of classes/studies/major combos.
To compare course offerings across these schools, I would not use any AI front ends, I would go to each current course catalog and make a spreadsheet.
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You can use IPEDS to compare colleges by the number of first majors in a field. For example, Bowdoin reported 29 graduating math majors in a recent year, and Bates reported 19:
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Hello…our daughter graduated from Bowdoin two years ago, and our son is a junior presently at Bates and both of them applied ED to their schools and both of them also very much enjoyed their experiences. I think both schools enroll about 60% of their incoming class in ED.
The schools are often linked together (along with Colby) but they really do have some differences which distinguish them from each other. Having said that, kids are quite different and while both of them probably would have been happy at the other school, I think they both ended up at the place that was right for them.
Please feel free to send a PM if you have any specific questions, and best of luck with the process!
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That’s correct; it will be difficult to break into quant from NESCAC colleges. The key reason is that it’s a tiny industry, perhaps 500 new undergrad hires each year. Given such a small number of hires, the firms can largely meet their needs from a small number of target colleges where they actively recruit.
For quant trading, the primary targets are MIT, Harvard, Princeton, and Stanford. Secondary targets include colleges like Brown, UChicago, and Cornell.
It’s not impossible to get into quant trading roles from other colleges, but it’s harder. The advantages of the colleges listed above include a large alumni base at the quant firms, as well as quant clubs in the colleges themselves that teach how to ace the interviews.
For quant software engineering, the primary targets are the CS powerhouses like MIT, Stanford, CMU, and Berkeley. But if a student has stellar CS skills and can demonstrate that via an online test, other colleges will certainly be considered as well.
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