It’s a case of gilt by association.
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Tufts won the Field Hockey National title! (They lost the championship last year to Midd.)
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Tufts advances to the semfinals in both men’s and women’s soccer (taking out Bowdoin in the men’s competition) and Colby advances to the quarter finals (over Wes) in volleyball.
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GROAN.
And an award: 
Fully agree. Including Middlebury.
Prep schools even moreso.
Definitely Midd.
[last aside]
To be fair, most of these colleges, including all the NESCAC colleges (I don’t know about prep schools) really are trying to do better. However, almost all of these data for “leaders” are for people who attended these colleges in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. So the rankings are indeed based on data from when these colleges really served the scions of the wealthy and powerful families, along with a small number of other kids who were deemed worthy.
Things are changing, but that change had barely started, or had not started when these people attended college. I’d love to see the family income distribution, race/ethnicity percentage, and gender ratios of the “leaders” in their database.
I’d also like to know what actual criteria they used to determine that a person has “an influential role”. For most of these rankings, this is usually “makes a lot of money, and is in charge of a lot of people”, which, of course, would exclude almost all top scientists, authors, etc.
[/last aside]
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“Steve” Ballmer. Bill is the other guy.
I guess that I Billed Steve.
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Groan. 
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Under the rubric of Shameless Promotion - Holiday Season, two NESCAC towns - Middletown and Middlebury made this list of top twelve foodie towns in New England:
“Middletown’s food scene mixes campus energy with chef-driven ambition. You’ll find Taiwanese beef noodle bowls beside Mediterranean tapas, and bakeries frying inventive doughnuts before dawn. Farm-to-table menus highlight Connecticut produce—sweet corn, tomatoes, and orchard fruit—throughout the seasons. Cocktail bars tinker with bitters and local honey, while coffee shops keep the conversation humming.”
“Middlebury distills Vermont into bites of elegance and ease. Campus energy fuels ambitious kitchens, where chefs treat carrots like couture and pork like poetry. Breweries pour crisp lagers, perfect with cheddar-stuffed pretzels. A beloved creamery turns out soft-serve and cheeses with cult followings.”
12 Foodie towns in New England you’ve probably never heard of
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Haven’t been to all of them, and I didn’t eat in Middlebury either time I was there. As much as I like the town, I have to question Mystic’s inclusion. We’ve eaten at a couple of good restaurants there, and of course there’s the famous pizza place, but I think “Foodie Town” is a stretch for that one. Stand to be corrected.
I also dare say that most people have heard of Mystic and certainly Providence. So, if we’re including those places, what about Portland?
Anyway, I’ll take the win for the two NESCAC hometowns.
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Middlebury has some really good coffee places, a few bakeries/cafes, a few good restaurants in town, and a few more within a 10-20 minute drive. The county has fewer than 40,000 people, so not bad, though I guess that you need to also add the assorted tourists who come.
If you like cider, the Shacksbury cidery is 15 minutes away in Vergennes, and Woodchuck has relocated its cidery to Middlebury.
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Been a little slow, so I thought I’d add some new conference trivia I have not heretofore seen posted here. Rhodes Scholars by NESCAC institution through 2025.
Many LACs, including NESCAC member schools, show pretty well in this category in even absolute terms relative to some major R1s. I wonder if I’m missing something but the list is the list.
I asked Adobe’s AI tool to tell me the NESCACs. Here’s what it came back with.
The New England Small College Athletic Conference (NESCAC) schools listed in the document are:
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Amherst College - 21 winners
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Bates College - 5 winners
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Bowdoin College - 22 winners
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Colby College - 6 winners
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Hamilton College - 5 winners
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Middlebury College - 16 winners
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Trinity College (CT) - 2 winners
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Tufts University - 4 winners
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Wesleyan University - 14 winners
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Williams College - 36 winners
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That’s it.
Worth pointing out that 4 NESCACs had more Rhodes winners than UCLA, which claims 11.
I suspect that low number has something to do with how the awards are doled out. I’m guessing that the competition among Stanford, Cal, etc. eats up a lot of opportunity for them but I don’t really know what the driver is.
The obvious conference call out is how well Williams has done and Tufts’ surprisingly low number given their size.
Geographic diversity has to be one significant driver since the winners are doled out on a per state basis; it may explain why the service academies do so well. And, just looking at a map of the U.S., I would predict schools in California and Texas having significant headwinds working against them. OTOH, I imagine being situated in a sparsely populated state, or where the college has a lock on that state’s top graduates, would work in a college’s favor (UKansas comes to mind, but also UVA and UNC-CH.) Bottom line: kudos to NESCAC!
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The Rhodes had been allocated by state. However, current consideration is by district. The former aspect, in particular, makes meaningful historical comparisons across colleges in different states extremely challenging in what had been an inequitable system, and Rhodes has discouraged such comparisons. Further, Connecticut College has been hampered by Rhodes’ previous exclusion of women, and a college such as Bates has been hampered by its early inclusion of women.
These are the current districts relevant to the NESCACs:
District 1
Maiine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Vermont (Bates, Bowdoin, Colby, Amherst, Tufts, Williams and Middlebury)
District 2
Connecticut, New Hampshire and New Jersey (Connecticut College, Trinity and Wesleyan)
District 4
New York – north, Pennsylvania (Hamilton)
Applicants may apply from either the district of their colleges or of their homes states.
Hmm. Apparently, the changes were made 30 years ago.
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The NESCACs which have been Coed throughout the history of the Rhodes Scholar program (offered in the USA since 1904) are Bates (Coed since 1855), Colby (Coed since 1871), and Middlebury (Coed since 1883). Wesleyan was Coed between 1872 and 1912. The others only became Coed over the 1970s.
This is even more impressive, since these colleges are competing with each other, as well as competing with MIT, Harvard, Brown, BU, BC, UMass, Brandeis, Northeastern, UVM, and UMaine, not to mention a long list of other excellent LACs.
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Tufts Men’s soccer won the ncaa d3 title!
Women lost in the semifinals. Great showing!
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