<p>SarahsDad: are you sure all these Penn women were graduates of Penn’s undergraduate college of arts & sciences? I bet a number of them weren’t. Maybe law school, wharton, etc. Not that this list is better than Wellesley’s as is.</p>
<p>Columbiahopeful! Yes I believe that, in the case of a multi-college university, depending on context it may be more appropriate to use the university as a whole for some purposes, yet other times it is more instructive to look at the component colleges individually. In this case, when comparing the opportunities available to a female interested in liberal arts, I believe it is most on point to consider the pool of undergraduate females there who major in liberal arts. Rather than jumble that in with, for example a bunch of men who are in the engineering college. OR whatever else is also there, and also irrelevant to this applicant, who will be attending the arts & sciences college presumably. When I applied to colleges, the stats for each of the individual colleges of multi-college universities such as Penn, Columbia and Cornell were broken out individually in the guide books; and by gender as well. I find that approach much more instructive for applicants who will be applying only to one particular college of a conglomerate university.</p>
<p>It is made even more appropriate when comparing to a liberal arts college that doesn’t even have these other irrelevant other divisions around. Stats intermingling/ confusion is not an option for the comparison school.</p>
<p>It is particularly critical to compare apples to apples when considering the accomplishments of alumni. Because frankly, for most of this country’s history women were more likely to be marrying some mover & shaker and staying home than doing the moving & shaking themselves. The past accomplishments of Wellesley’s alumnae can only be appropriately viewed in this context. The only reasonable and fair comparison is vs. Penn’s women alumnae of the College of Arts & Sciences. Apples to apples.</p>
<p>If you would like to discuss specifically what I posted someplace else, about some other schools that are not the topic of this thread, by all means make your specific comments on those other threads, where they are perhaps pertinent.</p>
<p>I am actually not some huge fan of women’s colleges as a blanket matter. I consider each school individually. I’ve a daughter who is heading to Barnard, but that was her choice not mine. And her decision was not because it was a women’s college. My other daughter is at a coed school. I think there are good points & bad points about each. With respect to Wellesley I’ve pointed out some of each on this very thread. My D1, in the end, chose her school over Wellesley.</p>
<p>D1 was turned off, rightly or wrongly,at the Penn info session by a perceived overt pre-professional focus; not her thing. Did not apply. Penn did not have what D2 was most interested in; a non-starter for her. Neither did Wellesley.</p>