Wellesley or Northwestern?

Sam_Lee
Mon, 11 Apr 2011 13:59:44 +0000

marama,

You seemed to become rather combative and a bit condescending. Pardon my English; I didn’t know I am being graded here on an online forum.

–“I went to a high school in Williamstown for two years (from Hong Kong) and when I tried to describe the location to friends, most of them had no idea about Williams. For every “wow”, the top LACs suffer multiple “blank-stares” and I am not only referring to laymen.”

No, not everyone in the U.S. and abroad is familiar with every single elite institution of higher learning located in the United States and abroad. I guarantee you, if you named a prestigious college located in Hong Kong, it would not ring a bell for me.

I was referring to my friends in the U.S., not Hong Kong.



If you are suggesting I should not participate in this forum so as not to project my “own perception so broadly,” then I shall redirect that suggestion back to you. You wouldn’t, perchance, believe that you have more of a right to express your opinions here than do others?

I was suggesting you not to generalize (“it depends on the person”) just like you told me not to generalize using percentage figures.

Students at better schools generally have higher standardized test scores–as well as higher grades, a more rigorous courseload, more awards, more serious extracurriculars, more demonstrated leadership skills, and a whole host of other things–than those at less selective schools. As I stated above, there’s more to a school’s prestige than simply the SAT scores of the student body.

I have already mentioned average SAT score does not equte prestige but they are closely related. If one school has so much “wow” factor, it should follow that that “wow” factor would draw the students with top scores. That why Ivies/Stanford…etc have average SAT well above, not well below, 1400. Your claim that Welleysley has “wow” factor and Northwestern doesn’t is just not consistent with the stats comparison (80 points, not 10, 20, or even 30, lower).



Sam, in the final analysis, it doesn’t matter whether we agree. The First Amendment was a great addition to the Constitution.

True, it doesn’t matter whether we agree. That said, I don’t think you offered much “analysis”.