Wesleyan v Oberlin v Brandeis

circuitrider
Fri, 15 May 2015 15:21:22 +0000

@allyphoe

Not sure why you prefaced them all with “the” (because IME no one ever says “the Amherst College,” but if you omit it, you get a somewhat different looking n-gram.

Well, in all fairness, in order to filter out references to all the other Wesleyans with state names in front of it, you have to use the definite article. But, if you remove Wesleyan from the mix entirely (and, substitute Swarthmore), you see a similar result with Amherst,Williams and Oberlin cresting in the mid-60s then gradually levelling off until pretty indistinguishable from other top LACs:
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Swarthmore+College%2COberlin+College%2CHaverford+College%2CDavidson+College%2CAmherst+College%2CWilliams+College%2CPomona+College%2CBowdoin+College%2CCarleton+College&year_start=1945&year_end=2008&corpus=0&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2CSwarthmore%20College%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2COberlin%20College%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2CHaverford%20College%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2CDavidson%20College%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2CAmherst%20College%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2CWilliams%20College%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2CPomona%20College%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2CBowdoin%20College%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2CCarleton%20College%3B%2Cc0