@ThankYouforHelp Again…I believe Williams and Amherst are just as good for certain students as HYPSM etc…my question is why have they seemingly fallen off in the eyes of the tippy top students as the thread stating where they enrolled seems to indicate? So it goes back to my earlier questions…is it due to majors? Prestige? Why wouldn’t they choose smaller class sizes and more focus on undergrad? You would think that they and/or their parents would have done their homework and not simply chased name brand. Why aren’t they on kids radar? I’m sure they received informational material from these colleges as other top student do as well promoting their college. There was another post where the student who was a double legacy had been accepted to Williams but in the end chose UPENN for prestige. Certainly the students parents would have informed the student of the benefits and quality of Williams.
So my natural curiosity makes me think it mostly has to do with 1. majors and 2 overall perceived prestige. Thus I’m asking the question of what and where the top students majored in and attended.
@moscott my question is why have they seemingly fallen off in the eyes of the tippy top students as the thread stating where they enrolled seems to indicate?
That is a perception problem on your part. Admissions statistics indicate that the top LACs haven’t fallen off in the eyes of top students. If they had, they wouldn’t be as hard to get into as they are.
Let’s face it: they were never “on” the radar for at well over half of the country. When the person posting is from Florida or Texas or Georgia or Iowa, LACs are rarely part of the equation. If the person is from somewhere less wealthy, the top students may only be applying to state schools. However, in the places where they were on the radar in the past, they remain on the radar.
As to your last point: we all know that for some people, the word “Ivy” means everything, and they will turn down Williams, Amherst, Mudd (or for that matter UChicago or Johns Hopkins) in favor of any school in the Ivy league. Moreover, UPenn is a great school, and lots of people don’t want to be in an environment that is as small and remote as Williams. Nothing odd about someone making that choice, and it doesn’t reflect on the overall pull of the LACs.
@ThankYouforHelp I’m not talking about the admission statistics. There are about 37,000 HS’s in the US alone. More than enough to fill top colleges and top LA colleges so that isn’t the issue. The issue(based on the other thread) is that the tippy top students are not enrolling at Williams or Amherst etc…never mind those who were rejected and ended up choosing a top LA college.
Can you clarify what a tippy top student is to you?
You’ve drawn from a thread where people have been sharing where the top 10 ranked students are attending. Have you ever considered the possibility that top LACs aren’t particularly interested in drawing from that pool if that would mean their institutional priorities aren’t met? The only metric they’re held accountable to is top 10% of class rank per US News- other than that, they’re free to cultivate their class however they wanted to. On the percent basis, the top LACs compare favorably to their university peers.
If top LACs wanted to fill their class with students who numerically rank in the absolute top, they could. They already do so to a considerable extent. This was a profile from a Williams: “Fifty-four percent of the students who submitted high school rank are projected either to be valedictorian or to graduate in the top one percent of their class.” Here’s another from Pomona: “From high schools that rank, 30.4 percent of admitted students are valedictorians, and another 9.7 percent are salutatorians.” The percent admitted to enrolling isn’t different: 92% of admitted students in the top 10%, 92% of enrolled students in the top 10%. So my guess is that there is a substantial constituency at the top LACs consisting of the absolute highest ranked students in their high school.
But LACs value more in their classes than the highest rank. Amherst, Swarthmore, and Pomona all enroll more URMs as a percent than most top universities. A whopping 48% of Williams students are varsity athletes compared to ~20% at Harvard and Yale; even at Swarthmore/Pomona the varsity number is ~30%. There’s a NYTimes article out there about how well the top LACs do among private schools for enrolling Pell Grant, or low income students, and Amherst and Pomona are at the top: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/05/25/sunday-review/opinion-pell-table.html These are all talented, bright students who may not have the absolute highest academic accomplishment, but the LACs see them for the potential and perspective they bring. Not to say it doesn’t happen at top universities, but it feels like a bigger part of the admissions process at the top LACs.
There’s also the reality that LACs just don’t have the room to take more than 1-2 students per high school beyond really exceptional cases. You can see it in Pomona’s profile: 741 admitted from 621 schools. 1.19 students from each school they admit from in the first place, and that’s a tiny percent of all the HS represented in the applicant pool when only 8% are getting admitted in total. Of course you’re not going to see LACs mentioned very often in the other thread when the numbers are so low on a per capita basis. And because LACs gain many of their legacies or athletes from early processes who may be in the top 10% but are not the top 10 students overall, students who ARE in the top 10 may be passed in favor for those in schools not yet represented for geographic diversity and representation. There’s a rational in that- LACs know they can’t out-compete universities in marketing and recognition, but if they can draw a wide diversity of high schools which alums and students represent, that could hopefully enhance their presence in the future.
@nostalgicwisdom For context in THIS discussion it would be the top 10 students from each HS representing the “tippy top”. As for your statement “If top LACs wanted to fill their class with students who numerically rank in the absolute top, they could.” I don’t believe that for a second. I am an advocate FOR kids choosing the likes of Williams and/or Amherst however as seen in the other thread regarding top 10 students and where they are enrolling, clearly they are opting for name brand schools by far. Look at how many students applied to Williams but ended up enrolling Ivy etal IF accepted.
You drew from one anecdote with someone turning down Williams for Penn. I could give you more for those turning down Penn (and other Ivies) for Williams. What’s your proof to draw your conclusion? That thread does not reveal the colleges students were being admitted to relative to those they turned down. If Pomona, for instance, is only taking 1 student on average from each high school, then it doesn’t make a lot of sense to say that 3 students being admitted to Brown or Columbia each means 6 students who turned down Pomona.
The only current source for cross-admit battles I know is Parchment, which is questionable to put it mildly. But it’s a data source. Williams and other top LACs only seem to lose significantly to HYPS (if the numbers show red/green). That’s not so surprising- the other Ivies and universities (beyond U’Chicago) don’t do well against HYPS either. Tinker around with it if you want: http://www.parchment.com/c/college/tools/college-cross-admit-comparison.php?compare=Williams+College&with=Brown+University
What is your premise in the first place? If it’s that Amherst/Williams are comparable to HYPS, they’re not. But are they comparable to other prestigious universities like Dartmouth or Duke? I don’t see evidence suggesting otherwise.
@moscott “The issue(based on the other thread) is that the tippy top students are not enrolling at Williams or Amherst etc…never mind those who were rejected and ended up choosing a top LA college.”
Except that you are operating on a false assumption. Top students from the North East, Mid Atlantic and California ARE choosing Williams and Amherst to essentially the same level that they choose every school other than HYPSM (and maybe UChicago and CalTech). That is why it is just as hard or harder to get into Amherst as it is to get into the other ivies/JHU, NotreDame, Georgetown, etc.
They don’t get as many applications from the South and Midwest, possibly because few people from Amherst and Williams ever end up in the South or Midwest. New York, Boston, San Francisco - those places are full of Amherst and Williams grads. They are also chock full of well educated tippy top students who are interested in going to places like that. I know several students who turned down Ivies and the like for Williams and Amherst. No, they don’t turn down HYPSM, UChicago or Cal Tech… but everywhere else? Sure. It depends on what environment and location they want.
The top LACs also don’t get the thousands of applications from good but not great students who throw in a “what the heck” application to Stanford or Duke because why not, lightning might strike - but that’s a different story I guess.
Perhaps that other thread is not a very reliable resource?
Two things:
[ol][]“Top ten” is a silly metric for excellence. The top ten of my D17’s graduating class is the top [quick arithmetic] 38.5%. The top ten of this year’s graduating class at the high school my D25 is likely to attend is about the top 2.2%. Rather a meaningful difference, simply based on enrollment numbers.
[]Posters on College Confidential are not a statistically valid sample of any larger population, and posters to an individual thread or three even less so. Trying to draw conclusions about general college preference trends based on a sampling of posts here is a fool’s errand.[/ol]
I am talking about HYPSM in comparison to Williams. No they(Williams and/or Amherst) get plenty of applications from top students…problem is the top students then enroll at HYPSM over Williams and Amherst overwhelmingly IF admitted to both. What better source than CC for the best of the best students in general. Posters on CC are indeed a valid sample of the term “tippy top” students.
Maybe this thread could be entered into a contest for most annoying thread repeatedly mentioning two colleges along with the other thread in which two posters argue endlessly argue about about Emory vs Vanderbilt.
@CheddarcheeseMN Or maybe you could contribute something of value to the thread…oh I don’t know maybe a list of what was asked?
I would suggest that you do some deeper work in statistics before you ever again allow yourself to use the phrase “valid sample”.
(Seriously. You keep using that term. I do not think it means what you think it means.)
@moscott, before demanding that others add value, look at the value added by your posts such as #49 which doesn’t remotely respond to the OP’s question. And you are the OP!
Oh brother spare me. Valid meaning cogent or logical. Sample meaning a small part used for analysis.
2moscott “I am talking about HYPSM in comparison to Williams. No they(Williams and/or Amherst) get plenty of applications from top students…problem is the top students then enroll at HYPSM over Williams and Amherst overwhelmingly IF admitted to both. What better source than CC for the best of the best students in general. Posters on CC are indeed a valid sample of the term “tippy top” students.”
Well, if you are talking only about HYPSM, you are right. People don’t turn them down.
There is so much social and peer and parental pressure involved in an admission to HYPSM that it would be a rare 17-18 year old who would be so self-assured as to turn them down for an LAC (or for any other college except perhaps UChicago and CalTech). They have the money and the power and with the possible exception of Stanford, the history. It would feel so risky. You would catch such ridicule from your friends and your Uncle Stu.
I though you were talking about places other than HYPSM. Your earlier posts were not at all clear.
Since CC “generally” attracts the top HS students to the forums I find their answers to where the top students attended to be quite useful actually. Where else would you find a better source than actual top students?
@CheddarcheeseMN and again…nothing. Thanks for playing. Move along now.
Proof by repeated assertion? Still not right.
After all, you’re making an unwarranted assumption: That CC “attracts the top HS students to the forums”. This is at the very least not demonstrable, and at worst clearly false.
I suggest the following, as a starting point: Look at the geographic distribution of CC posters. Many don’t say where they’re from, of course, but compare the number who say they’re from, say, New York or Massachusetts with those from Texas or California. Texas and California have massively higher populations than New York and Massachusetts (proportionally higher even than you might expect, given that the important population here is high school students), but they’re relatively underrepresented on the CC forums.
So unless you’re willing to claim that Texas and California high school students are less likely to be “top” students—and if you’re willing to claim that, I’d really like to know what your basis for comparison is—you have to admit that CC actually doesn’t give you a representative sample of top high school students.
And that’s just one of a number of axes along which it’s really, really easy to show that you’re pulling from the wrong population to sample.
(And then, if you’d like, we can move along to the folly of using self-report data for the sort of issues you’re raising…)
@dfbdfb Apparently you haven’t been on CC very long or are just obtuse. It’s pretty common knowledge that CC “generally” attracts the top end students. Read a few posts or ask some other posters. Maybe look at the sub post section regarding top colleges, Ivy, chancing etc…Are there also students who are considered top end students…sure. You’ll see the occasional B student 3.5 questions. That said the vast majority are regarding 4.0 35 ACT Ivy chancing students or parents of students.