@dfbdfb: Joined CC April 2014, 8,804 posts (including this one)
In addition, I’m a social science researcher who actually knows a thing or two about why one should distrust “common knowledge”, especially common knowledge gleaned from skewed samples. But if you wish to believe that you know everything there is to know about the college selection process from CC conventional wisdom, sure, whatever works for you. Just don’t expect to be drawing valid inferences from the anecdata you’re using, that’s all I’m saying.
@dfbdfb To boot the parents or kids responding to where the top kids enrolled aren’t even self reporting in most cases. They are listing where the top kids went who were top 10 from their HS or child’s HS. Many times indeed listing where they were from.
@dfbdfb Joined CC date meaning?? What exactly? Then you should certainly know by now that it is indeed the case regarding top kids on CC. Also as a social science researcher you haven’t presented any evidence countering.
Whatever the top-10 claim they are to going to study, half will change their mind and half of those who don’t probably won’t use their major I their career.
@Chembiodad That’s absolutely true. The reason to ask what their intended major is was to see if there is any correlation to majors being a large factor in more and more kids moving away from LA colleges as noted in another thread.
@moscott, with the exception of engineering or some pre-professional fields such as nursing or physical therapy, which very few students major in nationally, those that chose LAC’s have the opportunity to study almost any other major.
Regarding top law schools, medical schools and MBA programs, one would struggle to find ones that don’t have a disproportionate % of students from LAC’s given they only make up 3% of all college students.
Here’s the list from the current Yale Law School class - likely more than 3% from LAC’s (several that list themselves, such as Colgate and Wesleyan, are LAC’s).
Amherst College
Arizona State University
Baylor University
Beloit College
Boston College
Bowdoin College
Brandeis University
Brigham Young University
Brooklyn College
Brown University
Bryn Mawr College
California State University, Long Beach
Claremont McKenna College
Clemson University
Colgate University
College of William & Mary
Columbia College, Columbia University
Cornell University
Dartmouth College
Davidson College
Duke University
Georgetown University
Georgia State University
Harvard College
Haverford College
Hunter College
Johns Hopkins University
Loyola University Chicago
McGill University
Middlebury College
Mississippi State University
Mount Holyoke College
New York University
New York University, Abu Dhabi
Northeastern University
Northwestern University
Pomona College
Princeton University
Queen’s University
Reed Collge
Rhodes College
Rice University
Rutgers University
Southern Methodist University
Stanford University
Swarthmore College
Temple University
UC Berkeley
UC San Diego
United States Military Academy
United States Naval Academy
University of Alabama
University of Arkansas
University of Chicago
University of Connecticut
University of Dayton
University of Delaware
University of Kansas
University of Kentucky
University of Maryland
University of Michigan
University of Missouri
University of Nevada
University of North Carolina
University of Oklahoma
University of Pennsylvania
University of Southern California
University of Toronto
University of Virginia
University of West Georgia
Vanderbilt University
Vassar College
Virginia Polytechnic and State University
Wellesley College
Wesleyan University
Wheaton College
Williams College
Yale College
Yeshiva University
The purpose of the thread isn’t singular. That said it’s a simple question…what did the top 10 students from your HS or child’s HS major in? Most of the answers seem to be geared to majors that most LAC aren’t noted for that top students in that major are looking to attend. This in turn would partially explain why it seems fewer and fewer top end students aren’t choosing to attend top LAC’s despite better ratios and focus on undergrad. They seem to be trending more and more to name brands.
Wait. You keep stating that "more and more students are moving away from LACs " but that’s the part that you just made up out of whole cloth. You have no data to support your “trend” other than the fact that you keep,saying it,
most students never considered LACs 20’years ago and they still don’t. Small, mostly rural, private colleges are a niche market and always have been. But it remains a very viable niche.
@ThankYouforHelp UGH!! TOP END students and I said fewer and fewer. The support is the list of colleges that have been reported as attending for the top 10 kids in their HS. I’m am all for more and more kids choosing top LAC’s but as posted by others as to which schools the TOP 10 kids are attending it is clear that name brands are leaving the LAC’s in the dust. You have evidence to prove otherwise other than the data presented here on CC?
Distribution of undergraduate majors attending Berkeley Haas School of Business - at least 62% could be from LAC’s, and given Econ at an LAC could be interchangeable with a Uni Business program it could be as high as 76%.
Selected Undergraduate Majors
Business 24%
Engineering 18%
Economics 18%
Social Sciences 13%
Humanities 10%
Natural Sciences 7%
Math 2%
Other 8%
@moscott, of the top 10% students at my twin DD’s HS, 60% are attending top-40 universities and 40% are attending top-40 LAC’s. If you break it down further by the 30 students that were National Merit Semifinalists or Commended, 25% are attending top-20 LAC’s and 75% top-20 universities - still way more than the national average of 3%. That said, I am biased as my DD’s are in the group of 30 and will be amongst those attending the top LAC’s.
Don’t know who the top 10 are beyond the val and sal, but the sal majored in Electrical Engineering at MIT and completed his BS & MS near the top of both classes within 4 years. He also ended up returning to MIT for his EE PhD after working a few years in Europe.
Val, not sure what she majored in for undergrad at Harvard, but she ended up attending and graduating from YLS and is now a public interest lawyer with a charitable/public advocacy organization for an underprivileged group.
Top areas most classmates in the top half(and some in the rest of the class) gravitated towards tended to be:
Math/Physics(both pure and applied)
Other natural sciences such as Chemistry, Biology, Biochem, etc
Engineering/CS
Pre-med
Philosophy/Poli-Sci/History(Mostly pre-law crowd)
Architecture/Art*
Economics**
One friend who majored in this at an HYP is now a respected artist/art journalist.
** Not always a major necessarily for the topflight students…nor one which guaranteed gainful employment as I found when a new acquaintance who had just graduated as an Econ major just a couple of years before from a top 20 university was still unemployed despite taking the quant-heavy track and doing reasonably well. Yes, he was actually asking me and some other friends for any job leads.
I would expect the Princeton Review to have a slightly better idea of what exactly a CS major studies and does, but I guess not. Throw in a few buzzwords and job well done.
@moscott, I do think that once you fall below the top-100 universities or top-70 LAC’s. it’s best to try to go for the cheapest option as the quality drops off pretty quickly.
@moscott I’m starting to question your reading comprehension. And you are rude to boot. Not a good combination.
Do you understand what a trend is? That other thread is not data of any “trend” unless you have some threads from prior years showing that more tippy top students chose LACs 5 years ago, or ten years ago, or whatever, and less choose them now. Otherwise, you don’t have a trend. You have one data point.
And as people keep trying to explain to you, HYPSM leave the top LACs in the dust because they always leave everyone in the dust on yield and they always have done so for half a century. Nothing has changed except Stanford joined HYPM a couple of decades ago and maybe UChicago is in the process of joining them today. When push comes to shove, kids today who are admitted to Yale and Amherst almost always choose Yale - just like they did in 1980. And just like they do when choosing between Yale and Brown, or Yale and Cornell, Northwestern, Penn or anywhere else that isn’t HYPSM.
The top LACs are a niche market that provide a great education for a small number of tippy top students but continue to primarily appeal to the families of coastal elites, just like they did in back 1980 and 1990 and 2000 and 2010. The tippy top students in the south and Midwest don’t apply to LACs now and they didn’t apply to them in the past either. Among the tippy topest students at my kids’ tippy top prep school, a good chunk chose LACs like Williams, Amherst, Swarthmore and Pomona every year - unless they get into HYPSM.
In sum, tHat other thread contains no new and exciting information about trends other that what you are imagining into it.
.
You keep saying they are a niche and yet you can’t explain that Cal Tech a niche school with even less enrolled freshman does get the top students. To play your word game call it an observation then. Princeton’s enrolled freshman class of say 1,300 vs William’s 600 makes it about a 2:1 ratio yet as an OBSERVATION from the other thread the top 10 students are choosing to enroll at a much higher rate. The people posting(kids and parents) represent CC from all over. They aren’t only responding from the south or northeast etc…to skew the answers. I even cited an example of a kid who chose UPENN despite being a double legacy. The question is why? He knew what a school like Williams offers obviously. So I’ll ask again…prestige? major ranking? Why “seemingly” do the top 10 kids NOT choose a school like Williams? Great teacher/student ratio, a focus on undergrad. One speculation would be that more and more of the very top kids are majoring in a subject to where say Williams isn’t strong compared to these other schools. That’s why I asked the question in this thread. Maybe it is a lot more kids majoring in CS so Williams doesn’t make the cut in comparison.
@moscott, as @ThankYouforHelp noted, Penn doesn’t fall into that group so choosing Penn over Williams is a personal decision that may have been based on a preference for a city as compared to a rural location - that is not a choice I would have made. but that’s also why Ben and Jerrys doesn’t have only one flavor of ice cream
