Which LAC is best for me?

gellino
Thu, 02 Oct 2008 10:33:07 +0000

Gellino - your freshman year memories are getting cloudy. Wesleyan and Colgate have always been within a few points of each other in terms of raw acceptance rates:

Fall 1997 - Colgate -36%, Wesleyan - 36%

Fall 2007 - 28% - Colgate, Wesleyan - 28%

However, that being said, I still think Wesleyan’s applicant pool is stronger. All of the schools you mention (Dartmouth, Williams, Bowdoin, Colgate, Middlebury, Washington & Lee, Colby, Bucknell, Union, Lafayette) have reputations for heavy drinking, emphasis on athletics and the general homogeneity of their student bodies. Perhaps, that has all changed within the last ten years, but, for some significant portions of America those are still turn-offs.



Sadly, my Freshman year was before Fall 1997, but maybe the spread was narrower than I thought as I certainly knew very little about Wesleyan back then. Second, I guess I had seen seen the stats for the most recent class where Colgate was 25.6% acceptance rate and Wesleyan was 27.4% acceptance rate.

I mentioned those schools because she asked what schools were similar to Dartmouth.



gellino, is Amherst similar as well?



Having known many Amherst grads, I would say there is certainly some overlap, although Amherst is smaller than all those schools (except maybe Bowdoin), less rural and less of a general party reputation.



My impression of the main difference between Wesleyan and Colgate is a cultural one in that Wesleyan is exceedingly liberal and attracts a lot of gays, lesbians, radicals, and liberals fightng for a cause whereas Colgate is ultra conservative and everyone is heading to wall street or medical or law school.



Colgate is certainly more conservative than Wesleyan (just about every school would be) but is hardly ultra conservative.