<p>you guys are bashing on pton a lot, and I feel I should stand up for my hometown’s college…but then again most of what you’re saying is true. One thing, though- meateater I doubt williams would have given you a much different situation on a sunday night…besides pton is really heavy on beer-binging at least on the usual college party nights, thurs/sat. </p>
<p>on williams and other top lac’s vs the ivies-
I was asking one of the professors I had at pton to write me a college rec, and we started talking about the whole process and what his thoughts on it were. He felt very strongly that if you want the best undergrad education, you go to one of the top lac’s, because really what the ivies are good for is graduate school. it is true that because pton has the smallest grad school of the ivies, it focuses more on undergrads…however, he’s seen such mindboggling homogeneity and in-the-box thinking in his students that there’s no question for him of what’s the better school, williams or pton.<br>
what he saw too is hand-holdingthat the hardest part of pton is getting in, and that you have to screw up reeallly badly to not graduate…and that no matter what they say at the other of the Big Three, it’s basically the same at those too. by and large you have kids groomed for the ivies with private SAT prep tutors and mission trips to Paraguay and parental connections just to get a “name”…even though an ivy grad school on your résumé is always more impressive than ivy undergrad, and the admissions there is far more meritocratic, looking at what you actually did in college.</p>
<p>anyway this is the guy I’m going to be listening to when I choose in april :)</p>