I think if you look at academic reputation or at employment outlook, Williams is right up there with HYP. I think everything else that goes into rankings is window dressing to sell magazines/get clicks.
Will the guy who cuts your hair know that? Or your uncle who claims to be an expert on everything?Probably not. But the AO at Harvard Medical School will, so will the hiring partners at McKinsey or JP Morgan. Which group are you trying to impress?
I’m not a great fan of applying anywhere ED sight unseen, but, I certainly wouldn’t let the THE/WSJ poll influence my decision!
“There’s no way I would choose Penn or Northwestern over Williams unless I really, really, really needed to go to a business school”.
How about if you wanted a vibrant urban environment rather than cows?
Whether one elects to attend an LAC or to enroll at a National University comes down to personal preference in large part.
MODERATOR’S NOTE:
And yet there were 17 posts debating such ratings, many of which I deleted… The OP did not ask for such a debate.If you want to suggest to the OP to google Niche (or USNWR or WSJ or whatever) be my guest. But usually a HS student is asking for some bullet points to compare/contrast and not a PH.D. dissertation discussing differentials of a few basis points. Thank you.
I refuse to cede my opinion to USNews, Niche or to the THE/WSJ poll.
MODERATOR’S NOTE:
I’ve deleted several more posts. Per Terms of Service “Out of respect for both moderators and policies, discussion of moderator actions and forum policies is welcomed via private message or e-mail; these issues are off-topic for the forums.”
I allowed initial mention of various rankings, but the rules also state “College Confidential is not a debating society.” The OP asked “what universities are reputationally equivalent” not 17 posts debating the statistics. If s/he wants help interpreting the data, s/he can ask.
I’ll further add that companies are free to run their businesses as they see fit in accordance for any internal or external oversight. So if some company chooses to have a paywall, trying to circumvent it here does not align with our business model. Thank you.
I lived in Los Angeles before and many people there never heard of Pomona/CMC but the majority would know USC and UCLA. People who know LACs would know Pomona has higher test scores and is harder to get in but they are minority. Are you the type that would be bothered if many people you meet don’t know your school?
I’d say for those who know LACs, it’s equivalent to Northwestern/Penn. But plenty of people may not know Williams due to its small size, lack of graduate programs, and Div-III athletics. Or they just never considered LACs.
On rep, it’s hard to compare LACs and universities. The actual advantages and disadvantages of LACs vs. U’s are fairly clear: LACs offer smaller classes, more individual attention, and greater focus on the undergrad experience overall; while major U’s offer more major and course options, a bigger sports scene, and more national and international name recognition generally.
In the Northeast, or among people who know Williams’ (and other top LACs’) quality, I would think Williams is regarded at least as a peer of everyone but maybe HYPSM. And I actually think they are as good as HYPSM for undergrad, unless a kid wants a pre-professional degree… and better for kids who value small classes all four years.
But the schools actually most like Williams include other awesome co-ed Northeast LACs like Middlebury, Amherst, Swarthmore, Bowdoin, Haverford, Vassar, Hamilton, Colby, Colgate, Bates… especially the more rural schools among that group.
As others have said, reputationally equivalent can have a lot of different meanings. In bay area, high tech, all would have better reputation than Williams. But a lot of that is due to grad programs so it’s tough to say just for undergrad.
National Universities offer a much wider variety of courses & majors some of which are taught by the leading researchers in their field of expertise. National Universities also often offer students a chance to work alongside pre-eminent faculty members doing cutting edge research & groundbreaking studies.
Small classes are also very common at the top ranked National Universities. For example, let’s compare Williams College percent of classes with less than 20 students with the top ranked National Universities based on figures supplied to US News Best colleges 2018 edition:
Columbia University–83%
Northwestern University–77%
Univ. of Chicago–77%
Yale–75%
Harvard–74%
Johns Hopkins–74%
Princeton–73%
Williams College–73%
Duke–71%
Rice–71%
MIT–70%
Stanford–70%
Penn–70%
Somewhat surprisingly, Dartmouth College has only 62% of classes with fewer than 20 students.
Where Williams College shows a significant difference is in percent of classes with more than 50 students with only 2% of such classes. (Noteworthy that some studies indicate that once class size exceeds 35 students, size becomes less significant.)
Here’s what’s bugging me about the OP’s question: He (or she) is not really asking what colleges resemble Williams, they’re asking whether there are specific universities that, though they have almost nothing in common with Williams other than the presence of the occasional honors college or an esteemed college of arts and science (that derive their reputations from the presence of a graduate faculty) nevertheless share the same kind and sort of prestige? In the middle-ages, this would have been called alchemy. They are two different elements.
LACs derive their prestige from their resemblance to English public schools, with ample playing fields, grassy quads and a kind of secret society access to different levers of power within The Establishment. It was not without some justification that the late lawyer and diplomat, John McCloy, an Amherst graduate, was often referred to as the “Chairman of the Board” of the Establishment. Wesleyan’s Henry Wriston (Class of 1911), Williams’ Phineas Baxter and others, were cut from the same cloth. They all seemed to have served with or had some connection with the OSS during The War and the CIA afterward.
The post-Sputnik modern university movement, with the possible exception of HYP, basically eschewed all of that stuff in favor of an entrepreneurial approach to science and technology and the so-called, “production of knowledge” which no LAC can compete with on a literal level but which they can exploit to a great extent by recruiting brainy STEM-oriented kids who like working in small, cooperative environments with a lot of mentoring.
For the above reasons, people who like one type of campus, don’t usually like the other; but, in today’s environment where generous financial aid has become a confounding factor, I am not surprised that many, many people need to cover all bases. Using a ranking system is just not the way to do it. Figuring out possible “overlaps” is one way that is fairly legitimate, IMO.
@nikom814: While it is difficult to compare an LAC such as Williams College to National Universities such as the 8 that you listed above, there are some areas of hard data that may offer you some insight. For example, a comparison of starting salaries as listed in the WSJ/THE College Rankings released on September 6, 2018 shows:
Georgetown–$85,800
Penn–$80,100
Duke–$77,100
Cornell–$72,200
Dartmouth College–$68,300
Northwestern–$64,800 (including theater majors who earn far lower on average initially & are informed of such by NU admissions prior to enrolling)
WashUStL–$63,800
Vanderbilt–$62,033
Williams College–$55,467
Other Highly ranked LACs:
Amherst College–$57,600
Pomona College–$53,533
Wellesley College–$57,767
Swarthmore College–$50,133
Claremont McKenna College–$68,333
Carleton College–$49,400
Middlebury College–$54,700
Haverford College–$56,167
Bowdoin College–$56,267
^The other question is the freshman experience. At many universities, upperclassmen will have many choices of small classes, in their majors, etc. But kids who are attending a top LAC will have all or mostly all small classes, even as freshmen, whereas freshmen at larger universities may be in many lecture classes. That’s where the “only two percent” statistic @Publisher quoted comes into effect— in how many students are taking large lecture classes, especially freshman year.
A big exception is writing seminars or freshman seminars; many of the kids who are freshmen at large universities have these as well. So even larger schools ensure freshmen get to be part of a discussion-oriented group with close attention from a professor.
But even at Williams, you can have a large intro course. Intro Art History and Intro Psychology are lecture courses not so different from those someone might take at a large university! As @Publisher points out, does it matter if there are 75 kids or 400 kids in that lecture?
(As I recall, there are some collleges- I think Grinnell was one?- who do not have ANY large classes, but these colleges are few.)
In general, the difference in class sizes might be that, first semester freshman year, a kid at a top university might have three large lectures and one small class, and a kid at a LAC might have one large lecture and three small classes. And, at a LAC, it may be possible to have zero large classes, ever, depending on which courses you take.
(Disclaimer: I am sure there are many different experiences and many exceptions.)
And I think that it is important to emphasize that the typical Williams College applicant probably does not apply to many, if any at all, National Universities. My best guess is that applicants to Williams College want the LAC experience of a small & more intimate setting. Accordingly, I suspect that applicants to Williams College apply to other elite LACs rather than to National Universities.
They overlap with just about any institution that offers generous financial aid. That was my point.
@Publisher all of those schools with higher starting salaries have engineering majors. I’m guessing that bumps them up.
Great observation–although I am not sure that Georgetown offers engineering (if it does, it is a small program).
@homerdog: I limited the National University comparisons to the eight (8) schools listed by OP in his original post.
Also @homerdog, that is why LACs are called “liberal arts” colleges.
Additionally, all but Northwestern University have undergraduate business programs.
Interesting WSJ/Times didn’t rate Harvey Mudd at all. At Payscale, (not my favorite source but there it is), it’s #1.
https://www.hmc.edu/about-hmc/2017/08/30/harvey-mudd-no-1-payscales-college-salary-report/
@Publisher can you find the ipeds data for it?