The real advantage of a small, liberal arts college are many, and are unrecognized by all the people above who cannot speak to the experience. At Williams you never would be taught by teaching assistants. All your teachers at Williams will be professors; not true of Penn. At Penn you will be a number, one of hundreds in popular classes. At Williams, almost all the classes will be small. You will get invited to dinner at your professors’ houses at Williams, but probably never at Penn. You will be able to do research directly with a professor in a professors lab, for instance, at Williams, but must wait until you are a graduate student to do that at Penn. At Penn the preprofessional students will be cutthroat and see you as competition. Williams, on the other hand, will have a more cooperative atmosphere, which will better prepare you to work in teams and groups in the “real world.” College is a time to immerse yourself in your academics. It does not need to be a time to scope out jobs or learn to be cutthroat yourself or to immerse yourself in a big city party scene. None of that develops your intellect. The advantage to being in a remote location like Williams is that your focus will be on academics and on fostering a small community of like minded learners to support your education and studying. To me, that is what college is really about. Plenty of time for competition and disillusionment later. You don’t need to be burdened by that in college. You will not get lost in the shuffle at Williams and you will be highly sought after by employers and graduate schools alike.