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Dartmouth vs. Williams/Amherst
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Date: July 24th, 2008 2:35 AM Author: startling location doctorate So..which one is better for a liberal arts education? What are their similarities and differences? Assume standard humanities major like English. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=838714&forum_id=1#10003926) |
Date: July 24th, 2008 2:40 AM Author: mewling foreskin They're practically the same schools but with amherst/williams you can take classes between the two and umass/another I'm forgetting. go with whoever gives you more $$$ or where you'll have a better time, amherst/williams if you want to crash zoomass parties. |
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Date: July 24th, 2008 10:56 AM Author: Concupiscible puce corn cake school cafeteria amherst is part of the 5 college thing. williams is not. williams is way out there alone. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=838714&forum_id=1#10004504) |
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Date: July 24th, 2008 2:52 AM Author: talking area hissy fit the one you get into (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=838714&forum_id=1#10003964) |
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Date: July 24th, 2008 10:57 AM Author: Concupiscible puce corn cake school cafeteria a complete wash. go wherever you like most. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=838714&forum_id=1#10004506) |
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Date: July 24th, 2008 11:08 AM Author: cyan corner but Dartmouth is an IVY, which is of GREAT SOCIAL RELEVANCE! (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=838714&forum_id=1#10004534) |
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Date: July 24th, 2008 11:30 AM Author: Concupiscible puce corn cake school cafeteria how could i forget...shame on me. i better get back to the cocktail circuit before i forget what really matters. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=838714&forum_id=1#10004600) |
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Date: July 24th, 2008 12:40 PM Author: talking area hissy fit easy for you to say - you already have the big H (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=838714&forum_id=1#10004841) |
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Date: July 24th, 2008 12:35 PM Author: talking area hissy fit this is actually true. Given the choice between these schools pick D. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=838714&forum_id=1#10004828) |
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Date: July 24th, 2008 1:41 PM Author: histrionic school newt titcr, although the caps make me think the poster said it sarcastically. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=838714&forum_id=1#10005070) |
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Date: July 24th, 2008 1:59 PM Author: talking area hissy fit he is slightly embittered these days (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=838714&forum_id=1#10005147) |
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Date: July 24th, 2008 2:07 PM Author: cyan corner No, I'm quite happy. Read the Ivy Equivalents thread for background. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=838714&forum_id=1#10005166) |
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Date: July 31st, 2008 4:31 PM Author: Onyx fragrant brunch it's true. The top two are ivies.
Elitist cocktail type? Sure. Rich? Yes. I'll take that anyday. |
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Date: July 31st, 2008 7:42 PM Author: mind-boggling stag film pocket flask Subject: "Ivy"?? "Ivy League"? Isn't that an athletic conference? completely! And its completely bogus to lump these schools together in the academic sense. Let me clarify. Princeton is more like a college than any of the other schools in the Ivy league. Small with no medical, no business, nor law school. Brown has a medical school but its very VERY small and there they have NO requirement in your course of study. Take anything you like. You can avoid having to take a lit or math course! Harvard is huge. SO is Yale and both with lots of grad students teaching courses, & non tenured rotating assistant profs. teaching courses. These are research institutions. Teaching isn't as important as it is at Princeton or Williams or other small college everywhere. SO they have large graduate and professional schools. Columbia and Harvard both have these "Education" schools that turn out huge numbers of grads. So you can follow my logic here? Yale has a great art school and a drama school. These schools are just so different in almost every sense except they play football against each other and a lot of poor folks needing to feel good about themselves go to games. Big fucking deal. Mediocrity crying for attention...that's socially. but I guess there are enough assholes out there so the idea, it works. In actuality, a Rutgers degree is probably equal to or almost, to the value of a Harvard or yale undergraduate degree. In fact studies have shown this to be more or less true if you look as costs verses lifetime earnings. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=838714&forum_id=1#10026338) |
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Date: July 24th, 2008 8:19 PM Author: frozen rough-skinned center lettuce Williams all the way, dartmouth is for regects, in circles that matter williams' reputation is similar to hyp. hanover is nice, but williamstown has a supermarket, which is important. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=838714&forum_id=1#10006338) |
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Date: July 24th, 2008 11:20 PM Author: bistre garrison goyim I say this as someone who has lived in Williamstown, got into both schools, and attended Dartmouth.
Dartmouth is the relatively easy choice unless you're interested in Art History, and Dartmouth is an especially easy choice if you're at all interested in the hard sciences.
If you're going to be a humanities person, it's a closer call, but Dartmouth's social life and surrounding area are much better; Williamstown is shockingly small (and Williams has a tiny student body).
The larger Dartmouth student body also helps with alumni connections, speaking as an alum: you're just much more likely to run into Dartmouth folks in all walks of life.
Don't fool yourself into thinking that Williams (or Amherst) cross-yields with HYP(S). Maybe for like 5 people every year it does, but everyone knows that those schools are basically equivalent to the second tier Ivys.
EDIT: And there's a goddamn supermarket within walking distance of the Dartmouth campus, and like 6 more within a 10 minute drive. The poster above hasn't spent much time in the Upper Valley. |
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Date: July 31st, 2008 11:05 PM Author: Onyx fragrant brunch don't you mean, "rejects"? (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=838714&forum_id=1#10026838) |
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Date: July 24th, 2008 11:19 PM Author: Drunken high-end sound barrier i have a couple of good friends at amherst and it sounds really, really tiny/high school like. williams is about the same size (a bit larger i think). i would go to dartmouth, assuming that everything else was equal.
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Date: July 25th, 2008 11:27 AM Author: anal bateful property quadroon Williamstown not only has little by it; even if you get into a car there is nothing but shit for many miles. The Berkshires as a whole are pretty much an economic wasteland. Also, while the students are of decent quality, it's not like those at Dartmouth are not, so it seems to wash out the school's sole potential advantage.
As for Amherst, the immediate area is slightly better and college friendly, but effectively just as rural and small. Further, the five college setup is kind of a lame deal given you only get to take classes at institutions well below the caliber of Amherst itself. I would not go out of my way to pay for courses at MHC, Smith, Hampshire (almost went bankrupt due to lagging enrollment) or UMass. |
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Date: July 27th, 2008 3:25 PM Author: Hateful marketing idea goal in life When did Hampshire almost go bankrupt?
Regardless of how shitty UMass is, if you get really deep into some field, you can take advantage of UMass having graduate programs in that area to take classes you wouldn't otherwise get to take.
Of course, that's only a selling point over Williams, not over Dartmouth. |
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Date: July 27th, 2008 7:29 PM Author: anal bateful property quadroon On Hampshire: The school has struggled with financial difficulties since its founding, and ceasing operations or folding into the University of Massachusetts Amherst were seriously considered at various points. Today the school is on more solid financial footing (though still without a sizable endowment), a condition often credited to the fundraising efforts of its most recent past presidents, Adele Simmons and Gregory S. Prince, Jr. ~ Wikipedia
On UMass: I would rather take some high level UG courses with solid peers than some very weak PhD courses at a middling state university. Even for weighty subjects like math or chemistry the best seniors at Amherst are going to be stronger on average than a first year doctoral candidates down the road.
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Date: July 28th, 2008 2:26 AM Author: Drunken high-end sound barrier "Even for weighty subjects like math or chemistry the best seniors at Amherst are going to be stronger on average than a first year doctoral candidates down the road."
i find this kind of doubtful. umass isn't harvard but it's still a flagship state school, and i'd imagine that student quality in the phd science programs would be pretty strong; it's not like there's any shortage of superstudyazns in india and china who would turn down those phd slots. |
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Date: July 28th, 2008 1:16 PM Author: anal bateful property quadroon True, there will be some superstudyazns who are trying to shake the information veil of their UG credential Eastern Punjab Technical State College before moving onto a stronger graduate program - the mass exodus to the door after the master's is awarded - yet you have to remember that state schools also have lots of John Q. Americans, who are just not that strong. Also, the fresh off the boat graduate students are often hard to work with in any meaningful manner, if they are open to the idea at all. By the second or third year they get better, but it takes time to acclimate.
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Date: July 28th, 2008 1:37 PM Author: cyan corner You would probably be surprised at the strength of PhD students, even somewhere like UMass. It also depends on the discipline. I would say that you will find people at some schools--I'm thinking more along the lines of very low-level institutions and places like Walden University--who just don't belong in PhD programs, but I think that a PhD student at UMass would be able to hold his/her own against (and most likely eclipse) any undergraduate in his or her field. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=838714&forum_id=1#10017676) |
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Date: July 30th, 2008 4:56 PM Author: talking area hissy fit up for debate (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=838714&forum_id=1#10023020) |
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Date: July 31st, 2008 9:26 AM Author: cyan corner No, I really don't think so. You get the occasional undergrad superstar who makes the jump to a top PhD program directly from college. Someone like that, at the end of his/her senior year (regardless of where they're graduating from), is obviously at the same level as a first-year PhD student in a top program. That's comparatively rare, though.
As a rule, I just don't accept that a random Amherst undergrad is operating at a higher academic level than a UMass PhD student. |
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Date: July 31st, 2008 7:50 PM Author: mind-boggling stag film pocket flask Subject: the idea is so stupid it a laugh completely random. Generally speaking I'm not even sure an undergraduate at amherst is operating at the same high level a umass undergraduate is. I know plenty of stupid nitwit amherst grads. Money says it all. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=838714&forum_id=1#10026356) |
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Date: July 31st, 2008 8:03 PM Author: cyan corner completely credited. But this is xoxohth, so I'm not surprised that there are those who feel a gender studies junior at Amherst is more impressive than a physics PhD student at UMass (exaggeration, but you get the point). (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=838714&forum_id=1#10026387) |
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Date: August 1st, 2008 12:22 AM Author: talking area hissy fit where did you get "random" from? (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=838714&forum_id=1#10026965) |
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Date: August 1st, 2008 10:21 AM Author: mind-boggling stag film pocket flask Subject: where did I get "random"? pulled it out of my ass. but you got no real proof that it's anything but random, beyond income and social networks. |
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Date: July 28th, 2008 10:13 AM Author: Concupiscible puce corn cake school cafeteria UMASS is a research unviersity - which means it offers a hell of a lot more advanced coursework/research opportunities than any lac (and in most fields, Dart). Its just the difference between a LAC and university. You go to a LAC you lose both breadth, and at the highest levels, depth. Just check out a course catalog. |
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Date: July 28th, 2008 1:08 PM Author: anal bateful property quadroon I am not saying that the coursework is not more advanced in terms of detail. What I do doubt is that a PBK type senior from Amherst would find it to be the huge jump in rigor that many first year doctoral students face, and seek, in more vaunted PhD programs.
Consequently, it is just not an option I would be hugely sanguine about using. If I was short on credits for a Amherst degree, and was also out of coursework options, I would just take a leave of absence and register as a domestic visiting student at a more solid research university to finish up (transferring the credits back). I know off hand that JHU, Columbia and MIT have special enrollment options designed to cover this situation in the sciences and engineering.
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Date: July 28th, 2008 9:03 PM Author: bistre garrison goyim Speaking as a scientist, this just isn't true; Dartmouth is stronger than UMass pretty much across the board in the hard sciences. It's not the Ivy prestige that pwns, its the Ivy paychecks and the perks of teaching smart kids. Plus, Dartmouth basically built new buildings for bio, chem, and earth/enviro, so all the profs have spanking new facilities and lab equipment.
Given that the main drawback of a LAC is really weak opportunities in upper level hard sciences, I'd say Dartmouth is a much stronger choice from a pure academic setting. I had my pick of cherry thesis topics as a upperclassman-if you're a gunner and you want to leave there with a publishable thesis, it can happen. |
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Date: July 28th, 2008 9:58 PM Author: Concupiscible puce corn cake school cafeteria i agree dart (or really, most top universities) beats lacs for the facts you mention (and the ones i mentioned above).
but dont exaggerate the dart/umass difference in strength of hard sciences - UMASS is a very legitimate university, and according to the NRC rankings (rather outdated, but still the best) the two are quite close in nearly every field they are ranked (with 1-2 where dart is well ahead and 1-2 where umass is well ahead).
but that point is unrelatd to the op. |
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Date: July 28th, 2008 9:58 PM Author: Jade fat ankles Dartmouth may be stronger than UMass in the sciences, but it is still pretty weak when compared to other research universities. It has (hands down) the worst doctoral programs of the ivies and is pretty mediocre when compared to other universities in general, so I don't think its advantage over Amherst/Williams in this area is particularly strong. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=838714&forum_id=1#10019097) |
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Date: August 31st, 2008 9:21 PM Author: drab base rigpig "Speaking as a scientist, this just isn't true; Dartmouth is stronger than UMass pretty much across the board in the hard sciences. It's not the Ivy prestige that pwns, its the Ivy paychecks and the perks of teaching smart kids. Plus, Dartmouth basically built new buildings for bio, chem, and earth/enviro, so all the profs have spanking new facilities and lab equipment."
Speaking as a "scientist", I don't believe you are a scientist, or perhaps you are severely misinformed. |
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Date: August 31st, 2008 9:19 PM Author: drab base rigpig "Even for weighty subjects like math or chemistry the best seniors at Amherst are going to be stronger on average than a first year doctoral candidates down the road."
Amherst CS undergrads are better than UMass CS Ph.D. students? Same with philosophy? Same with biochemistry? Same with astronomy? Same with nanoscience (oops, they don't have that at Amherst)?
I know a bunch of Amherst students since my old lady went there and I visited quite a bit. The d00ds/girls from my undergrad who go/went to UMass for grad work are certainly stronger in their respective fields than a bunch of well bred lawyer's/banker's kids. But I'm sure that's just anecdotal... yes, I'm sure. |
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Date: August 1st, 2008 10:33 AM Author: mind-boggling stag film pocket flask Subject: williams.. some facts. I've always been very impressed by williams grads. I know perhaps a dozen or so. In fact based on my experience williams grads are up there if not more impressive than Yalies I know and I know a bunch. ;). A lot of williams grads are famous too. On the other hand I know 3 Dartmouth grads. two are losers and one is boring but successful. now you know where I'm coming from. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=838714&forum_id=1#10027618) |
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Date: July 28th, 2008 11:04 PM Author: bull headed business firm i had an absolutely great time as a student at dartmouth. the professors were almost without exception very good and very accessible. the students were very impressive but for the most part did not take themselves too seriously. i could not recommend dartmouth more highly.
that being said, if i had to do it over again, i would seriously consider going to williams. the reason is that i was not good enough to play basketball at a division 1 school (and dartmouth's team isn't even that good). i would entertain the idea of going to williams so that i could have tried out for their basketball team.
i think anyone who is being honest with you would tell you that williams and dartmouth are extremely similar. williams is just half as large. if you would like being a student at williams, i am fairly certain you would like being a student at dartmouth, and vice versa.
i have always gotten the sense that amherst tends to draw more liberal, artsy, intelletcual types (not that there is anything at all wrong with that). notwithstanding their different locations, i would imagine that your college experience at amherst would more closely resemble a student's experience at brown (or yale).
in terms of career/graduate school placement, i think it is a wash between dartmouth/williams/amherst. |
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Date: July 29th, 2008 2:33 AM Author: startling location doctorate Thanks, that was a helpful post. What do you mean though that Amherst attracts the more artsy intellectual types--as opposed to Williams and Dartmouth? How do their students differ (Dartmouth in terms of stronge sciences, as others have pointed out?)? (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=838714&forum_id=1#10019780) |
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Date: July 30th, 2008 2:36 PM Author: bull headed business firm The point that I was trying to make about the distinction between Dartmouth/Williams and Amherst is that the social life at Dartmouth/Williams revolves around drinking and parties while I would imagine that the social life at Amherst revolves moreso around going to plays and lectures and hanging out in coffeeshops, that type of thing (I realize that these are gross generalizations and that you are bound to find exceptions at all the schools).
I think if you are dead set on majoring in chemistry (or a similar discpline) with an eye towards getting a phd, I would not recommend going to anything of these schools (or any other liberal arts school for that matter). Instead, you should look at schools with well recognized graduate programs (e.g., MIT, berkeley, etc.).
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Date: July 30th, 2008 3:01 PM Author: amber haunted graveyard No, People Get Drunk at Amherst Too. Dartmouth, Amherst, and Williams can best be compared by location. In other comparisons, Williams campus is my favorite with castle-like buildings, similar to Princeton. Dartmouth is the most well known in the nation of the three. Amherst and Williams are technically better than Dartmouth when LAC and Undergraduate University rankings are combined. Its harder than choosing between HYP. |
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Date: July 30th, 2008 5:49 PM Author: Drunken high-end sound barrier based on my experiences with amherst peeps i don't think that this is an accurate description of social life there. i think it would be pretty similar to williams/dartmouth.
also i think these schools all have pretty good phd placement. |
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Date: July 31st, 2008 8:40 AM Author: Jade fat ankles LACs actually have much better grad school placement than most universities.
http://web.reed.edu/ir/phd.html
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Date: July 31st, 2008 4:18 PM Author: anal bateful property quadroon This is such a bullshit statistic to throw around. Not pointing at you per se, but more at the schools that use it.
Sure, a lot of students from St. Johns or Reed get PhD’s in the traditional arts and sciences. But looking at sites like facebook and LinkedIn, a lot of them are from second and third tier institutions, which in a way is often less impressive than just getting a random fortune 500 job. When you see someone studying English literature at the University of Arizona or evolutionary biology at Tulane, you really have to question their motives. Either they have no other options and have fallen into graduate school as a last resort, or they are so academically idealistic as to be able to justify spending five or six years of their own lives, and other people’s money, on a wall ornament that is most likely not going to lead to a social contribution that could ever justify that kind of expenditure.
It just pisses me off that this gets cited so frequently as some sign of crass materialism run amuck at Ivies that runner up LAC’s are purportedly immune to. Sure, there is rampant Wall Street whoredom at elites, but there is also some common sense about graduate school that keeps middling Yale grads throwing away their twenties in a lab at the University of Syracuse. Nor is it even clear that if the consulting / banking nexus showed up in force at these schools to recruit that their students would say so loyal to the intellectual cause.
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Date: July 31st, 2008 7:56 PM Author: mind-boggling stag film pocket flask Subject: better fortune 500 than "second tier academic" speak for yourself asshole. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=838714&forum_id=1#10026369) |
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Date: July 31st, 2008 7:59 PM Author: mind-boggling stag film pocket flask Subject: people like you better run. Money is your god? .such scum created the mess we now find ourselves in. My advice is when your time comes it maybe you'll pray for life. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=838714&forum_id=1#10026379) |
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Date: August 15th, 2008 9:33 PM Author: Odious pit black woman i think u of a is actually really, really good for english lit. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=838714&forum_id=1#10069607) |
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Date: July 31st, 2008 10:34 AM Author: navy crawly point Dartmouth is the obvious choice. Williams and Amherst are only well known in elite circles, and Amherst can be confused with UMASS. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=838714&forum_id=1#10025173) |
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Date: July 31st, 2008 10:53 AM Author: talking area hissy fit dartmouth. done (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=838714&forum_id=1#10025195) |
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Date: July 31st, 2008 2:01 PM Author: Onyx fragrant brunch Subject: do you like money? http://www.forbes.com/2008/07/30/college-salary-graduates-lead-cz_kb_0730topcolleges_slide_2.html?thisSpeed=20000 (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=838714&forum_id=1#10025556) |
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Date: August 10th, 2008 12:20 PM Author: Jet heady abode round eye Subject: that's an interesting list... Do you guys think its because of the alumni network? The next school is Princeton who also has a very good alumni network.
Now is that for undergrad only or does it include grad school too? |
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Date: August 14th, 2008 9:36 AM Author: Onyx fragrant brunch I think the alumni networks for Princeton and Dartmouth are among the best in the country, based on alumni I've talked to and the reputations. Networks certainly help. For Dartmouth, the fact that many alumni immediately enter programs such as the Peace Corps and other jobs that help one get great jobs afterwards. |
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Date: August 15th, 2008 5:59 PM Author: Jet heady abode round eye Subject: does that go for any degree from Dartmouth? Or just undergrad? (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=838714&forum_id=1#10069266) |
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Date: August 16th, 2008 10:22 AM Author: Onyx fragrant brunch I don't know too much about the graduate schools, so I can't help you. I have a feeling, though, that students from Tuck have a pretty good alumni network, with the likes of the GE CEO and others out there. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=838714&forum_id=1#10070375) |
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Date: August 27th, 2008 9:38 PM Author: brass wild range queen of the night Good math instruction at Williams (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=838714&forum_id=1#10102728) |
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Date: August 31st, 2008 9:23 PM Author: drab base rigpig Go to Amherst and take grad classes at UMass. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=838714&forum_id=1#10115549) |