How prestigious is Williams College compared to HYPSM/T10s?

Considering employers’ perception of Williams and grad school admissions? How does Williams do compared to HYPSM? Or does it fall more in the T-10/mid-tier Ivy range?

12 Comments
 
Controversial

Probably around the T-20 range. The acceptance rate and stats are nothing spectacular and grad school/employer perception is generally closer to a *lower Ivy than a top or mid tier one.

 

I'd say it's in the T-10 range (along with Penn, Columbia, UChicago, etc.). It sends the 5th highest # of people per capita to elite grad schools in law and MBA after HYPS. In employers' eyes, similar to the mid-tier ivies. I can't tell if all the MS is from the lower tier ivies or what.

 

Hey, Williams student here. OCR is pretty good (MF PE, top BBs, and some really nice AM shops), but the alumni network is what you need to leverage. They're very loyal, so if you're proactive about reaching out, you can get interviews at a wide variety of firms. Possibly the only downside of my experience recruiting from Williams is that you would have to self-study technicals, but I was granted a ton of leeway during interviews as a liberal arts student and only rarely had to answer tough questions lol

 

I’d say they are a notch below HYPS due to name recognition. On paper, they place into top grad schools and companies. But IMO the big knock on the top LAC’s is the name recognition. Outside of the people who are in the know (like the banks, MBB, top grad schools), many people/companies have no clue what those schools are. A family member of mine who is a VP of a big telecom company is more likely to be impressed by a T20-25 like UVA, Georgetown, Notre Dame than a school like Williams simply because he has no clue what Williams even is.

 

To an extent though.  As I said before, my family member who is a VP at a big telecom company has never heard of Amherst or Williams or Bowdoin etc... What if you applied to said company in a leadership role? He might see your resume and think "some random college in Massachusetts" while he'd see a Cornell resume and be like "an ivy" or a Duke guy and be like "wow, Duke."  

 
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