LAC School Tiers from W/A Alum

There's been a lot of chatter about LAC's in this forum that I feel like isn't really true from the perspective of a recent W/A grad.

Tier 1: W/A - best LAC's

Tier 2: Middlebury, CMC - Candidly just the most pre-professional natured school in that Tier 2 of LAC's historically ranked between 2-10

Tier 2.5:  Wesleyan, Bowdoin, W&L, Colgate, and Davidson: Basically a mixture of the other top 10 LAC NESCAC's (beneifts hughely from NESCAC network + general reputation as top schools) and more pre-professional names like W&L + Davidson + Colgate

Tier 3: Swarthmore and Pomona: Just upper-end top 10 LAC's that aren't particularly big for finance, but they are all respected by other LAC's so you'll get looks and responses 

Next would just be all the other NESCAC's that you can kind of split based on general CAC rankings. Tufts is also probably somewhere in tier 2.5, but it's not a LAC.

6 Comments
 

Would agree with most of this list but would put Tufts in tier 2.5 as they're a part of the NESCAC and place decently well per capita. I was actually very surprised with Wesleyan last year when they placed 4 kids at UBS and 2 EBs, 2MMs + 1 GS TMT. Definitely not Middlebury material with how many grads they send to GS, but considering that Middlebury is a "preppier" school than Wesleyan, on a per capita basis, Wesleyan is on the up.

 

Middlebury doesn't have that many more placements than that for coverage banking. From what I've heard and seen from friends at Middlebury, they have 5-7 NYC/SF BB/EB/notable MM's (mostly RBC) coverage placements (including their 1-2 GS coverage). Middlebury's spread of offers is better as it is more GS + Barclays + one-offs elsewhere as opposed to mostly UBS for Wesylan (no offense to UBS people). Middlebury, however, widens the gap with a lot of product banking placements (especially at GS), a good amount of one-off MM placements, and strong placements in other location (Boston / Houston). 

I don't think Middlebury is that much more preppy than Wesylan given all the NESCAC's have mostly students from the same boarding schools. I also think one year outcomes aren't super important given smaller class sizes, some years just have better canidates and/or more students interested in finance than others for these smaller schools.

 

Wesleyan is a much more creative and artistic school and  definitely has the most alternative culture and student body out of all the NESCACs. Preppy kids of course exist at Wes but it is a much higher percentage of creative kids versus other NESCACs.

 
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not really shitting on them. pretty accurate from my experience. finance interest is extremely limited, and there's zero institutional support. comment about respect is generally true and if anything slightly optimistic

 

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