Off the Beaten Path
If you live and die by status, if the name Harvard, Yale, Stanford or Penn must hang etched in sheepskin on your wall, then read no further. There is nothing we can do for you here. The demographic bulge of college-age students has made the journey to a top-tier campus the most arduous, angst-ridden an 18-year-old can make.
“If you decide that there's only one place to go to college and it's Harvard, you are setting yourself up for rejection,” says Barmak Nassirian, associate executive director for the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers.
There are more than 2,500 four-year colleges and universities in the United States – an educational landscape unmatched anywhere in the world – yet only 25 or so of the usual suspects end up on high school seniors' lists. Higher education experts have this message for those squabbling over a handful of spots: you're probably not going to room with the next president anyway. Pay less attention to prestige and more to “fit” – the marriage of interests and comfort level with factors like campus size, access to professors, instruction philosophy. In their caliber of undergraduate teaching, many lesser-known campuses, in their opinion, are on equal or near-equal footing with brand-name universities, and in some ways are more three-dimensional.
“My view is that there is a very modest to zero correlation between general academic prestige and the quality of undergraduate experience available to students,” says Lee S. Shulman, president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. “Those seeking hidden gems are very wise, especially if they are committed to coming to a campus and becoming very active students, taking advantage of faculty office hours, undergrad research experiences and the like.”
Colleges, too, want a more prominent seat at the national admissions table, and have been building up campuses, luring new faculty members and trying to raise academic standards.
“The difference in faculty quality between institutions is much smaller than ever,” Mr. Shulman says, “and the opportunities for students in smaller, less prestigious institutions has never been greater.”
Mr. Nassirian agrees: “There are numerous institutions that may not be household names or have the resonance of the Ivies but offer superb and sometimes better undergraduate experiences. But people are mesmerized with the usual suspects.”
Even the notion that a prestige degree unlocks doors and leads to higher earnings has been challenged. A 1999 study by Alan B. Krueger of Princeton and Stacy Dale of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation found that students who were admitted to both selective and moderately selective colleges earned the same no matter which they attended. The study suggested that the motivation and drive of the student mattered more than the college.
As parents and counselors clamor for relief from the high-stakes admissions battles, a handful of guides have thrown the spotlight on lesser-known colleges. “Far too often the conversation is about the inability to get in anywhere,” says Martha McConnell, an editor of “Colleges That Change Lives,” a 1996 book by Loren Pope profiling 40 oft-overlooked but worthy campuses. The concept of “hidden gems” has gained so much currency that the 40 have formed the C.T.C.L. coalition and promote themselves as a unit at college fairs. But, Ms. McConnell says, the Ivies-or-bust mentality is “a shame that tends to still be the way we think.”
Of course, whether a campus is known or not depends on vantage point. The Claremont Colleges, a consortium of seven institutions near Los Angeles, have long drawn the admiration of cognoscenti west of the Mississippi; two of the colleges, Pomona and Claremont McKenna, are now among the nation's most elite. Who outside of California can name the other five? Likewise, Grinnell and Carleton are selective institutions that are no secret to academic pundits, rankings-makers and high-achieving Midwesterners.
But stealth powerhouses outside the Northeast “simply don't have the brand names,” says David W. Breneman, dean of the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia and an expert on the economics of private colleges. Many “simply don't have the application pressure that the Eastern schools have.” So the Midwest is dotted with liberal arts opportunities. The West, in its relative youth, lacks the East's private school tradition but has a strong public presence.
The following colleges, compiled with help from a dozen higher education experts and counselors, stress undergraduate teaching, have established or rising scholarship, even if they come up short on standardized test scores, and are alternatives to the usual suspects. They're not a good fit for everyone, and represent just a small sample of America's riches. There are only so many miles a family can cover on campus visits. But from Ann Arbor, it's an hour and a half to Kalamazoo; from Berkeley to Oakland, 15 minutes.
UNION COLLEGE Schenectady, N.Y.
Undergraduates: 2,150
Acceptance rate: 47 percent
That's Union as in the union of science, particularly engineering, and the humanities. Consider this year's valedictorian, Mark Weston, who majored in computer science with a minor in classics. The salutatorian, Marisa Zarchy, was a biology major with a double minor in chemistry and art. More than 150 years ago, Union was one of the big four – right up there with Harvard, Yale and Princeton – before losing ground amid a scandal over college finances. Union began a revival in the early 1900's with the addition of an electrical engineering program, tapping a relatively new technology. Three years ago, Union embarked on another experiment. Worried that Greek life was dominating campus (the country's three oldest fraternities were founded at Union), administrators created the Minerva houses, after the Roman goddess of wisdom. Students, about 300 each, and professors are assigned to one of seven houses, where they study, hold discussion groups and just hang out; upperclassmen can live in the houses. Mr. Herndon-Brown lauds the new social climate for letting Union's “academic richness” shine through.