Knowing one’s priorities, goals and aspirations will help identify which institution is the right fit to help get where one aspire to be. Do thorough research and choose a college that makes sense rather than what's trending, says Adarsh Khandelwal
In the life of every student comes a crossroad that’ll set the course for the rest of their lives, at least professionally. When it comes to choosing a college, students are often faced with whether to go for an Ivy League vs a Liberal Arts College.
It’s understandable why making the right choice between the two can be overwhelming and even confusing. On one hand, students may feel like – it’s just college, on the other hand, the right college could, simply put, be life-changing.
What is an Ivy League?
It is a collective title which refers to eight prestigious universities like Columbia, Yale, Harvard, Dartmouth, Brown, Princeton, Pennsylvania, and Cornell. The terminology itself is rooted in football (these universities formed an inter-collegiate agreement governing football), today Ivy League has come to be associated with prestige and the topmost quality of education.
Every student, especially those applying abroad, dreams of getting accepted into these hallowed institutions. The reason being that these universities carry a great deal of goodwill and open the choicest of opportunities for students.
What is Liberal Arts College?
These are rooted in a wide variety of cultural, intellectual, and social studies and activities. Their approach is more holistic, and these colleges aim to impart a broader, general knowledge and intellectual capacities. Liberal Arts Colleges are particularly appealing to students who want to pursue education and careers in critical thinking, social impact work and other humanities.
The top eight liberal arts colleges every student should consider are Williams College, Amherst College, Middlebury College, Wellesley College, Pomona College, Oberlin College and Vassar College. These are also the colleges we will be taking into consideration while drawing comparisons further down this article.
While public opinion is one thing, when it comes to matters of one’s career, it always helps to look at the data and make objective analyses. And that is exactly what we have done.
Acceptance rate mean is the rate at which a school accepts applicants. The percentage of students accepted into a school against those that applied, determines the acceptance rate of that school.
This means that the school with higher applications will reject more students, and therefore have lower (more impressive and more competitive) acceptance rates.
It is important to note that acceptance rate only refers to the percentage of students that have been accepted, and not the percentage of students who choose to attend that school. The latter refers to something called yield rate.
Acceptance rate is an important metric for colleges because it is a factor in their ranking by third party sites like US News College Rankings, which influences future aspirants as well. However, this is not the only metric to choose from, as middle-tier colleges are known to game the system by adapting tactics such as dropping application fees, to attract larger number of applications.
The acceptance ratio of Ivy leagues is higher as students prefer the former for better pay opportunities, social capital, and other such factors. If you are a student with aspirations to make it in the world of business or of earning a higher pay right at the outset, then Ivy League is the obvious choice for you, as employers are always happy to Ivy graduates what they are worth. After all, Ivy League colleges are not just institutions, they are brand names.
The early pay of Ivy League universities is significantly higher. Having said that, colleges like Claremont McKenna shows a higher early pay than an Ivy League Brown University.
On an average, the early pay for ivy league is almost $10,000 higher than average of liberal arts colleges.
The average median pay of Ivy League alumni ranks ahead of that of Liberal Arts alumni. While the average difference is of around $15,000, there is a dramatic difference between the median pay of Ivy League Columbia University and Liberal Arts Wellesley College.
The writer is CEO-co-founder, Collegify