Help me decide: Top 20 University or Pursue Running??

Hamilton: Ranked #9 among national liberal arts colleges. I'd still vote for Northwestern in a lot of cases, but OP will do just fine if he goes to Hamilton.

Nobody applies to this liberal arts school I’ve hardly ever heard of - Hamilton, it’s a pretty self-selecting pool. The best of the best apply to Northwestern. Acceptance numbers are inflated because most people who apply also applied to another dozen Ivy-League caliber places and ended up going somewhere else. This is ridiculous and clearly a bunch of people here trying to defend their misfortune or bad choices.

If you go to the small liberal arts college you will have an uphill battle every single time you compete careerwise with people from Northwestern. And much of it will not be just the name of your Alma mater but the fact that you won’t be as prepared and won’t be as connected. “Big fish in small pond” - sure, you can be a Wal-Mart manager. But wouldn’t you rather work at Google or Goldman or become world-class at something intellectual? Then Northwestern will surround you with people who will do exactly that immediately after graduating.

a look at all the suffering Hamiltonians:

https://www.hamilton.edu/after/alumni

OP, those who need to know, know. rest assured. that is often the case in life.

Oh the dripping irony of the GS comment in this post.

Assuming you're male and straight, go where the chicks are. I'm actually serious since girlfriends turn into spouses.

Spell it out for him! He obviously does not know the CEP of Goldman Sachs is a Hamilton graduate.

No brainer. Go with the "name" school and run club. Throwing out some outliers from Hamilton who have gone on to very successful careers doesn't guarantee you will be one of those. Northwestern name will open doors for you looking for that first job and networking in the future.

Northwestern club running and Hamilton Varsity running are about the same level, so there is not much difference there.

But you could hardly pick two more different schools. Northwestern is Big Ten, near a big city, much bigger, dominated by grad schools, etc. Hamilton is a small school in the boonies, totally undergrad focused. Do you want small classes taught by full professors who are chosen for their teaching ability and who actively recruit undergrads to help with their research? Or do you want world class researchers who teach on the side (or let TA's teach) and mostly use grad students to help with their cutting edge research? Do you want to be anonymous sometimes, or do you want to be at a place where you know many/most of the people you see regularly? Do you want a competitive atmosphere among the students, or a supportive one (too much of either one is bad)?

If it were me, I'd choose Hamilton in a heart beat, knowing I'd probably get a better education which matched my personality, but YMMV.

Perfume Dreams wrote:

highhoppingworm wrote:

Nobody gives a crap where you went to school by the time you are 23. .

I’m fifty and my education is put on every project proposal I am part of. I live in San Francisco where going to Cal is considered a safety school so education matters depending on your industry or location.

Um...Cal, as in Cal Berkeley is NOT considered a safety school by people in the Bay Area. US News has them ranked as the 22nd best national university, and the third best in California behind only Stanford at #6 (personally I'd rank Stanford higher) and barely UCLA at #20.

Not sure where that came from, but that's just not true. Cal ranks higher that Georgetown, University of Michigan, Carnegie Mellon, Wake Forest, William and Mary and a ton of other really good schools that are hard to get into. Cal is no one's safety school.

It’s not irony. David Solomon, the current CEO of Goldman Sachs, was rejected from Goldman’s analyst position after graduating from Hamilton.

How much more evidence do you want? He was exceptional enough to later become CEO, yet he was rejected in his early twenties likely because he didn’t have the Ivy League level diploma they were looking for.

Top investment banks take their analysts from top tier Ivies, So NWU doesn’t matter. In Chicago NWU matters but it’s not a heavy hitter degree outside the Midwest.

Why not both? Go run at Stanford.

top investment banks wrote:

Top investment banks take their analysts from top tier Ivies, So NWU doesn’t matter. In Chicago NWU matters but it’s not a heavy hitter degree outside the Midwest.

I’m with you but Northwestern is elite as is Stanford, Duke, MIT, UChicago, and a few other non-Ivies

Asking letsrun for advice on your decision will honestly likely not help you all that much and may honestly just stress you out more. As somebody who goes to a liberal arts school (not Hamilton but a close friend of mine is there), there is always going to be a lack of name recognition without a doubt. That being said, the people who haven't heard of Hamilton aren't going to be the people who you are going to be trying to impress. Smart people know Hamilton and I'm sure you recognize that the education that you will get at either school is going to be amazing. From an academic perspective, you can't go wrong either way.

I think the biggest thing for you will be fit. Consider location, your fit with the guys on the team at Hamilton if you've met them, size, and personality fit. Honestly, both are great schools and you will be able to find yourself a good group of friends at either. People make too big an emphasis on small things and ultimately the only people that should be influencing your decision should be you and your parents.

Good luck!

Northwestern consistently ranks well above all the elite liberal arts schools (Williams, Amherst, Swarthmore, Pomona) in any credible rankings lists that combine research unis and liberal arts colleges.

Interesting decision -- very different schools. Naysayers aside, I think the running consideration is legit -- my college teammates remain some of my closest and best friends 20 years after college, and being a part of those teams was a key part of my collegiate experience. Beyond that though, I think it is really about what kind of experience you want to have -- do you want a "big 10" experience with big classes but lots of variety (of all sorts) and access to a major city? Or do you want a very tight-knit experience with small classes and everyone knows everyone in a small town kind of thing? I think the academic quality of will be similar (i.e., high), and I think the other poster's point about "what next" is a key consideration too. If you are not planning to go to grad school, might be a better call to go to NW because of bigger alumni network (esp. if you want to stay in Chicago/midwest); if you are, Hamilton is not going to hurt you at all (e.g., law schools will view those schools as effectively equivalent from an admissions perspective) and could help you with recommendations from professors you actually know, etc.

I grew up in the midwest and did a similar analysis when I was looking at schools (though I was comparing NW to Grinnell/Carleton/Macalester instead of Hamilton), and had decided I would go to Grinnell if it came down to it for some of the reasons noted above. I ended up getting into an Ivy so went there instead, but that is where my head was.