I’m just catching up to this thread and thank you to @AustenNut for starting it. His original post caught my eye since it mentions Hope College and has nice things to say about it. Obviously my current avatar is the Hope logo because my youngest kid is there, and will graduate in May with a BS in Computer Science as well as a double major in Classical Studies. i do think of Hope College as a school that “punches above its weight” and previously used that exact phrase in discussing how well Hope College fared in USNWR rankings of the availability of undergraduate reesearch projects. The Hope College website claims that: “Hope is consistently awarded more National Science Foundation grants for undergraduate research than any other liberal arts college in the country” which presumably helps explain why they fare surprisingly well on the undergrad research ranking (#22) compared to their overall ranking. Undergraduate research opportunities LACs vs National Universities - #29 by Corinthian
My older kid went to Pomona and is currently in a PhD program at Penn. My Hope student has no current interest in grad school. My Hope kid also had no trouble finding internships each summer (including an NSF REU) and before fall semester started he had a full time job lined up for after graduation.
I find it a little bit condescending that some posters suggest that if a lower ranked LAC like Hope is successfully placing PhD students, it must be because of poor advising. The Hope Physics department is particularly strong and has placed students into PhD programs at Stanford, MIT, CMU, CalTech, Purdue, Michigan State, etc. My kid was originally interested in majoring in physics and that was part of what drew him to Hope, which was otherwise an unlikely choice.