<p>getting serious for a moment...</p>
<p>To some extent, in the wider world I don't think LACs always get their due. So one can't help but enjoy a haven where people "get it," where they understand the appeal of a college that might be smaller than your high school, where they don't make every single liberal arts comment end with knee-slapper "you want fries with that?" So you can kinda understand why LAC fans get a little overboard here sometimes.</p>
<p>"So you can kinda understand why LAC fans get a little overboard here sometimes."</p>
<p>Not really. Not when the LAC obsession is at the expense of many fine Universities. It is really only a handful of CC posters who embellish the virtues of certain LAC's by continuously diminishing some of the social aspects of larger schools, and constantly preach that small LAC's are the only place on earth where driven "intellectual" students could possibly be happy!</p>
<p>I guess I was talking about the normal people, the ones who don't need to run down other schools to promote their point of view, and who are happy to recommend a wide variety of schools to interested students and their parents. I've always loved what LACs have to offer, and have found it has been, at least in the general public, a bit of a hard sell at times. It's nice that there is a more receptive audience here. But I wouldn't run down places far different from an LAC...like, for example, my fine employer.</p>
<p>But I know precisely what you're talking about -- luckily we know who those people are, and it's fun to poke the bear. :)</p>
<p>Nothing like a reformed drunk. TheMom and I were totally oriented towards large research universities, both of us having graduated from them and she having spent most of her working life at one. LAC's were a stunning surprise to us. It still comes down to "fit" and what a student is looking for. But, yes, the general dismissiveness towards LAC's in many quarters does wear a bit.</p>
<p>one size doesn't fit all
but just as <gasp> there is more than one "soul mate" for each of us, there is more than one college where we can get a good education.
Its good we have some choice in the matter, are we leaning more toward that guy with the curly hair who plays the baritone sax, or are we more interested in the guy with the shoulders and the chalkbag hanging from his waist?</gasp></p>
<p>A reformed drunk would never have attended an LAC. If you attended an LAC, you never would have been a drunk to begin with. At least that is what I learned from CC over the past couple of years...... :)</p>
<p>I'd like to know where they get an enrollment of 11,759 for Humboldt State. They have never had more than 8500 FTE (7500 in 2004), with 12,000 being their growth goal for ten years from now. So, recompute 332 with 7500, and you get 4.4%, but you take 332 divided by number of baccalaureate graduates for the year of graduation, and you'll get an entirely different number.</p>
<p>I apologize in advance because I'm going to do something I try to avoid: I'm going to post without reading all the comments. </p>
<p>There is a liberal arts honors program at UT-Austin called Plan II Honors. It enrolls approximately 180 freshmen every year and graduates about the same number. Here's a link to the graduate profiles for the past 12 years: <a href="http://www.utexas.edu/cola/progs/plan2/students/profiles/%5B/url%5D">http://www.utexas.edu/cola/progs/plan2/students/profiles/</a>. Plan II is a program that appeals to students who want to go to graduate school, including law and medicine. In any given year, 45-60 Plan II graduates (25-30%) enroll in graduate schools, most of which are top-tier. This doesn't count the Marshall, Rhodes, Oxford, and other scholars who go on to advanced degrees.</p>
<p>I suspect that other large publics have honors programs that send a greater percentage of their graduates to graduate school than the overall school ranking would reflect. I'm not sure how to analyze this more precisely but if statistics like these are relevant to an applicant's college decision (and they are to some), it's another factor to consider.</p>
<p>gonna resurrect this fascinating thread I happened upon when searching Phd production to find where my d's candidate colleges lay in the list.----</p>
<p>I wanted to add that Loren Pope's books looked at least three sources to see longitudinal traces, or records, of undergrad college experience. He discovered and reported on colleges that popped up in these data sources unexpectedly, undergraduate colleges that did not require water walking to gain admission, and yielded his 'colleges that change lives'.</p>
<ol>
<li>PhD production (like the lists presented in this post)</li>
<li>Who's who</li>
<li>Heads of Business (ceo's?)</li>
</ol>
<p>By examining 'who's who' and ceo lists, it adds depth to the idea of what constitutes, or at least hints at, an active, engaged and creative learning environment, and which supplements the traditional PhD list.</p>
<p>Ah another ranking discussion!!!!</p>
<p>Any attempt to objectively rank numerically something so subjective as colleges is futile imho. But this is just a valid a methodology as the one used by USNews to sell magazines. Heck their major criterion is reputation using a 1-5 range and every academic who has participated and commented on this one criterion has admitted that they have no rational basis for assigning a score to more than a handfull of colleges with which they are intimately familiar.</p>
<p>However our son did see the F&M study which was very similar to the OP's link and it did put Rochester, Oberlin, Wooster and Allegheny onto his radar screen for a closer look which he subsequently visited, applying to 3 of the 4.</p>
<p>I look at this list as descriptive of the schools and their students, rather than a qualitative ranking.</p>
<p>Sort of like what fraction of the school is involved in Greek life, what portion of the students are from in-state, what percentage of the enrollment is engineering or pre-med, what the male/female ratio is, etc.</p>