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I think we can agree that LACs' strengths are not so much vocational preparation for the real world (e.g., due to lack of engineering and business majors), but rather preparation for grad school.
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<p>How is this any different than a non-engineering, non business major at Princeton, Brown, Duke, BC, UVA, Emory, Wake Forest, Lehigh? To me, it's not the distinction of LAC vs research university but of what classes you take; except that at the former you're unlikely to have any TAs.</p>
<p>College is not just about "the classes you take". See that is the whole point. If it were just the classes you take, then LACs would have an advantage. But there is a lot of learning (and growing) that goes on outside the classroom, especially in the later years of college, and there I think a larger research university has the advantage. </p>
<p>I agree, it is great that there are so many different options and every student needs to find what is right for him/her. People just need to be aware that what is right for an entering freshman may not be right for that same freshman in senior year.</p>
<p>Having graduated from an LAC and having kids graduate from them as well, I don't think that going to an LAC prepares you any less for the real world than a university would. Yes, the university has preprofessional programs that the LAC does not, but if you are majoring in subject that is offered at both types of schools, I don't think that one offers an advantage over the other in the "real life" category.</p>
<p>I agree with Post #82, although I love the thought of a LAC (and I graduated from a LAC). And I attended two graduate schools (law & master of law in taxation) at two different universities. "You can make a big school small, but you can't make a small school big" has a lot of truth to it. And there are many LACs that are aware of this issue and have done a lot to address these concerns.</p>
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College is not just about "the classes you take". See that is the whole point. If it were just the classes you take, then LACs would have an advantage. But there is a lot of learning (and growing) that goes on outside the classroom, especially in the later years of college, and there I think a larger research university has the advantage.
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<p>How is being a history or economics major at Lehigh materially different than being a history or economics major at Lafayette? How is there so much more learning going on outside the classroom at Wake Forest than at Davidson?</p>
<p>Post #85 certainly raises legitimate points. I am going to answer in a sloppy & not fully awake fashion as I did not sleep much last night. Gossip can severly harm a student at a LAC. I've seen it. Disappointment and frustration during the first year at a national university requires one to grow. Dealing with many different types of students at a large school requires one to grow. And this is a tough response for me as I love Davidson College & Lake Norman. And I attended WFU for a summer session while in undergrad school--and I came alive. Although Dartmouth College & WFU are as much like LACs as they are Nat'l Univ.--so I think that Gellino is highly intelligent as shown by his/her choice of schools.
Essentially I do not see LAC versus Nat'l Univs. as a debate between good & bad, but, rather, as a choice between best & better.(And I know that that is grammatically incorrect.) The better analysis would focus on which type of school is better for my child.</p>
<p>LACs are best for some students and their goals, and big universities are best for some students and their goals. Some students thrive at either, and some fail at either.</p>
<p>The advantages of each kind of school have been enumerated for years, over and over again.</p>
<p>The OP asked this thread to give the advantages of LACs.</p>
<p>I want to agree, but I can't. A large part of the issue is that a lot of LAC students learn to socialize differently than do students at highly competitive national universities. Another part of the issue is breadth of course/major offerings and variety of types of people with whom a student must interact. And there is much more initial disappointment at a large school than at a LAC which requires the student to grow & mature. This suggests another issue: When is it best for a child to mature? During undergraduate years or when in the workforce?
Having remained in contact with many alumni from my LAC, I noticed a distinct difference in fondness for the school from females to males. LACs work for females who become heavily involved in their sororities is the best over simplification stereotype that I think is accurate.</p>
<p>Coldwind: I understand where you are coming from. However, I think you are unfairly generalizing from you experience/your LAC to all LACs. There are plenty of happy alumn, male and female, from LACs that don’t even have sororities. LACs also tend to have really high alumni giving rates, for whatever that’s worth in terms of telling us about people’s happiness with their experiences. </p>
<p>I would not agree that unis necessarily force and LACs don’t. I know plenty of people who went to Unis who’ve spent their time at the back of classrooms (or skipping class), and partying…at lot. Plus, it’s a lot easier to hide from your mistake at a larger uni. It’s true that this can be a good thing (one incident Freshmen year won’t determine your entire college career), but it also means that the people who want to hide from their mistakes can. I’ve grown a lot at my LAC by having to actually learn how to deal with seeing and interacting with people I’d rather not see.</p>
<p>I agree with vossron: different strokes for different folks, academically and socially. I’d also note that all LACs are not the same. My school, Wesleyan, is a slightly larger Lac, but, more importantly, it’s also more divided up in terms of living: there are lots of program houses that cater to different interests, and juniors and seniors live in apartments and houses. This means it has slightly less of the cozy feel of some LACs, but it also means that it is totally untrue that everyone knows everyone business: there are some communities on campus I known tons about, but there are plenty where I know nothing of them or them of me, so it would be possible for me, even as a junior, to start fresh if I needed to.</p>
<p>SemiIB09: LAC's vary widely in requirements. some have open cirriculums with little or no distribution requirements. some have more structured requirements. In all of them, you will likely spend the final 2 years mostly in your major, just like any other school. You will have to check each school to see.</p>
<p>I agree with the general point of 'different strokes for different folks'. My point is that 4 years is a long period of time and the student will grow and his/her interests may change. What looks like a perfect fit for the 17-18 year old HS senior visiting a college may not be right for the 21-22 year old college senior in his/her last year on campus. You just have to be aware of that when making your decision.</p>
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I want to agree, but I can't. A large part of the issue is that a lot of LAC students learn to socialize differently than do students at highly competitive national universities. Another part of the issue is breadth of course/major offerings and variety of types of people with whom a student must interact. And there is much more initial disappointment at a large school than at a LAC which requires the student to grow & mature.
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<p>To me, what you're mainly discussing is the size of a school; not if the school grants PhDs and has grad students. Bucknell is a LAC with ~ 900 students a class and Rice is a national university with ~ 700 students a class. Are you trying to say that Rice is more frustrating to grow and mature than Bucknell because the former grants PhDs even though it is smaller? To me, the environment at Dartmouth and Princeton is more similar to Colgate and Wesleyan than they are to Penn and Cornell.</p>
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To me, what you're mainly discussing is the size of a school; not if the school grants PhDs and has grad students. Bucknell is a LAC with ~ 900 students a class and Rice is a national university with ~ 700 students a class. Are you trying to say that Rice is more frustrating to grow and mature than Bucknell because the former grants PhDs even though it is smaller? To me, the environment at Dartmouth and Princeton is more similar to Colgate and Wesleyan than they are to Penn and Cornell.
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<p>I agree. In fact, I've always considered the university/LAC dichotomy to be quite artificial, particularly because some supposed "LAC's", such as Bryn Mawr, offer PhD's. {Heck, one of Bryn Mawr's major claims to fame is that it is the first institution in the US to offer PhD's to women.} </p>
<p>Let's be honest. Dartmouth is basically a LAC. It shares far more in common with schools like Williams or Amherst than it does with Harvard or Stanford. Rice, Princeton and Brown are also quite "LAC-ish". Caltech might also be considered a LAC, or at least a LAC-university hybrid.</p>
<p>I dunno. Is it really fair to pretend that 1600 extra students don’t exist? They may not utilize the same academic resources as typical undergrads, but, they do leave a footprint; they walk across campus, they patronize the same coffee houses and campus grills. I’m willing to bet the Rice campus has a different “buzz” than the Bucknell campus, thanks, in no small part, to the presence of graduate students.</p>
<p>For what my opinion is worth, I don’t think that the “small class size” advantage for liberal arts colleges is all that particularly significant. For one thing, introductory lectures (biology, chemistry, economics, etc.) at an LAC are still going to be big enough that there won’t be a ton of professor-student interaction, it’s just that the classes will be around 60 students instead of 260+. That’s not to diminish the reality that approaching a professor outside of class at an LAC will probably result in more face-time than if you tried to meet with a professor outside of class at a university. Also, the number of students in your classes will decrease over time no matter which college or university you attend; even at a large state school, you’re bound to have a majority of your classes with less than 30 students or so after your first few semesters as your classes grow more specific.</p>
<p>Again, there are pros and cons to both types of schools, but I don’t think they’re quite as clear-cut as some people make them out to be, just like others here have said. Just look at the policies and structures of each university individually.</p>
<p>^Note that there is still a relative difference in class size between universities (at least large state Us) and LACs–after the “first few semesters,” upper-division LAC classes are often only 10-15 students, vs. 25-30 at a university. Having experienced seminar-style classes of both sizes, I can attest personally that in the humanities those extra 15 students do make a difference. Class discussion feels significantly “larger,” with long waits to speak, in a class of 30 students than in a class of 15.</p>
<p>^Also some departments at large research universities, like Psych at UCLA, don’t have smaller classes after a few years or semesters as one would think. I took two psych upper division courses this past quarter and they were both over 150 students. One of the classes did have a “discussion” of 15-20 students directed by TAs. However, I put the quotes on discussion because they really mean “review” as in a powerpoint presentation of the material in lecture, or just writing on the board material from the lecture. To me, that is not a “discussion.” </p>
<p>I’ve experienced liberal art small classes capped at 18 at one of my former schools(prior to UCLA) and it makes a HUGE difference…that is if you value that interaction. However, I will also state that for some students who are the “big fish in the small pond” might find small classes with peers who aren’t “big fishes” a bit of a time waster. By being in small classes and having discussions, everyone is entitled to speak/talk/ask questions and that could prevent a fulfilling learning environment for someone who “gets it”</p>
<p>“I took two psych upper division courses this past quarter and they were both over 150 students.”</p>
<p>I guess I was referring more to upper level seminars; indeed, classes at the 200-level and even some at the 300-level will still be huge classes (case and point: organic chemistry). But again, past a certain point, the class sizes will shrink with more specialization.</p>
<p>^I’m not sure how specialization works at different schools, or how upper and lower division courses work either. At UCLA anything below the 100 series is lower division, anything in the 100s is upper division. There is no distinction in the upper division unless theres a part two to a second lower divion(or what i know as pre-req).</p>
<p>But when a major has upper division requirements that are required for all psych majors(a popular major)there is bound to be large classes. The smallest class(excluding labs, and special seminars) sizes in psych that I see available for the winter quareter are 40 students. That is still a lot. Even at the “specialization” or “concentration” level if such a thing exists, or whatever is meant by it.</p>