<p>Well, first of all, I should note that getting into any top-20 college right now is such a brutal challenge that it would be best to apply to BOTH universities and LACs and make the final decision about which is better once you have an acceptance list in hand.</p>
<p>My son has always been a bit of a quiet kid, and I thought he’d ultimately land at an LAC due to its size and nurturing attitude. However, the interviewing gauntlet did a lot to help him learn to speak about himself to strangers and two college visits completely on his own (airplane flight and all) also helped him adapt.</p>
<p>His final choices came down to Amherst, Williams and Brown. All 3 had accessible professors, but Brown had a larger selection of classes and a larger range of facilities for physics and computer science. Its size of 6000 students was larger than the approximate 2000 at Williams and Amherst, but still manageable, compared to our state flagship’s student body of 35,000 – where he certainly would have felt lost.</p>
<p>Sometimes it really comes down to the little unexpected things. My son, along with two others, managed to wander off from the official presentation just to look at the science and engineering facilities. Everywhere they went, professors not only didn’t chase them away, but offered to unlock doors so they could view otherwise-inaccessible rooms for themselves. I really believe this generosity sealed the deal for him, because it was totally unscripted, unlike a formal presentation.</p>
<p>He also would have been totally happy at either Amherst or Williams. There are no BAD choices here, just the difficulty of having to make a final decision. I believe there is a fairly large overlap between top private universities and top LACs, probably much more than between top private universities and their larger public cousins. Both type of schools really need to be considered.</p>
<p>I would also like to say that I’ve seen great researchers who were also outstanding teachers. I’ve seen great researchers who can’t get through a lecture without getting bogged down in a sign error in some equation way back somewhere. </p>
<p>Karl Case (of the Case-Shiller Index) who just retired from the Economics Department at Wellesley, is the exemplar of a great LAC professor who was also a great researcher. I’ve also seen some really bad teachers teach at a liberal arts college. </p>
<p>There are many professors who are great at both teaching and research. You don’t get to be a great researcher if you can’t explain what it is that you do.</p>
<p>I know plenty of people who got PhDs but didn’t like graduate school or doing research. Their ultimate goal was to teach and they needed a PhD to teach at the level they wanted. They aren’t teaching at LACs by default.</p>
<p>Of course there are great professors that are also great researchers! As I said, I was trying to be devil’s advocate, some of them are at research universities, others at LACS. People here seemed to be explaining only the advantages of LACs, while there are also advantages to a larger university. One of them is quality of research.</p>
<p>After transferring to a LAC, I have noticed many differences from a non LAC environment. I find that I have less busy work to do. At my old U I would have to submit my economics and Spanish homework online. I spent more time “fighting” with the technology than actually learning. Not to mention it was really expensive to pay for “the privilege” of submitting my work online. At my LAC my homework is graded by the professor or a student grader. Smaller classes means that we waste less class time handing in/ back assignments. I also appreciate that my lab grade (for a science class) is not at the mercy of some random TA, and that I never have to go to pointless “discussion sections” taught by well meaning, but generally not helpful TAs. I have also found introductory courses a lot more intense at a LAC, because there are no multiple choice exams. </p>
<p>Also, my LAC has a really strong honor code, so we have self scheduled exams. This makes finals period so much better. (I am not aware of a university that offers this). </p>
<p>I do miss having a wider selection of courses of a larger U, but for me this is an acceptable trade off.</p>
<p>*People get PhDs in a research environment. A PhD is a research degree and for the most part, one is trained to be a researcher, not a teacher. The higher resources, salaries, prestige, and freedom of schedule come from getting a position at a top research university after a PhD. Those that don’t make the cut- because their degree is from a lesser school or they aren’t as strong a PhD graduate- take a ‘teaching job’ at a more teaching oriented school than a research powerhouse. Its a place where they have to be in the classroom a ton more, usually make less money, have far less prestige in many fields. While absolutely it is the case that some PhDs choose a teaching school because that is their passion and/or strength, more often than not it’s the default they ended up with because they couldn’t get a job in a research environment. *</p>
<p>95% of PhD graduates who get tenure track positions end up teaching at more teaching heavy schools, simply because there aren’t enough R1 universities to sustain all of the PhD graduates. Not only that, but not all of us want the life that we see our professors at R1s have. I’m getting my PhD at an Ivy League top 10 program but I have no intention of teaching at a place like this. I’d rather leave for industry than teach here or or Harvard or Yale or something. The stress and the constant grant-chasing isn’t worth it for me; that’s not the lifestyle I want and when I talk to my colleagues, the majority of them don’t want that life either. I want to go to a top LAC where I can engage undergrads in my research and shepherd them through a great college experience into grad school or the work world. My university regularly has seminars and workshops for students who want to teach at an LAC and they are always well-attended.</p>
<p>It often doesn’t have anything to do with strength of the candidate. There are simply far more strong candidates than there are positions at top research schools for them. Fact is, the majority of colleges and universities in the U.S. aren’t research-intensive places anyway; they’re teaching schools. Look at the professors’ pages and CVs from colleges like Amherst, Swarthmore, Williams, Pomona, and other top LACs - you’ll see that most of them come from top graduate programs. (I’ve been doing this a lot lately because I just finished my third year of my PhD program and I want to teach at a place like those.)</p>
<p>It’s a generally accepted statement in academia that you can expect to teach at a place that’s a tier or two below where you got your PhD. Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Princeton, etc., don’t need to hire fresh assistant professors - they can poach famous academics from other places and are very good at using their money and prestige to do that. In fact, I know that assistant professors don’t really <em>expect</em> to get tenure here - my advisor (an asst prof here at my Ivy) has joked that it’s a great place to start your academic career.</p>
<p>In Biology at least my husband has said numerous times he can’t think of a single LAC professor who has published research in any of the top journals, or presented at the top meetings. </p>
<p>Personally I went to a medium sized research university and got to know the profs in my major (tiny and you had to apply for it) extremely well. In that particular major there were very few TAs. I got to know a number of other professors as well. I wasn’t particularly outgoing, but my friends who were fared even better.</p>
<p>I liked lecture courses as well - it didn’t bother me to have lecture by world famous authority followed up by a smaller session with his favorite grad students.</p>
<p>I think there is room for both kinds of institutions, but in the end both my husband, I and our kids all felt that we were better served by bigger institutions and taking advantage of the smaller communities within them.</p>
<p>Thus, LACs has personalized touches and smaller class environment, despite of the similar ratio. The research universities provide the cutting edge academic topics. Not much changed from the old time.</p>
<p>However, what kind of benefit undergraduates can have with the advance academic environment, than with the small discussion based instruction?</p>
<p>The research U’s also provide small classes and personalized touches, plus the chance to take grad level courses in the major. You can’t lump all LACs and all other U’s into “one size fits all” boxes.</p>
<p>The benefits that a student can get at an LAC include a more personal living environment. Think of it as small town vs big city living (I’m talking about the on-campus environment - not the surrounding area). On some large uni campuses kids are basically commuting to classes from their dorm and may not see a familiar face in between.</p>
<p>Re: PhDs wanting to do research rather than teach - the other side of that coin is that a PhD is required in order to teach at almost any 4 year college in almost any field.</p>
<p>As Wis75 points out, it’s possible for an undergraduate to take some graduate-level classes at a university, but not at an LAC (since they don’t have graduate-level classes). Also, it’s possible to get a 5-year master’s degree at some universities like Brown.</p>
<p>A larger school will offer a larger catalog of classes and, possibly, multiple sections, so you don’t have to chose between Course A or Course B, both offered only once and during the very same hours.</p>
<p>An LAC may be able to compensate for some of these shortcomings by having more flexible instructors who might be willing to allow a student to create an independent study class to mimic the material found in some other school’s course catalog.</p>
<p>An LAC may be quite competitive in fields like math and history that generally don’t require the use of specialized equipment. But for physics and computer science, perhaps also biology and chemistry, access to specialized equipment might be necessary to get the most out of one’s chosen major. In such cases, universities are likely to have a strong advantage.</p>
Over the course of my academic career, I’ve studied at four universities and taken classes at a fifth. My boyfriend attends a LAC, as does my sister. I can only speak about these colleges and hesitate to generalize, though I suspect my experiences are not unusual. </p>
<p>At the large public universities I’ve attended, there has been very little handholding. One of my professors is supervising only three (!) PhD students and complains that it is far too much. Students are mostly left to their own devices, and office hours are minimal. In introductory lecture classes, professors quite often field questions to the TAs (e.g. graduate students like me) to answer, and students are encouraged to approach the TAs during office hours before approaching the professor. Upper-level courses, on the other hand, are smaller and more personal, although the size of these classes will vary considerably depending on one’s major; econ classes will seldom be as small as geology classes. The advantages to a large university are a large number of courses offered and a greater variety of students, organizations, etc. The degree to which a student thrives in such an environment depends on his involvement…it is quite feasible to get to know professors, do research, join or start clubs, etc. It is also quite feasible to stay in the background, avoid unnecessary work or research, and graduate without any meaningful interactions with other students or professors whatsoever. A go-getter does rather well; a student needing more support might not.</p>
<p>LACs are somewhat the opposite. Though introductory courses, especially in the sciences, are far from small, you are much more likely to hear stories of a professor inviting students over for dinner at a LAC than a university. LACs also tend to have more more tight-knit communities due to their small size; this can feel suffocating to some, however, especially by senior year. Undergraduates are encouraged to participate in research, and the number of LAC graduates getting into top graduate programs indicates they’re doing experiments a little beyond the vinegar-and-baking soda type. The drawback to LACs is the limited number of courses available; even one professor in a department going on sick leave or sabbatical can severely impact one’s educational plans. </p>
<p>“LAC-like” universities, a term that quite frankly gets bandied about far too often and is often claimed with dubious justification, are small universities that maintain the feel of a LAC - Wake Forest and Dartmouth are two examples. These can either be the best or worst of both worlds, depending on the school in question; sometimes a small university does not offer more courses than a LAC or have smaller class sizes than a larger university. If balanced properly, however, a LAC-like university can offer small class sizes, an undergraduate focus, and decent course selection.</p>
<p>I am a product of universities, but I have increasingly become a fan of LACs. I’ve attended some fairly prominent universities, but I’ve seen students at my boyfriend and sister’s LACs (ranked outside the holy Top 20) do remarkable things and get into great graduate programs, all the while experiencing a MUCH more undergraduate-friendly experience than even my fairly small undergraduate alma mater provided. I am immensely fond of all of the schools I’ve attended, but I will readily admit that I may well have chosen a LAC for undergrad if I were to do college over again. Others would not. There is obviously no consensus on whether LACs or universities provide a better undergraduate education…the better question to ask is which provides a better education for you personally.</p>
<p>For most people the choice isn’t between the top 20 LACs and the top 20 Unis. It is between the 100-150th ranked LAC, and the 100-150th rank Uni, and there the similarities and differences become much more interesting. </p>
<p>I attended Williams back in the dark ages, followed by a masters at Oxford, followed by UChicago, where I also taught. In the days when dinosaurs roamed the earth, the classroom experience was far higher at Williams than at UChicago, for one simply reason: I was thrown into a classroom with no training, had limited time for preparation (because of my own courses and research), and told to lead a discussion. Now, the interesting thing is that, in many if not most cases, I could have given better lectures than the senior faculty giving them. I had more up-to-date information (some of them were simply renowned fossils), and my style was likely more engaging. What I couldn’t do was necessarily lead a good discussion - simply a lack of experience. (I was better by the time I taught at the Community College of Philadelphia, which is to say, at least as regards me, the quality of education at CCP was higher than at UChicago.) I also graded all the papers and exams (again, with virtually no training). I do know that while I was at Williams, when I told my Harvard friends what my experience was like, they were almost universally jealous. But this was 40 years ago.</p>
<p>(What was better at UChicago - again back in the dark ages - was the student body. The student body at Williams was very well-spoken, knew how to write, and, usually, from a higher socio-economic class, but was also much less creative and intellectually engaged than their counterparts at Chicago. I have no idea if that is true today.)</p>
<p>To add one little thing: my d., who graduated from Smith, is now a graduate student and “head preceptor” at Princeton. In the courses she precepts, the professor gives one one-hour lecture a week. She leads two one or one-and-half hour discussions per week, although she also has to convey new material, as the professor never covers even close to all of it. She grades all papers and all exams. This is something that would never happen at Smith.</p>
<p>Why do people complain about this type of thing only at big state universities then? From what I have seen, the norm in big classes at big state universities is about three hours of lecture per week by a faculty member, supplemented by an hour of discussion and review by a graduate student, not one hour with the faculty member and three hours with the graduate student.</p>
<p>mini: I do think the student body is more creative at Williams now. For example, S is in a History of Science class. They had to find a work of art that demonstrated some concepts of the new physics. Three of these young men (including my S) chose Stoppard’s ARCADIA, which all had seen over Spring break. They only discovered this after they handed in their papers, and then they met to discuss the play together. All were deeply moved by it. One wrote a play himself heavily influenced by Stoppard. </p>
<p>When S’s class read the Orestia in class they voluntarily met to read the play aloud. They’ve done that on many occasions. DS wrote music for the first play, The Agamemnon in lieu of a paper. Others did similar things.</p>
<p>In fact, I find the school so interdisciplinary and creative I have dubbed it “The Montessori School.” In contrast, Barnard, my D’s school, is very scholarly and doesn’t emphasize creativity. However, after they write their thesis, they are all incredibly well prepared for grad school.</p>
<p>BTW: DS said he is immensely interested in what your daughter is working on and would love to read some of her conclusions.</p>
I do that as well but was also asked to make the quizzes and exams. Surprising, to say the least. My supervising professors pretty much just teach the large lectures they’ve memorized from years of practice and enter the grades I’ve already computed at the end of the semester; most other things are left to the TAs. A pretty convenient deal for the profs!</p>
<p>If LACs are like a small town, give me the big city U any day. Small towns may be where everyone knows you but can be awfully stifling- what if you discover you don’t quite into the culture? I suppose New York City has to be the worst place in the US to live by this LAC is best thinking. Large U’s, like large cities, are composed of neighborhoods. </p>
<p>I like the no hand holding comment. College is what you make of it- “nurtured” or independent. Different personalities thrive under different conditions. also- a small school may have a larger percentage of “creativity” but the large school may have just as many in that world, plus a whole lot more. Some get lost in the large world, others need it to be able to discover themselves.</p>
<p>I too like WIS75 analogy. But I’d also like to say there’s a time and place for everything. While my own kid isn’t always thrilled with the small town of the LAC, he definitely has been able to discover himself and, academically at least, he has had more opportunities than a lot of his Big City counterparts. </p>
<p>As he has said himself… he has a lifetime to live in the big city. Would he like to move there sooner than later at this point? Probably, but I honestly can see how much he will be prepared when he does. </p>
<p>I have no preference because I see the merits in both. However, the relationships my kid has with professors who truly know him are far and above what my H or I ever experiences at our Big U’s.</p>