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<p>It looks to me that the LAC families know a good deal: small college with a good prof/student ratio with more attention paid to students, probably a more academically homogeneous student body and great research opportunities at the state school.</p>
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<p>I completely disagree. Plenty of smart, extremely successful midwesterners who could buy and sell you a dozen times over went to U of Illinois and wouldn’t have heard of Haverford, or Colby, or Bowdoin. But again — so freakin’ what? Is the point of a college education merely to have a gold ribbon for potential employers?</p>
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<p>Unless of course you leave the NorthEast or apply for an engineering job. You have to love the NorthEast Bias on this board</p>
<p>As Mini likes to point out, in WA, people mistake Wellesley for Whitman. In MA, practically no one has heard of Whitman. </p>
<p>I will always remember the occasion when I used my international student ID to get a discount in a Paris cinema (to see Bergman’s Persona, to date that particular occasion). The cashier, a young man in his 20s, asked what university I was attending. Harvard, I said. Ah, everybody has heard of Harvard Business School. No, I replied crossly, Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. Oh, he said, I did not know there was anything else at Harvard besides the B School. So much for the prestige of Harvard College and Harvard University! Of course, at the time, Harvard Square was a sleepy place full of preppy stores rather than the chain-dominated tourist over-run place it has become and Harvard is now an international household name.</p>
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Nope, it’s not East Coast bias. I’m talking about schools that are recognized by anyone with an ounce of sophistication. If you’re applying for a job and the employer has never heard of say, Carleton or Pomona, you’re not applying for a very important job. That’s just the way it is.</p>
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Actually, what it means is the person who has not heard of the college is not elite. Yeah, it’s possible that they could have made money somehow but they are certainly not very worldly.</p>
<p>Well, so then they don’t presume it’s elite. Is that the most important thing in life, impressing other people with your choice of eliteness in schools? That’s a response I expect to hear from 17 yos who don’t know any better, or Asian immigrants who don’t know any better. </p>
<p>Isn’t your own self-satisfaction and your own knowledge that you went to an excellent school and had a fine education enough?</p>
<p>And there is considerable, quite considerable, regional variation in what people know. I grew up in Philly so of course I know Haverford and think highly of it. People elsewhere might not. My husband, Chicago born and bred, with a medical degree, doesn’t know of it except for what I might have mentioned. Ah well. That has zero, zip, zilch impact on whether my children should go there if so inclined. </p>
<p>Being worried that your choices won’t impress others sufficiently is so the very OPPOSITE of being elite.</p>
<p>In my mind the issue is if someone hasn’t heard of Haverford are they interested in being quiet for a minute and hearing what you have to say about it? My daughter applied to colleges this year including Williams. Some of the people I work with hadn’t heard of Williams but then they wanted to know more about it, where was it, what kind of school, and I told them. Now the next time Williams comes up in a conversation they will know something about it.</p>
<p>I think it is the same thing with immigrants. I have a friend from China whose son was also applying to colleges this year. He had very little exposure to the LACs and his son was applying to the big universities. He was extremely interested in how things played out for me. He asked questions, he listened to what I had to say. Now he knows more about the LACs and why some people choose them over bigger schools. It wasn’t just that, he also wondered why he should spend so much more money for his son to go to a place like Harvard than the in state University. It was an honest question, he really wanted to know. So I told him that if he has the option he should definitely send his son to an Ivy League over a state school even though the cost differential is huge.</p>
<p>From him I’ve learned what it is like to come from a country where you don’t have the opportunities we have here. We really are the spoiled Americans. He said that when he came here for graduate school, no matter what his living conditions were like or how hard school was, it was so much better than what he had to go back to that it motivated him to really work hard and get his PhD.</p>
<p>Sorry if this post was too long or got too far off the point.</p>
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<p>Here’s the great thing, though. Within the first few minutes after meeting you, they’ll figure out whether you’re smart or not, regardless of what diploma is hanging on your wall.</p>
<p>"I completely disagree. Plenty of smart, extremely successful midwesterners who could buy and sell you a dozen times over went to U of Illinois and wouldn’t have heard of Haverford, or Colby, or Bowdoin. "</p>
<p>This is true, IMO. And if they have not heard of a college, they are unlikely to presume it is elite. Possibly they will draw the opposite conclusion.</p>
<p>“But again — so freakin’ what?”</p>
<p>Well, sometimes I feel like the main, unique advantage of a known “elite” university is that people who don’t actually know you will presume that you are likely to be rather smart. This could be potential employers, potential clients who might possibly hire your firm for a business transaction. All people who don’t know you but are nevertheless evaluating you based on sparse information. In those contexts credentials can conceivably have some impact. And your parents can more successfully brag about you at (non-elite)cocktail parties. You owe your parents something, after all.</p>
<p>But beyond that, “so freakin’ what?”, well true again. But OP wasn’t asking so what, just what the perception is. And the answer is, probably in many cases, due to size and some other factors, public recognition may not identically track Northeast elite recognition, and this could cause an overall tendency towards slight undervaluation, by non-elites who don’t know you.</p>
<p>"Is the point of a college education merely to have a gold ribbon for potential employers? "</p>
<p>Some people feel that is at least a tipping factor, at the margin, where other more “legitimate” considerations of actual fit balance out. This would apply not only to choice of Univ vs. LAcs, but preference of some “gold ribbon” LACs over others. BTW I’m not condoning that view, but just observing that evidently people seem to differ on that point.</p>
<p>And FWIW, if the first tier is HYPSM, then yes LACS will be considered at least second tier, even by NE elites, along with virtually everyplace else.</p>
<p>"If you’re applying for a job in the U.S. and the employer has never heard of Haverford, it means you’re not applying for a very good job, sorry. "</p>
<p>Guess what, there may come a time in your life when you need to apply to that job, anyway, because the “good job” employers don’t seem to want you, at the moment at least. Despite how wonderful and elite, and “above them”, you feel these other employers are. It’s tough out there, and at times it is nice to have an edge, however trivial.</p>
<p>But the undergrad degree is just one thing, the grad degree, and who you have become, your actual capabilities as have been shaped by your education,are the most important for most reasonable purposes. And if those are better developed at a particular LAC, then that’s the better choice for you.</p>
<p>edit: sorry this should have gone above post #89, I decided to edit more.</p>
<p>" Within the first few minutes after meeting you, they’ll figure out whether you’re smart or not, regardless of what diploma is hanging on your wall. "</p>
<p>No, in many cases it takes a lot longer than that. After they’re already hired you, and you’ve been given a fair number of opportunities to prove yourself. Whether that be an employer or a client.</p>
<p>Having worked for firms that hired a fair number of idiots who glittered but were not gold, despite interviewing them for quite a bit more than a few minutes, I’m pretty confident of this.</p>
<p>I have not read through this entire thread, only enough to see that cellardwellar raises some good questions about LACs.
I’d hesitate to accept this conclusion based only on a study of placements into “top graduate programs”, defined as schools with 10 or more programs in the NRC-95 top-10 (which I think is the criterion applied by cellardwellar’s sources.) </p>
<p>The first problem is one of definition. Is this really a good definition of what it means to be a “top graduate program”? What about LAC graduates attending top-10 programs within schools with relatively few top programs? </p>
<p>Another thing that makes me skeptical is that the findings cellardwellar cites don’t seem to jibe with what’s been reported about professional school placements. I’m thinking of the WSJ study of the top 50 “feeders” for top law, business, and med schools.<br>
<a href=“http://www.wsjclassroomedition.com/pdfs/wsj_college_092503.pdf[/url]”>http://www.wsjclassroomedition.com/pdfs/wsj_college_092503.pdf</a>
LACs perform very well according to that study. Why would they perform much worse for placement into top science programs? One plausible explanation would be that LAC students are at a disadvantage in access to the best laboratory facilities. If that’s true, does it really mean they are winding up in second-rate programs? Or, is it possible they are up in equally good programs, but ones that do not require the same kind of preparation?</p>
<p>From reading this thread it appears:</p>
<p>Attending a high quality LAC is not detrimental and may be an advantage for competing for spots in top Graduate and Professional post college programs.</p>
<p>And that attending a well known university may be an advantage for applying for jobs where the personnel staff knows little about colleges or college quality or where there is a huge regional influence of the flagship state university.</p>
<p>And that if one wants to go to a university that most everyone has heard of, it is best to choose a top ten perennial football or basketball powerhouse.</p>
<p>And this is a thoughtful essay by a nobel laureate on the topic of science and LACs: <a href=“http://www.collegenews.org/prebuilt/daedalus/cech_article.pdf[/url]”>http://www.collegenews.org/prebuilt/daedalus/cech_article.pdf</a></p>
<p>The Wall St. Journal “study” is cheesy, and its methodology questionable. I wouldn’t rely on it for any kind of precision. But in general it describes the world as I and my children experience it: below the HYPS level, top LACs, top research universities, and top hybrids are completely intermixed in terms of their perceived quality.</p>
<p>One of the ironic things is that the prestigious LACs are not overrun with high-scoring ethnic Asian applicants to anywhere near the same extent as their university peers. Wesleyan – which has spent millions upgrading its science facilities – would probably love to admit more Asian pre-meds, who in that context would provide real diversity. Every year, there are probably hundreds of Asian or Eastern European families getting caught on the short end of an Ivy-or-bust mentality who would find domestic harmony and pride if they adopted the approach of their WASP neighbors and decided that prestigious LACs were fine for their kids.</p>
<p>Try it! I’ll have L.L. Bean send you a catalogue, too!</p>
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<p>While true, I believe this is changing. Our area has a significant Asian population and more and more are turning down Ivy’s and other larger universities for LACs and other small universities. The word of mouth is spreading about the education quality and there has been an observation that the students attending the LACs are employed in very good career paths, or in high quality graduate or professional schools. I have a friend whose family has strong and long roots in the Asian community who informally tracks this kind of thing. He shows a strong trend in the past 7 years toward LACs.</p>
<p>There are some variations in college preferences among Asians and Asian-Americans beyond HYPSM. Chicago is very popular among Koreans/Korean-Americans; Smith attracts lots of students from Korea who invariably complain about how restrictive their society is toward women. Wellesley has a good sprinkling of Chinese and Chinese-Americans (the Song Meiling effect, perhaps). I believe Williams also attracts its fair share of Asians.
When we toured Bowdoin, the admission officer stressed how much the school wanted to attract more minorities, including Asians.</p>
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<p>Can anyone cite a better study that comes to significantly different conclusions?</p>
<p>I’m not too interested in the question of whether LACs are “perceived” as second tier. I’m more interested in evidence that confirms or contradicts findings that LACs have a high success rate for Ph.D. production or for top professional school placements.</p>
<p>Cellardwellar challenges the HEDS Consortium Ph.D. productivity findings (see #61) by distinguishing between top graduate schools and all graduate schools, at least in the sciences. I’m not sure if that distinction is well founded, or not.</p>
<p>Suppose for example we define a “top” school as one that has 10 or more departments in the NRC-95 top-10. Suppose we find that national universities have a higher rate of placement into just those schools than LACs do (which I think is what cellardweller is saying). This would not necessarily show that the LAC graduates tend to get Ph.D.s from 2nd tier departments. It may mean they are more discriminating in choosing their graduate schools, gravitating toward the best departments not the most famous schools.</p>
<p>IDad: Thanks for posting that article. I think it was spot on in terms of the strengths and weaknesses of each kind of school.</p>
<p>I realize this entire thread is about “perception” and “1st tier vs 2nd tier”, so the following comments may be off-topic but I think they may be more relevant in making the LAC vs Univ choice.</p>
<p>One big disadvantage of LACs, almost by definition, is the absence of an affiliated graduate or professional school. The presence of a graduate school can provide opportunities to cross-register for graduate level courses in your major. There may also be more practical learning opportunities (e.g, working in labs, internships, etc), though I realize that such opportunities do exist on LACs too. In addition to the educational opportunities, it would also be an advantage to come in contact with graduate students in the fields that you are interested in. These interactions would provide a vital ‘informal’ type of counseling about future career options. </p>
<p>In an ideal world, a student would start college in the nurturing and intimate environment of an LAC, and then finish up in a full-scale research university. I think it would be a very fruitful collaboration for both LACs and research universities to enter into partnerships and offer such programs. For example, wouldn’t it be great if Swarthmore and UPenn offered a combined program where students enter Swarthmore, spend 2 years there, and then finish up at Penn? IMO, it could be the best of both worlds. </p>
<p>Of course, it it is probably impractical to expect colleges to offer such programs- they are, of course, competing against each other for the brightest students.</p>
<p>^ That’s an interesting idea. Swarthmore and Penn is probably a bad example, though; the two schools attract vastly different types of students. And which school would grant the degree? For graduate school, the Swarthmore name may be more potent than Penn.</p>