Are liberal arts colleges perceived as second tier?

<p>has she finished her undergrad career? what is she doing now?</p>

<p>I had an interesting discussion with a Cornell math prof, who is the husband of a friend, and is Chinese, with BS from a Chinese school and PhD from MIT. S and I visited Cornell last during the big spring break college visitation trip (U. Richmond, GW, American, Vassar, Tufts, Middlebury, Syracuse, Colgate, and Cornell). </p>

<p>Prof seemed quite surprised that S would consider applying ED to Vassar. He had a fairly low opinion of LACs, and said that he found that math grad students from LACs tended to start out behind students from research U’s, mostly because the LAC students hadn’t taken graduate level math classes already, while the U students had. </p>

<p>He did say though that he was sure that an LAC prof would do a better job teaching Calculus than him. </p>

<p>When my friend/his wife pointed out that S is interested in going to law school rather than a PhD program, he did accept that S wouldn’t really have the need to take graduate level classes as an undergrad, and would probably benefit more from having a better Calc teacher. But he still strongly believed that Cornell would be a better choice than an LAC.</p>

<p>I personally don’t think is there is any single right answer. It will vary for different kids, and even for the same kid. I think S could be happy at all of the schools we visited, even though he liked some better than others. He doesn’t really know whether he would prefer a large LAC or a small-medium U, and I imagine he will end up applying to both types.</p>

<p>What happened to monydad’s daughter could happen to a student at a research university as well. Not every department covers every aspect of its field. But, yes, far more likely to happen at an LAC.</p>

<p>But an LAC is also far more likely to do something about it. I have a nephew who just graduated from a well-regarded 10-20 LAC. He had something of a dream career there, including getting funding to travel all over the country researching an area of interest to him, and support from the college to create a large-scale community-supported agriculture program with the college as key subscriber. When his interests outstripped the expertise of the faculty there, the college paid a well-known professor at a university about 60 miles away to advise him and consult with him from time to time on the major he had devised for himself. The college’s flexibility and commitment to let a student go where his studies were leading him was very, very impressive.</p>

<p>I meant to add this to my previous post:</p>

<p>Wherever one goes, one learns from the teachers that are there. When I went to college, I thought I wanted to study Renaissance poetry, and T.S. Eliot. But the exciting teachers weren’t that interested in Renaissance poetry, and it turned out that T. S. Eliot was out of fashion. So I studied Romantic poetry, and I read practically everything Wallace Stevens had ever written. It took me almost a year to like Wallace Stevens. But I figured that they knew more than I did, I was there because of them, so I might as well read what they wanted me to read. I think that was a good approach. I can read Renaissance poetry if I want to – and sometimes I do – and use the tools I acquired then.</p>

<p>If I had gone to an LAC, I would have had a much shorter list of professors to glom onto, but I would have done exactly the same thing: I would have figured out who was doing cool stuff, and I would have studied whatever they wanted to teach. That’s why, in retrospect, I am sure I would have been fine at an LAC, although at the time I would have scoffed at the notion. The core of my education was furnished by 5 or 6 teachers, and the same would have been true there.</p>

<p>JHS:</p>

<p>Top LACs do seem to exert themselves to address the needs of their students. The young man I met had taken one class in Asian history from the lone prof who covered everything on Asia at his LAC. On his recommendation, that young man spent a year at Harvard, which has one of the top if not the top program in East Asian studies. I wonder, however, how frequent that is across the board at LACs.</p>

<p>Of course, the problem is not limited to LACs. Another young man I met had gotten smitten by history when he took a required HASS class at MIT where he was a bio major. By the time he graduated from MIT, he was spending most of his time at Harvard, studying Renaissance history. MIT has stellar profs in the social sciences and humanities, but not enough breadth in these fields as they are seen as supporting the science and engineering majors.</p>

<p>“…S wouldn’t really have the need to take graduate level classes as an undergrad”</p>

<p>Wouldn’t have the NEED, but what if he should develop the DESIRE?</p>

<p>“Wherever one goes, one learns from the teachers that are there.” </p>

<p>Right, so its better to have more teachers there, so you’re more likely to be able to learn what you want, as your wants may develop. It’s better to have your choices be more guided by your own desires, and less by the shortcomings in the menu offered by your school, is my opinion, in retrospect.</p>

<p>Of course there are also, theoretically, tradeoffs in the other direction. But my family wasn’t negatively impacted by those. In fact D2 transferred to a larger U and is loving it there.</p>

<p>No single college or U covers every single sphere of human knowledge. To pick an LAC or a U with the presumption that anything you want is going to be there is patently naive. It just doesn’t exist.</p>

<p>But kids should make choices with their eyes open. Not every college does everything well. That should be a given. An 18 year old is also not going to be able to predict with a high level of certainty what he or she is going to want to study in 3 years. That’s also a given. Small departments- whether at LAC’s or large research U’s- are really at the mercy of the faculty. You could be majoring in a subject and discover that of the 5 faculty in your discipline, one is on maternity leave for next semester, one is on sabbatical in Australia, and one is emeritus and only teaches every other semester. And you’ve already taken what you want to take with the other two professors.</p>

<p>But at a large U there will be fungible courses in related disciplines-- and you can probably make it work. At a small U or LAC you might not be able to make it work (which is why kids transfer, or take classes someplace else, or take an extra year to graduate, or change majors, or a host of other options.)</p>

<p>If you’re majoring in bio or econ or English literature this is probably not a problem at any accredited college in the US. If you’re majoring in Egyptology or ethnomusicology or Urban plannning but with a focus on botanical preservation and restoration, it may be a problem. Or not.</p>

<p>But it is dumb to claim that U Michigan or Berkeley are so big that they have everything, or that Bryn Mawr or Conn. College are so small that your average kid will run out of classes. No college has everything. And trust me- if your little Johnny or Susie discover their passion for Pre-Colombian inscription and ends up running out of courses at Huge U, it will be as much of a pain to transfer as it would if he or she were at tiny podunk college with a fine Art History department (but with a focus on Chinese ceramics).</p>

<p>I donno about everything anyone wants to study, I know the U’s we looked at for transfer had what she wanted, and the odds certainly tilt that way, when there are multiple times the number of faculty in an area.</p>

<p>That wasn’t the only issue, either. There were the courses only given every other year, or whenever they could find an adjunct to come in and teach it; only one section of a particular course she needed offered, which conflicted with the one section of another particular course she needed… </p>

<p>all this related to being too small, having too few courses/sections, with too few teachers there.</p>

<p>This is why mid-sized research universities are such a good compromise between too large (where you can end up spending more than 4 years to graduate) or too small. Even so, they’re not for everybody and they are not necessary for everybody.</p>

<p>
[QUOTE=cellardweller]

How often does a student turn down Harvard for Amherst or MIT for Harvey Mudd?

[/quote]

If my Mudder had ever shown any interest in MIT, I would have discouraged it mightily. I’m convinced he’ll get more exposure and better opportunities as an undergrad at Mudd… and most likely be happier too. His reasoning about Caltech was the same: Great place to go for grad school.

[QUOTE=WaitingDad]

It’s the same reason parents and students put their school’s stickers on their car rear windshields…they are proud of their school and they want others to notice them.

[/quote]

We have a Mudd sticker on the rear windshield of the car I drive to work at the state flagship, one department of which has tried to model its Engineering program on Mudd’s. Employers and faculty seem to know the name quite well. Beyond that, we take some perverse pleasure in the number of people who don’t know the name. Maybe we’re just weird that way. ;)</p>

<p>The question of public perception is academically interesting, but in the end, what matters is what the student gains from the environment – education, opportunities, positioning for whatever comes next (employment, grad school, whatever), and personal development. Anyone who ignores those factors in favor of what other folks will think of a name… well, I think he might end up missing out no matter where he goes.</p>

<p>cellardweller – S1 is at Chicago, but his final three choices were Chicago, Mudd and MIT (in that order). He wanted a strong humanities component, and he didn’t want to go to Harvard to get it. He had been at intense math/science programs for seven years and wanted to meet people who were as passionate about other fields as he is about his, but also wanted a place where he could continue his studies at a high level. All three were superlative choices, and it was wrenching to say thanks, but no thanks to two of them. </p>

<p>There have been a couple of parents on the Mudd boards over the past three years whose students picked Mudd over MIT. Mudd > Caltech was no contest. I realize that’s not the case for others, but it was quite visceral with S.</p>

<p>After a year at “THE top LAC,” I’ve come to realize the futility of defending LACs and their educational mission against naysayers. Honestly, I could care less that uninformed, ignorant, and narrow-minded people condescend to me; their opinions simply carry no weight in my mind.</p>

<p>I find it hard to believe that this thread has reached nine pages worth of posts.</p>

<p>Let’s not assume that all LACs are the same.</p>

<p>For instance, people are making statements such as students at LAC can’t take grad level classes or students in specailized areas have to take all their classes with one professor.</p>

<p>Not necessarily. First, many of the upper-level “undergrad” classes at e very to LACs are equivalent to research university grad school classes. Second, at places like Bryn Mawr, Haverford, and Swarthmore students can take grad level classes at UPENN. </p>

<p>Also school with strong consortiums (Bryn Mawr/Haverford/Swarthmore or Amherst/Smith/Mt. Holyoke/Hampshire or Pomona/Pitzer/Mudd/Scripps) actually provide multiple options when it comes to small faculties. </p>

<p>Moreover, schools provide the opportunity for deeper relationships between faculty and students (which may be important to some people and not important to others). I’ll note that when you combine Haverford and Bryn Mawr faculty and student majors in the Classics department there’s no university in the world, other than Oxford, that offers more per capita. So there can be major strengths to small programs as well.</p>

<p>The great thing about U.S. higher education is that we have lots of diversity in how it is delivered and lots of entry points. People can choose what will work for them. LACs aren’t for everyone neither are major research universities. </p>

<p>To try to talk about one group (LAC, private mid-sized, public research, public land-grant) as a generic whole easily lumped together and to conclude one that one type is “second-tier” is a waste and nonsensical.</p>

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<p>We researched top LACs for math and found they would not meet S’s needs.</p>

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<p>If LACs have fabulous labs most of them are not putting them to very good use. I agree that top LACs provide excellent <em>undergrad</em> education, rivaling or surpassing that offered by the top universities. But when it comes to high-end scientific research, LAC output is pretty thin. </p>

<p>I make this observation based on a long career career of reading the scientific journals for my work. Pick up any issue of the flagship journal of any lab-based scientific discipline, say the Journal of Biochemistry, or the Journal of Virology, or the Journal of Immunology, or Cancer Research. etc. or top general science journals like Science or Nature, and flip through from paper to paper and read the institutions the authors are publishing from, and you’ll seldom see any papers coming out of an LAC. Maybe one paper in 50 or so might have one author from an LAC co-authoring some work with his/her university-based colleagues. Papers published solely from LAC authors are rarer still. All the rest comes from universities and research institutes.</p>

<p>CC members who have kids at LACs or are simply LAC boosters often brag about the terrific research opportunities at LACs. Maybe so. But the quality of the LAC research or the significance of the questions that research seeks to answer is often lower, because the research going on there seldom merits publication in the high-end journals.</p>

<p>Take a look at the faculty at Reed College. Many are doing exceptional research, one who I know, is considered one of the top contributors in his field. Plus, I believe they have the only undergraduate operated nuclear reactor in the country (in the basement of the psychology building, …when I asked a student why there, he replied they did not want to risk damaging any real scientists, pretty funny).</p>

<p>" Pick up any issue of the flagship journal of any lab-based scientific discipline, say the Journal of Biochemistry, or the Journal of Virology, or the Journal of Immunology, or Cancer Research. etc. or top general science journals like Science or Nature, and flip through from paper to paper and read the institutions the authors are publishing from, and you’ll seldom see any papers coming out of an LAC."</p>

<p>What % of these professors doing published research have undergrads working in their labs? (I’m sure posters will list people they know…but anyone know what %?) Although the papers coming out of an LAC may be few…it’s likely virtually all of them had undergrads assisting with the research.</p>

<p>But…I don’t even think that’s the argument to make. There is ample evidence to show that grads of liberal arts colleges are being admitted to, and graduating from. top graduate research programs. </p>

<p>In addition to studies I’ve posted on this thread, participants on this thread may be interested to know that The Goldwater Foundation includes Liberal Arts students in its scholarships for academic merit in math, science and engineering. These scholarships are intended for students who plan to get PhD’s. It appears that at least 20 - 25% of this year’s new scholarships went to students currently attending liberal arts colleges. Most recent list of awards is here: [Barry</a> M. Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Program: 2009 Goldwater Scholars](<a href=“http://www.act.org/goldwater/sch-2009.html]Barry”>http://www.act.org/goldwater/sch-2009.html)</p>

<p>I agree that for students ready for graduate level research when they enter college, and who want to do that level of research, it is likely to be more available at a research university. But, any student wanting to get a good background in basic research in preparation for attending graduate schools, can find those opportunities at all of the top liberal arts colleges. </p>

<p>Although a strong advocate for liberal arts colleges, I would also agree that they are probably not the place for someone like Marite’s son…who, if I recall…had already gone beyond most levels of undergraduate math before even entering college.</p>

<p>At top schools, students like my S are not at all rare. Top LACs do offer quite a few advanced classes, but often in alternate years, making scheduling quite difficult and reducing opportunities to advance further.</p>

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<p>I don’t disagree with that. As I said, LACs are capable of providing a first-rate <em>undergrad</em> education. But when someone starts boasting about the wonderful research, outstanding labs, or shiny nuclear reactors at their favorite LAC, I say great, but show me the output. What are they doing with all that equipment? Why is it so rare to see significant work coming out of those schools? If the research is so great why aren’t they getting published?</p>

<p>Everybody can point to their favorite exception, but you don’t have to look very hard to see that the general trend is that the amount of top-quality research coming out of LACs is very low.</p>