Do you think you get a significantly better education at a top 20 LAC

Parents Forum
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compared to a school that’s not ranked as high? I’m not talking about the difference between the local community college and Williams; more like the difference between Haverford and Sarah Lawrence or Vassar and St. John’s. I’m also not talking about what opportunities you would have post graduation, but the actual curriculum and instruction. Does being at one of tippy top schools necessarily prepare you better for graduate school or life beyond college?

This is something I’ve been thinking about a lot as my daughter’s been going through the college search process and I’d be interested in hearing what people here thing about it.

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I don’t think there’s a significant difference related to rank, but the schools you name have significant individual differences. And yet I think 3 of those are much more alike than different.

St John’s the great books college is for a certain kid, who probably isn’t the same kid attracted to the others.

So no, not based on rank.

But a top 50 LAC vs a really unselective one that is also budget strapped? Yes, there will be a difference. Williams vs Wittenberg. Wellesley vs Sweet Briar. Denison vs Albright? I’d say yes.

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@OHMomof2 I’m also very interested in the answer to this question. I don’t know anything about the colleges you named in your post, but could you elaborate on how you think their financial situation impacts the educational quality? How about less selective schools often mentioned here like Ursinus and Quinnipiac? How would the educational quality stack up against higher ranked schools.

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IDK state publics are hard to beat these days for a truly motivated student I don’t care what the rankings say.

As far as your specific question I want to believe there is a difference, but I doubt there is.

My wife always talks about the Tulane professors that would help out at the local community college in New Orleans. How nice is that being taught by a Tulane professor at a CC.

The rankings game has really made everything goofy these days!

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A school in financial trouble may reduce offerings of courses or majors to balance the budget. If it has had chronic financial trouble, it may not fill vacant tenure-track faculty jobs and instead use lower cost adjuncts if it even offers the additional courses that would be taught if it had more faculty. Or it may increase class sizes so that a smaller faculty can teach all of the needed courses, which may not be an issue at a school where the class sizes are already large, but for LACs kind of defeats the purpose.

In more extreme cases, a school in financial trouble may cease operations, forcing students to look for other schools to transfer to (which can be difficult if they are senior level).

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Among the schools the OP mentioned, I agree with @OHMomof2 that individual differences among the schools would matter more. This is a care where rankings really make it worse.
For instance, Sarah Lawrence features tutorials and sends a bunch of kids on exchange to Oxford every year but isn’t strong in STEM (it actually has a limited number of majors). St. John’s is Great Books and thus is a top feeder in to Poli sci and English PhD programs (maybe a few other subjects) but also isn’t strong in STEM. Those curricular differences would and should matter more when you are considering LACs.
Ursinus I thought had a reputation of being strong in STEM.
I don’t see Quinnipiac as a LAC. Aren’t the strongest areas there professional fields like communications and TV production?

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So no, I certainly don’t believe that those top Sarah Lawrence students who are receiving PPE tutorials at Oxford or St. John’s Great Books students who enter Poli sci PhD programs received a significantly worse education than they could have gotten at Haverford/Vassar.

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Much depends on your choice of major. Students studying marine science at Eckerd, math at St. Olaf, anthropology at Beloit, or religion at Wheaton (IL) have no reason to envy the students of any top 20 LAC.

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What @warblersrule said is very true.
Here are rankings of PhD feeders (per capita PhDs by undergrad origin and subject):
https://www. collegetransitions .com/infographics/top-feeders-phd-programs

As you can see, some LACs aren’t very highly ranked by USNews at all, but on a

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I think it depends on the kid. I’ll tell you the things I think my kid got out of a top ranked LAC. But I certainly know kids can succeed at many other types and levels of school. Here were some benefits:

  • My kid was KNOWN by multiple profs and mentors at her school. She had 3 profs she worked with on research (1 for 1st two years, then 2 who shared a lab that she researched in for the last two years). Also residential life deans who knew her in the dorms. They knew her well, and she felt comfortable with them when she needed help or advice, and not just about academics. She is still in regular contact with a couple of them now that she is off in grad school.
  • She got GREAT support in grad school applications. Her mentors advised her on where to apply, helped her with subject test GRE prep, wrote recs for her, and helped her parse her offers.
  • Her academic advisor helped her make sure she was on track for graduation starting freshman year, meeting all graduation and major requirements.
  • Her college had a lot of funding for student research, even starting summer after freshman year.
  • The college had funding for students to attend conferences. My kid got to attend and do some kind of presentation every year starting soph year.
  • There was a lot of school supplied tutoring for her classes. She never struggled to find help. I remember waiting for her to leave campus one Wednesday before Thanksgiving, and she spent over 2 hours with a prof getting homework help that morning (not regular class time).
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@intparent do you attribute those perks to the specific school she went to or to a liberal arts education in general?

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A quick response. “Top 20 LAC” in who’s opinion? There are differences in the academic emphases and social environments among LAC’s but I don’t take the rankings all that seriously in this group. Here’s a random and quick list of THIRTY FIVE LAC’s that I know are credible, and where one can obtain an outstanding education. But it’s not an exhaustive list, and I’m not ranking them. ANY of them could be very good for the right candidate. And there are additional worthy colleges.

NOT IN ORDER EXCEPT FOR THE FIRST ONE B/C I WENT THERE: Reed (my alma mater), Carleton, Kalamazoo, Grinnell, Oberlin, St. Olaf, Beloit, Pomona, Lewis & Clark, Bryn Mawr, Colby, Swarthmore, Haverford, Amherst, Williams, Claremont McKenna, Harvey Mudd, Wellesley, Bowdoin, Middlebury, Davidson, Wellesley, Smith, Wesleyan, Colorado College, Bates, Macalaster, Kenyon, Scripps, Skidmore, Mt. Holyoke, Centre, Trinity, Denison, Washington & Lee.

AND MORE. These are all terrific, perhaps with different strengths and atractiveness. Don’t get excited by rankings within this class of colleges. Figure out what location, campus atmosphere, special programs are attractive to YOU. And figure out a strategy for selecting among them, since you can’t apply to all!

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@inparent as a follow up to cbrbowie’s question, do you really feel you D’s experience is universal, or even common at her college, or do you think it was tied more to her individual personality and drive?

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@cb4bowie I think being known is common at LACs. Small class sizes and good opportunities to get to know profs. But I think the funding for research, conferences, and tutoring is more specific to higher ranked schools that have larger endowments (and higher tuitions…). I think coming from a well known school may have helped her grad school apps, too.

My other kid went to a lower ranked LAC and also had a good experience. She was a kid who would squeeze the maximum juice out of every experience, although she didn’t have the stats for a top 20 school. She didn’t want to go to grad school and wasn’t a STEM kid (so research wasn’t as important to her). For her, a lower ranked school was fine.

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With LACs, rankings are largely useless. Certain LACs have departments that are gems that the overall ranking of the school may not reflect.

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Yep. Departments or style. If you think that Oxbridge-style tutorials are a terrific way to learn, then you can go to Oxbridge or Williams, but also Sarah Lawrence, NCF, William Jewell’s Oxbridge Honors, or Ohio U’s Honors Tutorial College. If you think a Great Books education is awesome, St. John’s and a few others are for you. If you think a block plan facilitates learn best, Colorado College (and maybe a few others) is for you.

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I think a prior poster hit it on the head about faculty resources—in looking at this issue, one thing you will note about the top LACs is the sheer number of full-time faculty they have for a school their size. Go far down the list, you start seeing more and more visiting professors and assistant professors (without tenure). Either way, you get small classs, etc., but I worry that there are too few 45-60 year old profs with reputations and connections.

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@BooBooBear, yes, there is a correlation between resources and rankings, as wealth plays a big role in USNews rankings.

But I’m results-oriented and you can’t ignore the success that certain LACs outside the top 20 have in certain subjects. If their students do just as well as those in top LACs in those subjects (despite those LACs, on average, taking in statistically weaker students) what does that tell you?

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Well, regarding profs, the talent pool in the US is ridiculously deep in terms of quality of profs. You can get amazing/outstanding profs at directional colleges because we have so few tenured teaching positions compared to the number of PhD students graduating, and this has been going on for some time. So I don’t necessarily think the top 20 LACs have better teaching or research talent than the next 50, honestly.

But it is worthwhile to look at what % of the courses are taught by TAs or adjuncts at a given college when assessing what you are going to get for your money. Not that a TA or adjunct can’t be a good teacher, because there obviously are some (and some profs are terrible teachers and mentors, and the tenure system allows them to stay in place). But in general, a school with a higher % of profs teaching classes means more experienced teachers who have completed their PhD, and I think that is a good thing.

I also agree that some LACs outside the top 20 have sort of specialty niches that they are strong in. Examples might be Whitman’s strong focus on combining environmental-related majors with other majors, Dickinson’s international business major, St. Olaf’s math department, Lawrence in Physics, Kenyon in English, Franklin & Marshall for pre-med/sciences, Reed for Physics and generally for students who want to eventually get PhDs (although Reed might very well be in the top 20 if they would just play the ranking game, which they refuse to do).

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TAs and adjuncts may be used differently. The most common use case for a TA is as a secondary instructor of a course (discussion or lab associated with a lecture given by a faculty member). That may not be the case for adjuncts.