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

@homerdog There is a difference, but some people here think there isn’t because there are still smart kids at lower tiered schools, and the profs have PhD’s, which is not really the original question. The colleges will be teaching at the level of the majority of students there. The discussions at your S’s lower tiered schools may also be fabulous, but the kids may be thinking at a different level. I have a kid at the 35 level and one at the 29 level - they just don’t think at the same depth om a subject so I can’t imagine that they’d be taught the same way at 2 different tiered colleges. One’s not necessarily better than the other, but they will be different.

Skidmore College has the Periclean Honors Forum which my D is a member of. I would consider them a fairly selective college with a 25% ± acceptance rate this year.

@homerdog

This! The only way to know is to actually engage with the students and the professors. When trying to decide between her reach and her safety (with serious merit), my D sat in on classes and spoke with students on campus. She came to the conclusion that for the classes she cared about, the difference in educational quality was non-existent. That may not be true for other programs at her school.

Addressing the original question, yes. Though, as someone mentioned - compared to what? Compared to school rated #21? No Compared to a very large state school with 1st year lectures of 200+ people? Yes, absolutely. Is it worth $280,000 over 4 years? I would say no, unless the idea was to go right into the workforce with absolutely no thoughts of grad school. In an ideal world, I’d send my kid to a small LAC for the first year or two so he could have the nurturing that comes with small introductory classes, then I would set him loose at a larger university.

The level of the students surely factors into the level of the discussions. In the interest of clarifying the actual ACT / SAT ranges for the schools that @homerdog mentioned, here are the 25th and 75th percentile scores as reported in the 2017-2018 Common Data Sets for Carleton and Dickinson. The latest Grinnell CDS that I could find is a year older (possibly apples to oranges), and I didn’t find Denison’s CDS.

Carleton (2017-2018)
SAT Evidence-Based Reading and Writing 680 760
SAT Math 680 770
ACT Composite 31 34

Dickinson (2017-2018)
SAT Evidence-Based Reading and Writing 620 700
SAT Math 610 720
ACT Composite 27 32

There is some overlap between the two populations, but also a significant difference. I’d expect that this is reflected in at least some aspects of the academic experience.

Joining this discussion (didn’t read all the prior posts) to add my two cents: I think the advantage of ANY liberal arts college is the academic relationship with both peers and professors due to small class sizes and the personal and more holistic support to help students achieve theire academic and career goals.

While I think at the margin you could say that at the top 25 colleges the ‘quality’ of academic conversations inside and outside the classroom is higher – I also think that any LAC can propel a student to reach those same levels. Say you’re a very good student with a 29 or 30 ACT who goes to a competitive but not tippy top LAC. That student’s motivation, passion, academic growth catches fire due to high quality education, opportunities, support from the college and 10 years later is in the lab finding a cure to cancer.

Meanwhile, a 35 ACT student at a tippy top school is burned out, uninterested, or whatever and doesn’t take advantage of his / her opportunities and coasst through college and goes on with his/her life – hopefully a good one.

My point is that a student’s admissions profile is a snapshot in time of that kid. Potential is ‘assessed’ and kids are , to an extent, sorted through the admissions process, but then you have kids who ‘take off’ in college (late bloomers) in the right environment and other kids who flame out. Admissions decisions DO NOT equate with potential. Rinse, lather, repeat. Please tell your kids this over and over!!!

[[And this doesn’t even taken into account the EQ skills that take most people through life successfully. Think of all the successful business folks who do not go to highly ranked colleges or get great grades but do very well professionally and personally, but now I’m digressing. My friends who work in development say the B and C students (not A) in college are the biggest donors b/c they make the most money. ]]

So bottom line is that if a kid has motivation and catches fire at pretty much any LAC and reaches out to profs and seeks opportunities they can go anywhere – not being surrounded by the so called smartest of the smart (as deemed by tests and admissions) should not hold them back IF they are motivated, work hard, seek growth and opportunities, etc. .

Anecdote to share b/c I love it: Educational pathway of son of a former colleague:

-2 years at a community college after being a non serious student in HS

  • transferred to small, private, fairly non-selective LAC college near his hometown. Got interested in philosophy and took off academically. Won some national undergraduate paper award; published. Led to being accepted immediately after college to enter –
    – Masters at University of Denver (other side of country from his small college)
  • Entered doctoral program top 25 national university
  • Getting ready to do research at Trinity in Dublin as part of his doctoral program.

@homerdog:
“He probably needs to get to class at some of his safer schools to see what he thinks.”

Yes. I agree with @gallentjill and @almostthere2018.

You’ll have to decide for yourself if there is a difference and how much it matters. This includes faculty too (where I’d expect the quality to be amazingly high almost everywhere).

I think this is a really good point from @mom2and and I agree:

“With admission rates of less than 10% and elite colleges stating they could fill their classes several times over with qualified students, it is hard to imagine that schools just below the top 20 or even in the top 50 to 75 (or lower) are filled with students who are not capable of high level understanding of complex material.”

[Sorry I don’t know how to do the quote clip thing.]

@AlmostThere2018 good point. But then we should see test scores, etc, going up for those schools.

@homerdog - Their scores might be going up, I don’t know. But I also think being qualified is more than a test score.

@homerdog They are! That’s why the acceptance rates at so many schools is plummeting. Its not just the top 10. Look what’s happened to the admit rates at places like Skidmore and Kenyon over the years. And along with those declining rates, comes rising scores.

A little late to this discussion but just have to add in a comment. I am not a fan of judging schools based on rankings, nor do I feel test scores are a measure of the academics. However, I have to point out that one cannot compare test scores across the board as @purpletitan and others have done, without commenting on whether the schools being compared are test optional. Test optional schools will undoubtably have a ‘right’ skewed average as those on the lower end of the test range are likely not submitting scores.

Sorry, don’t know how to copy and paste on this site… but in post #79 these schools were presented as an example of scores being relatively close depite rankings differences.

Grinnell: 32 (98th percentile)
Macalester: 31 (96th percentile)
Knox: 26 (83rd percentile)
Lawrence: 29 (92nd percentile)

Haverford: 32 (98th percentile)
Vassar: 31 (96th percentile)
Sarah Lawrence: 29 (92nd percentile)
St. John’s (MD): 30 (95th percentile)

However, Knox; Lawrence; Sarah Lawrence; AND St. Johns are all test optional schools while the other four are not.
If all scores were reported, the differences would very likely be more significant.

^ I think a kid has to visit. For instance, St. John’s is among the top 10 feeders in to PhDs programs for PoliSci and English (top 20 for History). Lawrence is top 5 for Physics. Top 20 for Math and Science overall. Knox is top 20 for Economics, Chemistry, and Math&Science overall.

That doesn’t happen unless the school provides good preparation for those subjects.

^ Agreed. Fit is paramount at LAC’s.

I’m sorry, I’m a little cranky today, and I’m not directing this at the specific posters here but — high test scores are neither necessary, nor sufficient, for meaningful work in small classes. High test scores mean a kid can perform the tasks tested at an extraordinarily high level. That does not necessarily overlap with intellectual curiosity or thoughtful interpretations of issues, or all kinds of other attributes which contribute to serious work in the classroom. Of course, there are high stat kids who are deeply intellectually curious. But please don’t assume that the “rabble” with a 30 or 28 are not going to be able to keep up with the 35 ACT student. We know a bunch of kids at Carleton, Swat and Midd and they are not a different caliber thinker than the kids we know at Denison, St Lawrence and Dickinson (who took the merit awards there).

Agree with Purple Titan. If you want to put together a list of target LACs based on strength of major it might look different than a media ranking that is general and non-specific and a potential LAC applicant really needs to keep that in mind. The big research unis may also have those slight differences e.g. MSU is better for physics than UofM and those sorts of things, but it is more pronounced at LACs.

@Midwestmomofboys Absolutely right! Also don’t forget the lopsided kid with immense talent in the humanities and little talent for STEM. That kid may be shut out of the top 20 because of lower test scores but will be no less able to contribute to the college classes they are actually taking.

Here’s my take. You CAN get a great education almost anywhere. Obviously the quality of the professors will vary greatly and you aren’t likely to find the best at a community college, and some schools are magnets for great profs in specific subjects. SO if you know what you want to study do the research…

But what I meant was, the right kind of student can thrive at a major research university with 800 person classes just as well as the LAC student in 16 person seminars. However, it’s a whole lot easier to thrive in that smaller LAC environment and most people aren’t as self-directed as the most successful students in the big universities. When I was at UCLA I made it a point to go to my profs office hours and get into material discussions about the subject of the classes. I would say almost every prof who I took knew me, even if the class was 500+, at least at the time. Most probably forgot me after the quarter, though a few I am in touch with to this day.

But there’s absolutely no question the experience my son is having at an LAC is better overall. He’s not the kind to seek profs out in office hours yet most of his know him anyway and some actively seek to assist him in matters beyond the classroom – getting internships or research gigs, etc. The college structures it to encourage profs to eat with students – they pay for their meals if they eat without students and are comped if they eat with them. I don’t know if this gimmick would even be necessary, but it’s a vast universe apart from my UCLA experience. Same with career services, etc. The school guarantees a job for everyone who wants them even if they are full pay. And they pay students for their extracurricular activities if they involve work with any campus-affiliated activity. For example, if you work on a professor-directed theater or dance production you get paid. I could list many other examples. There are obvious advantages to being one of only 2,000 students in a place with an 8:1 faculty ratio and vastly more financial resources per students.