<p>The official teaching load is the same at LACs and research universities, but the professors at the research schools are more likely to have big NIH/NSF/etc. grants that they use to “buy out” their teaching portion with the funding to do more research.</p>
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<p>Well, this isn’t entirely true.</p>
<p>First of all, you don’t need to have a letter of recommendation from a top researcher to get into a top PhD program. If you do have one, it of course can help, but most successful applicants have excellent recommendations from run-of-the-mill professors in their fields. The corollary is that the big shots with a lot of clout often don’t teach undergraduates very often, or at all, so trying to get a recommendation from them is nigh impossible. When you work in their research lab you are typically working with their postdocs and graduate students, because they are off in their offices writing grants to keep the lab funded.</p>
<p>Also, as pointed out, the top LACs have teaching loads that are comparable to the top universities precisely because they want their professors to be competitive for grants. If you go teach at a Swarthmore, Amherst, Williams, etc., you might have a 2/2 load, which is also what you’d get at University of Minnesota or Michigan. If you’re at a mid-level LAC like a Rhodes or Agnes Scott, you might have a 3/2 or a 3/3. But that’s also true at regional flagships - I have a friend at UNC-Greensboro (not exactly a no-name state school) who teaches a 3/3 load, but I saw a job opening at Agnes Scott College for a 3/2 load. Only the very largest public flagships can offer a reduced teaching load for powerhouse researchers.</p>
<p>The point is - nobody is expecting undergraduates to do cutting-edge research with the top names in their field. Getting good “research experience” is about getting an introduction what it means to be a researcher. For the vast majority of undergrads, you can do that just as well at a small LAC or regional college/university with decent research opportunities as you can at a top university. In fact, you might actually get more face time with the professor/lab leader at a small LAC or public college because there are no graduate students and postdocs in between you and the professor. At small LACs, professors have to rely on their undergraduate to keep the lab running, and so undergrads are often entrusted with more serious tasks that would be handled by a grad student at the public flagship or private research university.</p>
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<p>Also true, but the caveat to that is that means they probably aren’t teaching Intro to Basketweaving or even the Social Basketweaving seminar so that you have a chance to meet them as a junior undergrad. They probably teach the graduate seminar on Weaving Baskets with A Specific Green Reed and that’s it.</p>
<p>Besides…as an undergrad, you don’t need an NSF or NIH grant to get good research experience. What you need is a patient professor who is willing to show you the ropes and let you explore.</p>
<p>Don’t know the answer to this at all, but I wonder how much having to write a senior thesis as an undergrad has on grad school placement? Many of the elite LACs require it, as do honors colleges at state flagships, and it’s an option at many schools. Just guessing, but I would think that sort of thing could get you a leg up over your straight BS/BA grad. I would imagine the thesis is often not complete by the time admissions decisions roll around, but the process of researching and writing one would give a writer of a letter of recommendation a pretty strong basis to write upon.</p>
<p>Okay, so my point was that if you do work with a researcher who is well known in his or her field, or if you take a 1 or 2 upperclass seminars with and get a recommendation from that person, it’s going to be much easier to get into a top PhD program (everything else held constant). It is certainly NOT necessary to go to a college with professors who publish lots of research work in top/well-read journals. But if you do go to a school with those kinds of professors, it can be helpful. That said, there are many other factors that are important, such as the PhD program’s experience with past students from that school (in the case of LACs) etc etc. I’m all for LACs, but I am also acutely aware of the fact that the recommendations of professors from UChicago, Yale, and Brown could probably pull more strings and turn more heads than those of professors from Vassar, Reed and Swarthmore, in PhD admission committees (everything else held constant).</p>
<p>I recently read a post on CC about a person who went to two summer programs at MIT to do research and stuff (from a “mid-range” school), and worked hard and impressed the advisors there. He was admitted to every PhD program he applied to (something in the flavor of biology–I forgot), including MIT, Stanford, etc. Also consider the case of my cousin, who went to Lafayette College, and did not get into any “top 10” programs, despite having strong research experience w/ Lafayette college professors, honors during graduation, etc etc. Lafayette, as many of us know, is notably strong amongst liberal arts colleges for its science programs. I’m not saying that people from Lafayette can’t get into top programs. All I’m saying is that if he had gone to MIT/Stanford (whether for undergrad or for the summers) and then had gotten a strong rec from an adviser there, he would have probably had more success in graduate school admissions.</p>
<p>Sorry, but you’re comparing apples and oranges. Lafayette, fine school that it is, is not MIT. And it’s not fair to compare Lafayette to Vasser, Swarthmore, or even Reed.</p>
<p>That seems to be @International95’s point.</p>
<p>No, he’s trying to take someone’s experience at Lafayette and compare it to someone’s experience at MIT and then project the Lafayette experience to Vasser, Swarthmore, and Reed in comparison to Chicago, Yale, and Brown. Not only is it anecdotal, the schools are not even in the same league.</p>
<p>What??? Are you serious? Here’s where Swarthmore, Vassar and Reed can’t touch Lafayette: engineering (not even Swarthmore–its engineering program is too general; the others don’t even have a program in the same). Here’s where Vassar can’t touch Lafayette: physics and math. If you are under the impression that these LACs have professors who can pull more strings than Lafayette professors, I’d call you naive. My cousin fully loved his Lafayette experience and would not have chosen it over any other LAC partly because there are few LACs with strong specialized engineering programs.</p>
<p>I’m not comparing those experiences. I’m saying, CONSIDER these experiences (so don’t put words in my mouth -_-). I’m saying, had he gone to MIT for the summer, he would have probably gotten into his top choice engineering PhD program: Princeton. I’m saying, where you go to college COULD matter in these decisions (not in terms of the NAME of the school, but rather in terms of which professors you work with–which is what this thread is about!), but it’s certainly NOT necessary to go to MIT or the sorts to get into top programs. Just that your life would be easier in terms of admissions to those programs if you did (whether during the summer or as an undergrad).</p>
<p>Is that clear? It’s possible to make it from anywhere–that’s what I maintain. But having connections helps. All that said, most LACs, even top ones, cannot boast of having professors whose reputation in research is in the same league as those of top universities (or unis with especially strong programs in certain subjects). They can, however, boast offering superior teaching, which is the first thing that students should be concerned about, and why many students forgo big universities like MIT for the LAC experience.</p>
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<p>Wrong. The top high schools are selective. They have a pre-screened concentration of high stats kids who would likely have gone on to a good college from whatever high school they graduated from. </p>
<p>Which undergrad school you graduate from isn’t critical, provided it’s a reasonably solid school. In any case, a grad school doesn’t want students predominantly from its own undergrad school. They want students who will bring fresh perspectives from other schools.</p>
<p>Your GRE score will matter a lot.</p>
<p>Also sorry to be picky, but its Vassar, not Vasser.</p>
<p>Also, “even Reed”? Reed is every bit as good as Swarthmore and Vassar. Vassar actually trails far behind when it comes to math and physics.</p>
<p>Interesting discussion… here is our experience - S1 is now in a top engineering grad program and majored in a ‘hard’ sciences at Vassar and is doing extremely well in grad school. Vassar’s physics and math courses gave him a solid foundation to succeed even in a new field of study (engineering) - and the Vassar physics and math courses also benefited a Vassar classmate of his who is now in a top science PhD program. S1 was told that his double major at Vassar made him more attractive to his graduate school. Vassar’s reputation helped him get the summer internships leading to a wonderful recommendation which certainly contributed to S1’s grad admittance (written by his engineering supervisor at the large corporation where he interned for three summers). </p>
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<p>For PhD programs, that means a reasonably solid department in the undergraduate major that one studies to prepare for PhD study. (This is not always the same as the PhD major; for example, economics PhD programs place heavy emphasis on the math and statistics preparation of those applying.)</p>