HA LAC's - Areas of specialization?

I’m hoping to get a quick… Word association type… reaction for the following HA LAC’s in terms of their most dominant program(s) of study. Essentially, what is each of the following schools MOST known for academically by reputation (and hopefully reality). I have my own perceptions on some of these which I want to challenge/validate, but others I really have no handle on at all. Many thanks for any info along these lines on any or all of the following… Just looking for the one or maybe two “signature” programs or areas of study that each of these schools is immediately knowin for:

Amherst
Bowdoin
Bucknell
Carleton
Davidson
Haverford
Holy Cross
Lafayette
Middlebury
Swarthmore
Tufts
Washington & Lee
WUSTL
Wesleyan
Williams

Amherst – English, history
Bowdoin – political science (http://www.bowdoin.edu/news/archives/1bowdoincampus/001355.shtml)
Carleton – geology (http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/carleton-college/1536797-how-does-carleton-produce-so-many-geology-phds.html)
Middlebury – foreign languages
Holy Cross - classics (http://academics.holycross.edu/classics)
Tufts - international relations (not a LAC)
WUSTL - biomedical engineering (not a LAC)
Williams - art history, math (http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/31/arts/legacy-one-college-s-long-shadow-looking-back-at-the-williams-mafia.html)

Those are some departments I associate with them, for one reason or other. Let’s see if other posters agree.
By the way, what’s an “HA” Liberal Arts College?

The problem is, these are all top tier schools. The reason for their excellent reputations are that these schools excel in a variety of fields, many of which aren’t known to students outside of the school. For instance, when I took mineralogy, I’m pretty sure I spent half my time on Wellesley’s geology site. Yet how many people associate Wellesley with a strong earth science program?

If you have a very specific interest (ex: comparative Middle Eastern history, Engineering, or geophysics) out are extremely advanced in a particular field, I think it would behoove you to analyze the strengths of the institutions you’re considering. However, if your interests are more broad, and will likely major in something like econ, environmental science, or English just choose which school you like the best.

Bucknell: Engineering and Business
Carleton: All the science programs and CS is on the rise
Lafayette: Engineering, Economics
Middlebury: Languages, Social Sciences
Swarthmore: Social Sciences (Economics, Political Science)–[* Few graduate with an engineering degree though it is one of the few LACs that offer their own engineering programs.]
Tufts: IR
Washington and Lee: Business
WUSTL: Biomedical Sciences

(Mostly based on the number of graduates in these majors according to the data in College Navigator)

Wesleyan: MB&B, Film, Ethnomusicology
http://www.stateuniversity.com/universities/CT/Wesleyan_University.html

Thanks all for the info… Would appreciate any other info or details that anyone else might offer as well.

tk21769 - you’re right… I inadvertently lumped in a couple of non LACs from S’s target list. I actually didn’t realize that Tuft’s wasn’t an LAC for some reason… So thanks for that edification too. HA = High Academic… A term I probably didn’t need to include as not relevant to the question.

Circuitrider - excuse my ignorance, but I’m stumped as to what MB&B designate… MicroBiology/Biology?

Perhaps as important to note when looking at small schools is to note which subjects they are weak in, so that the student’s interests can be used to avoid those which are weak in the student’s interests. Many of the schools will be strong in a few subjects, decent in many, but weak in another few.

For example, a student interested in computer science may not find Holy Cross to be a very good fit, due to limited offerings in that subject.

@soylentgreen It’s natural to assume that Tufts is a LAC since, for mainly historic reasons, it is a member of the New England Small College Athletic Conference (NESCAC), but, it is the only member with the official Carnegie designation of research university and is three times the size of the next largest NESCAC college (Wesleyan.)

MB&B=Microbiology and Biochemistry.

circuitrider - thanks again for the info and clarification.

ucbalumnus - great point… that would be really instructive to see as well. These schools are intended as a short list of most of the top LACs located basically East of the Mississippi. As such, my assumption is that even areas of comparable weakness in a given field of study at one of these schools will still be, at the least, respectable compared with selective colleges by and large. But, to ucbalum’s point, it would be informative to identify weaker programs of study at each of these schools… “Weaker” by comparison with the other peer top LAC’s anyway. Would appreciate any thoughts on this… Looking for best and least programs of study at each school:

Amherst
Bowdoin
Bucknell
Carleton
Davidson
Haverford
Holy Cross
Lafayette
Middlebury
Swarthmore
Washington & Lee
Wesleyan
Williams

Also adding:
Hamilton
Colby
Bates
Trinity (CT)

I would not make that assumption. Weaker departments at small colleges are often due to limited course offerings, so that taking all of the courses there would still be seen as “incomplete” compared to a larger department at another school. Checking course catalogs for offerings, and schedules to see how often each course is offered, can be useful. Also, sometimes a small department focuses on a particular specialty area within the subject, which may be great for a student into that specialty, but not so good for one who wants to learn the subject with the typical breadth of undergraduate learning.

For computer science, Davidson appears to be the most limited from your list. Amherst is fairly limited as well, but the cross-registration with nearby University of Massachusetts can fill in the gaps. But check the frequency of offering of courses at the others. If most advanced courses are offered only once every two years, that can reduce scheduling flexibility. Holy Cross has this problem.

I think even the very top LACs tend to gravitate toward the theoretical aspects of computer science with the number crunching potential of advanced computing making it an ideal partner for lots of interdisciplinary majors (e.g., computational biology.) But, comparing them to Stanford or MIT would be unfair.

LACs by definition focus on the liberal arts, therefore few LACs offer engineering or business programs (although exceptions do exist). Computer Science arguably is not a “liberal art”. Some LACs still include only a relatively small number of CS courses among the Math department offerings.

I have not found more than a few LACs with Linguistics departments that cover the full gamut of core subjects in that field (phonetics, morphology, syntax, semantics, historical/comparative linguistics). Swarthmore is one of the few. Carleton seems to cover those subjects, barely. Most of the others will be weak in this major (if they offer it at all.)

Anthropology and Sociology are 2 other fields that many LACs don’t seem to cover too strongly. Some of the above colleges (including Amherst, Williams, and Swarthmore) do not have separate anthro and sociology departments. Beloit and Bryn Mawr are 2 LACs with good reputations for anthropology.

Regional area studies programs will be limited at virtually all LACs. Oberlin and Wesleyan have had strong Asian Studies programs in the past. Middlebury is very strong in several commonly taught modern languages. However, don’t expect any LAC to offer the variety or depth of area studies programs you’d find at Berkeley, UChicago, Michigan, Harvard, etc.

There has been some discussion about the limits of Mathematics programs at even the most selective LACs. It has been suggested in at least one CC discussion that very few LACs offer solid preparation for graduate work in pure Math. A few LACs (Williams, Carleton, St. Olaf) do generate about as many alumni Math PhDs (even in absolute numbers) as Brown, NYU, Penn, or Northwestern. The Math offerings at some of the other schools on the above list may be fairly limited, or may attract only a very small number of majors (which you can look up in each school’s Common Data Set file, section J).

There is a consortium of small college programs in Geology called the Keck Consortium. Amherst, Carleton, Wesleyan and Williams are members. I wouldn’t expect other LACs on the above lists to be as strong in this field.

At any rate, the goal of a liberal arts college isn’t to cover a wide variety of specialized arts & science subfields. They leave that to graduate schools. What you can expect at a selective LAC is more or less rigorous exposure to the economic, mathematical, historiographical, etc., way of thinking in approaching enduring and difficult problems that come up in each field. That exposure typically will include a lot of discussion, writing assignments, readings of primary source materials, possibly field work or original research projects, all under relatively close faculty guidance. The number of courses listed in the catalog doesn’t necessarily tell the whole story (although of course it’s not irrelevant if you want to major in a department with very few courses or faculty members.) If you want exposure to bleeding edge research or specialized sub-fields of your major, you may be better off at a research university.

My apologies @soylentgreen, when I looked at your question regarding the acronym, MBB, I zeroed in on the “B” part of it, but didn’t realize until now that the “MB” part was also incorrect; I should have written, MBB=Molecular Biology&Biochemistry. Microbiology is an even smaller subset of molecular biology: http://www.wesleyan.edu/mbb/faculty.html

Hamilton: writing, math, geoscience, history.

Many of your schools, maybe too many: economics. I’d say a point in favor of Wesleyan and a couple others is that econ is not the most popular major.

As stated by @whenhen‌ , all of these colleges strive to be good across-the-board, so be careful not to rule any out too quickly because of what may be perceived as weakness in a given department. The department may be less well known, but still very strong.

A specific problem that may affect some potential math majors is that students who enter very advanced in math may run out of math courses. “Very advanced in math” means completion of college course work beyond the calculus 2 / AP calculus BC level while still in high school. Such students are likely to want to take graduate level math courses and do graduate level research as undergraduates; such opportunities may be limited at many LACs.

For economics, different schools do vary on the amount of math emphasis in their economics courses. It is common for intermediate microeconomics to list calculus 1 or 2 as a prerequisite. But some schools (e.g. Penn State) offer non-calculus-based intermediate microeconomics, while others offer (often as a more rigorous or honors option, like Amherst, Berkeley, or Harvard, but sometimes as the only option, like Chicago or MIT) versions that require calculus 3 or other sophomore-level math. An economics major looking to do a PhD in economics needs to take substantial advanced math and statistics courses anyway, but math-heavy economics courses may be preferable to such a student. Schools’ on-line catalogs can be helpful here.

Perhaps the OP can describe what possible interests or general areas of interest (e.g. arts, humanities, social studies, biological science, physical science, math/statistics/CS) that the student has. Few schools (LACs or universities) are strong in everything (some areas of study like linguistics and nuclear engineering are not very common to begin with, so even many of the biggest universities do not have them), so perhaps the OP can get more relevant help in this respect by letting others know what the student’s interests are. Ideally, a school should be strong, or at least acceptable, in any of the student’s potential majors or interests, and the school’s weaknesses should not be relevant to the student’s interests.

I found your comments interesting, @ucbalumnus‌, so I did a check of a LAC’s math offerings. The one I checked has 25 courses on the 300 or 400 level. This seems like a lot to me, but I don’t know enough to say what this would mean in terms of your hypothetical “very advanced in math” student.

Your post seems like a quite appropriate prompt for the OP’s next stage. For the moment, though, I think the intent was to illicit a Rorschach type of quick response. Not a bad idea, since the kind of answers provided may not be available elsewhere.

Again - I truly appreciate the input and experience being offered. S is essentially a non-STEM oriented student in terms of higher skill sets and even more so in terms of academic interests. By selective school standards, he is below avg in math skills but uniquely strong in writing, reading comprehension, verbal abstract reasoning, etc. Mom and dad were fairly pedestrian state u students for undergrad and grad degrees; S has GPA, test scores, AP/Honors classes, EC’s and overall profile necessary to be a competitive candidate for selective colleges. Mom and dad are finding it challenging to be of much help in surveying the landscape of target schools and also in identifying specific options for programs of study.

S’s specific interests run towards creative writing, new media, journalism, comp lit. He’s also interested in what generally is included under the pre-law concentration. Lastly, he hopes to minor in Spanish. What has interested him most so far in looking through various target college catalogs are interdisciplinary degree programs, where he can build a Humanities BA or in some cases a double major scenario. He wants to keep things as broadly based as possible, as opposed to focusing solely on something like creative writing, comp lit, or media studies as an undergraduate degree.

What we’ve found in visiting a few of the LACs listed in the OP is that they seem to understand the type of student S is more than he does himself at this point… And much more than mom or dad do. This is what prompted my OP; a general feeling of not having a very firm handle on what differentiates these great LACs. We don’t want to make the mistake of seeing them as loosely interchangeable entities… Although the consensus above seems to point to that being more or less the case in terms of the 50% of each student body which falls under the liberal arts designation… Which Is where S seems to belong as a student.

Any input on the list of LAC’s, stronger/weaker programs associated with each, unique areas of study for this type of student, etc… would be very helpful and most appreciated. It’s always challenging when you “don’t know just what all you don’t know” about something. Many thanks.

I don’t think this is a productive exercise. Most liberal arts colleges have strengths in all of their programs of study, and besides, it’s not like you are choosing a graduate program in which you will specialize in something specific. You are choosing an undergraduate college for a well-rounded liberal arts & sciences education. All of these colleges are strong places with good reputations where you will get a great education. I’m not sure why a word-association exercise with people who are passingly familiar with a handful of the colleges would matter.

There are some colleges that do have great programs in specific areas - like Middlebury’s foreign languages program or Lafayette’s engineering, which is unusual at a small LAC. But that doesn’t mean that they aren’t good for other areas.

The question about what differentiates these colleges is a different one - and, I think a more productive one more likely to yield information that can be useful to you. A student with strong interest in languages might prefer Middlebury, for example. If your son has lots of interests and wants flexibility within a curriculum to design his own area of concentration, Amherst has an open curriculum and Hampshire is designed for that kind of inquiry. Washington & Lee tends to be a more conservative LAC. A writer would love the intensive writing across the curriculum program at Hamilton (and Hamilton also has a level of curricular freedom, with fewer core/distribution requirements that allow more flexibility in planning one’s own course of study. So do Bard, Colgate, Vassar, and Wesleyan, which aren’t on your list.)

Prelaw requires no specific coursework or major. But good GPA and LSAT score are needed.

Good prep for the LSAT and law school includes reading, writing, and logic.

Have to agree with @merc81‌. Knowing what different colleges choose as their peak disciplines is an interesting way of arranging them. More so than just asking which ones have good Economics departments, followed by a list of 100 colleges.