Hi parents of CC -
I’m a rising junior in high school, but I felt that this question was best directed towards parents. I have recently begun visiting colleges and I decided that LACs were definitely the right place for me. My parents seem to disagree. They worry that my options will be too limited at an LAC, even the top ranked ones, like Williams and Amherst. They think I’ll be too isolated and that I’ll never have anything to do. They also worry about name recognition. We toured a some Virginia schools recently: Richmond, William & Mary, Washington and Lee, JMU, and UVA. They really pushed me towards JMU, UVA, and were okay with William & Mary, but felt it was too small. They were against Richmond and W&L, mostly because of the size. They want me to start looking more into bigger research universities, but that’s not what I want. I understand their concerns as they both went to big state schools and are sending my brother off to a big research university this fall, but I know that I need something to different. Were you on the fence about LACs and your children convinced you otherwise? Do you have any advice to help convince my parents that LACs can be just as good as research universities? Thanks so much!
If you focus on LACs in or near big cities, I think they will have a hard time arguing that your options are limited or you would be isolated or have nothing to do. As for name recognition, it sounds like they have some concerns about you getting a job later. Whether you plan to attend graduate school or get a job right after your bachelor’s, you can look up information on your target LACs that shows the success of graduates in getting employed or admitted to grad schools, the size and location of the alumni network, and some highly successful alumni.
I don’t know if you are male or female or your stats and what you plan to major in, or what your parents can afford (especially with another child in college at the same time). Are finances a factor in what they are recommending?
In any case, below are some colleges in or near large cities, where you would certainly have more to do than the typical student at a large research university in a small college town. You can also plan on spending summers in internships in large cities across the country if that appeals to you (or satisfies your parents as a compromise, should you want to attend an LAC in the middle of nowhere).
Cooper Union - New York, NY
Barnard College (women) - New York, NY
Simmons College (women) - Boston, MA
Reed College - Portland, OR
Lewis & Clark College - Portland, OR
Occidental College - Los Angeles, CA
Rhodes College - Memphis, TN
Macalester College - Saint Paul, MN
Trinity University - San Antonio, TX
Southwest School of Art - San Antonio, TX
Colorado College - Colorado Springs, CO
Oglethorpe University - Atlanta, GA
Swarthmore College - near Philadelphia, PA
Bryn Mawr College (women) - near Philadelphia, PA
Claremont Colleges - near Los Angeles, CA
My D went to a LAC and absolutely loved her experience. Like you, she knew she wanted a LAC from the start but my H needed some convincing. It did help that he was impressed by a number of the schools we toured and recognized that our D did want that smaller school, more intimate experience. Unfortunately that did not seem to sway your parents. Another thing that helped was that my H found he had friends whose kids went to LACs and loved their experience. And (this is a bit embarrassing) but he he also dug up in an old book from his Wharton MBA days and saw that a sizeable number of his classmates went to good LACs undergrad. Now that our D had a great 4 years, graduated, and is in a fantastic grad school, he is a big proponent of her LAC and forgot that he was not so excited about the idea in the first place.
Some LACs address their size limitations by participating in consortia with other schools. Good examples are the Claremont Colleges in CA (Pomona, Harvey Mudd, Claremont McKenna, Scripps, Pitzer), the 5-College Consortium in MA (Amherst, Smith, Mt. Holyoke, Hampshire, and UMASS), and the Quaker Consortium in PA (Haverford, Bryn Mawr, Swarthmore, and UPenn). In all of these cases, you could attend a small LAC but still take classes at and have access to the resources of other schools, including large research universities. You’d also have expanded social and cultural options. Have you looked into these?
Another point – my D at a LAC was able to easily get involved in doing research directly with professors (the results of one study was published in a peer reviewed journal) since there were no grad students to compete with for these research slots.
Are you an instate resident for VA? Is cost perhaps a consideration?
Grad schools and most employers…especially larger ones are well aware respectable/elite LACs provide a great education which prepares students well for graduate studies and employment.
Most of the prejudices against LACs IME come from laypersons ignorant about LACs…especially respectable/elite ones or a few smaller employers with prejudices derived from the same ignorance. And the opinions of such folks in the larger scheme of things don’t matter when it comes to getting hired or moreso…getting admitted to grad school.
Like universities, LACs should be considered on their respective individual merits…rather than the automatic assumption the former is better than the other.
This is only underscored by the fact some HS classmates and a relative* who ended up attending larger universities did so because they were rejected by the LACs which were their top choices…including my undergrad(Oberlin).
- He was rejected twice and ended up attending UWisc-Madison after being rejected the second time despite attending a well-respected private LA area HS and graduating somewhere in the top portion of his class.
This does depend a bit on which LAC, and what you intend to major in.
Some small schools such as Wellesley, Bowdoin, and Amherst (and many more) are very well known and have an excellent name recognition. MANY others are well known by the admissions staff at top ranked universities in the US. You could probably walk into most stores in Massachusetts and say “I am a student at Harvey Mudd” and they will think “what is that?”. However, apply for graduate school at Harvard and the reaction of the admissions staff will be “great undergraduate school!”. Most hiring managers will know how very strong any of these schools are.
There are tradeoffs between large schools and small schools. At a small school / LAC you are more likely to get to know your professor. If you are an outstanding student the professors are more likely to notice. Many students feel more comfortable at a small school, and it is the student who is going to need to go to class, do the homework, find their way around campus, and so on. You are more likely to have smaller classes, which provides greater opportunity for the student to interact with the professor and other students. A smaller class also makes it much less likely that the student will sort of “zone out” and stop paying attention and run into trouble.
I recall a visit to a small university in Canada (the Canadian equivalent of an LAC) where we were talking to a languages professor. There was a student in her class who was doing very well, but then just didn’t show up one day. Two days later the same thing happened. Two days after that the entire class got up and went off together looking for the student (and speaking the language that was being taught in the class). That would never have happened at a large university, and couldn’t have happened in a large class (and a large class would not be ideal for learning a language anyway). At a big school if you don’t show up for class no one will notice until your fail or get an incomplete at the end of the semester.
Someone I know is a professor at a different very small university in Canada. A few years back he sent one of his best students off to graduate school at McGill, which has the best program in Canada for what this professor teaches. Less than a year later he got a call from the student’s advisor, asking if he had any more similar students he could send them. The student had been so well prepared for graduate school at the small university that even at the top university in the country he stood out as being exceptional. There are many LACs in the US which can similarly prepare a student exceptionally well for graduate school.
If you want to major in engineering then I wouldn’t recommend an LAC, and you would need to be very careful which LAC you choose (most would be weak). If you want to major in something else (even math) then many LACs would be excellent.
By the way, my older daughter is double majoring in two fields which would not have been possible at an LAC. My younger daughter is about to go off to a small university in Canada (again, the equivalent of an LAC) which is a great fit for her (and a great small university). When it comes to universities, one size does NOT fit all.
Do you mean specific majors or in general? Just wondering as I knew plenty of people at my LAC who did double and even triple majors*…and not restricted to humanities/social science subjects.
One of my classmates was a double major in Viola and Chemistry and ended up in a PhD program in the latter at an HYPSM. There were also plenty of STEM/non-STEM double-majors such as Bio/French or Physics and Politics.
What do you plan to study? Do you have plans for Grad school? How large an influence is cost?
On the other side though, I can tell you from my daughter’s experience at a small LAC that she did run into problems with classes. Because each department’s faculty was small, the class offerings would often be reliant on who they had to teach. In other words, if a professor left or went on sabbatical, the class offerings were held up until they found a replacement, and then the offerings might change based on who they got! Several semesters she had to hold off on registering for a full load because they just didn’t know what was going to be offered a few months down the road. She didn’t complain, and it always worked out, but with paying that kind of money it made me steer my son to somewhat bigger schools, where the offerings would not be so iffy and we could count on him getting the classes he needed and wanted.
You can absolutely get to know your professors well even at a huge university. My undergrad had more than 25,000 students when I was there. Once I hit sophomore year, and was taking courses in my major, I knew all of my professors extremely well.
Also, some larger public universities have terrific honors college programs that make the huge school feel smaller…special dorms, class priority selection, honors college class sections, and other perks that make the large school feel smaller.
Find out what your financial constraints are. Maybe that’s why they’re pushing you to larger (public) institutions. Agree with Thumper. I had one at W&L and one at honors at UofSC. Both had close relationships with professors and good classes (although agree with comment about lack choices sometimes at LAC).
UofSC might be worth a look if you don’t want to stay instate. If you truly have stats for W&L then you might be in range for honor college at USC and would get in-state tuition rates. Best of both worlds - that D had only one auditorium size class in 4 years. Most were 15 -25 so she definitely got to know professors.
D at W&L loved her experience but if she hadn’t had scholarship, we would not have paid the full freight cost of that school. Maybe that’s where your parents really are - not that LACs aren’t good, just aren’t worth the additional cost. Find some that fit the cost parameters they set and see what they say.
Williams and Amherst are “little Ivies” along with several other LAC’s that are top tier: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ivies
They are well-recognized as being selective and excellent, and have active alumni networks.
At universities there are often star lecturers with discussion sections taught by grad students, who also grade. At LAC’s, generally, professors teach the class directly, often in smaller classes (depending on the subject) and there is more interaction with them.
There are exceptions of course.
Many grads of LAC’s go on to grad work and/or great careers.
I don’t understand the resistance at all.
Smaller universities such as Tufts or Wake Forest might be the sweet spot for your family.
edited to add:
Goodle for lists that breakdown endowment $ per student. The top LACs do very well by this measure and may convince your parents that facilities, career planning offices, etc will be well funded.
Big state universities need to be taken in context because of grad schools and medical schools.
If your parents like the “research” part of research universities, show them these tables of the schools that do a good job of getting their BA/BS grads into PhD programs (note how many are LACs):
You are just starting your search. You need to be open to your parents’ view of bigger schools and they need to let you look at some smaller ones too. William and Mary sounds like a good compromise. Ask they to come with you to visit some of the schools you like, and include some of the consortium schools.
Honestly, my kids wanted smaller schools and I let them look, but some were just so small that even they thought they’d get tired of the same people over and over, and the very limited class offerings. Really, if there are 5 professors in the department, how many courses can be offered? The one who ended up at a school with 10,000 is happy she did, can’t imagine going to a smaller school. Now that she’s finished most of her core classes, she’s having to really search for upper division classes she likes. Some have only one section and conflict with another class she wants, some are only offered in the spring, some may be offered by a professor she doesn’t really like. The other child is at a much smaller school, 3,500, but she’s in one of the smallest majors, so there are limited classes offered and usually only one section.
Just listen to each other. Keep an open mind about the big schools. There are honors colleges, living communities, clubs, and other things that make big schools much smaller.
My D wanted a small school and her dad took some convincing. I did a lot of research on sites like payscale and linked in so that my husband could see that kids from LACs were earning the same as kids from bigger schools. They end up working at all kinds of interesting places. I also found info on the many famous and successful people who graduated from LACs, including many presidents, scientists, business people, writers, artists, actors, etc… LACs tend to have very helpful career centers and active alumni networks, so it’s not difficult to get jobs and internships. Because LACs focus on undergrad, there are plenty of research opportunities. My D has two friends who just finished freshman year and spent the summer at college doing research. At larger RUs, those are harder to come by for undergrads. And of course, because LACs are small, you and your profs will know each other. Your classes will be smaller, and there will be more student-professor interaction. I think many LACs make a big effort to keep students active and happy, and judging from the high retention rates, they succeed. Just like bigger schools though, some LACs are better than others. Basically, I spent the better part of a year getting my husband to understand what I just said here:-) . Maybe show this to your parents, along with some of your own findings. Good luck!
And seconding what others are saying about grad school. Not only are students well prepared, but many LACs have very high percentages of students accepted to grad school. LACs also produce high numbers of Fulbright scholars in proportion to RUs. Each of the top five Fulbright LACs had more grantees than big universities such as Ohio State, Michigan, and USC. Pretty impressive.
I think obtaining a research position at a large university depends, at least in part, on the school that you attend. My daughter attends a large university and had a research position on campus during the summer between her freshman and sophomore year. She had another position during her sophomore year that she could have kept until graduation but chose not to. This summer she emailed a professor in her department and he got back to her within two hours. She is meeting with him later this month to discuss another research position within her major.
My friends daughter attends a large university and is not having success finding research- nobody emails her back. As I mentioned, I do think that obtaining a position at a large university depends on the actual school… as noted above, some are better than others.