<p>switch,</p>
<p>Untrue. I'd say that the top LACs provide an excellent science education. They usually have good facilities, small class sizes and a high degree of faculty involvement, which translate to very good results in the realm of science-teaching. You get more attention, and it becomes that much easier to do research with your professor and learn more.</p>
<p>And graduate schools are aware of this - Swarthmore, for one, has a medical school acceptance rate of 92% for graduating seniors, and 86% overall if you factor in students who graduated in the last five years. Contrast that to the national average of 43%. A recent release by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute focused exactly on this - how small colleges like Reed, Swarthmore, Williams etc - provide a superior science education for their students. The reasons were precisely the ones I mentioned above.</p>
<p>It depends, however, on which LAC you're comparing to which university - if you were to set CalTech side by side with one of the lower-tier LACs, arguably the science teaching at CalTech would be better. If you're looking at top colleges like Amherst, Swarthmore, Williams, Wellesley, Reed, Pomona, Wesleyan etc, I think it's safe to say that the science education in those places would be as good, (if not better), as the science education available in any good research university.</p>
<p>A good way to judge whether an LAC has a good level of science teaching would be to check out some basic stats - how many national scientific society members it has amongst its faculty, whether it's graduated any science Nobel Prize winners, what percentage of its science students apply and get accepted to good graduate programs (MS/PhD/med school/dental school etc), what equipment and facilities are available on-campus for research, if there's a well-established practice of students collaborating with faculty for research, or doing research on their own at good research universities/NASA/similar places over the summer, how often students/faculty members have won NSF grants for research, etc. I think that looking at these different aspects would probably allow you to judge better the probable quality of science education available in that college.</p>
<p>I'm majoring in Economics and not in any natural science. But that's more out of personal inclination than lack of opportunity!! =)</p>