<p>From what I understand is that LAC's course work is a lot more rigorous, and time consuming. Is this true?</p>
<p>It all depends on the LAC and the University.</p>
<p>It also depends on major and your willingness to work. And here's an even shorter answer to your question................No.</p>
<p>It absolutely depends on the school, as well as your major. One big difference, however, is that unis generally have much larger classes, so it's very easy to sit in the back, zone out, not participate, etc. At LACs however, you have many much smaller classes, where it is impossible to not participate, b/c the prof weill know you are there b/c you can't hide behind the other 200 students.</p>
<p>That's true, but there are some large classes at liberal arts colleges, and there are some small classes at universities. Your GSI, TA, or prof will know if you know the material or not when there are only 25 or so in a room. However, i do agree that it is easier to skip a day or two at a university. The test will sure catch up with you, though, or the paper, or the lack of participation may get you the C+ instead of the B or B-. It is a different environment in general, but the environment from larger research university to larger research university is different, as it is from lac to lac, so you have to compare specific schools.</p>
<p>
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From what I understand is that LAC's course work is a lot more rigorous, and time consuming. Is this true?
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</p>
<p>Grade inflation runs wild at many LAC's.</p>
<p>It might have grade inflation and be more rigorous. Grade inflation probably runs more wild at Stanford and Harvard like schools, but perhaps it's equal to or less than the grade inflation of the liberal arts colleges.</p>
<p>It depends upon how much YOU want to work.</p>
<p>M&B22, gotta disagree with your blanket statement. It's that grade inflation runs wild at many top tier unis -- the LACs are notorious in fact for not inflating grades -- which is why graduates of LACs applying to grad school usually get the nod over graduates of unis because the adcoms know the difference in the rigor of the academics. Oftentimes, a B from a top LAC will translate to an A from a uni. Kind of like weighted & unweighted grades for regular vs. honors & AP courses?</p>
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<p>Not so. See: <a href="http://www.gradeinflation.com%5B/url%5D">www.gradeinflation.com</a>.</p>
<p>As you can see, LACs such as Carleton, Williams, Pomona and Wesleyan inflated over the last four decades just like top universities did. There's no across-the-board difference. In fact, the least inflated schools are large publics.</p>
<br> [QUOTE=""]
<p>graduates of LACs applying to grad school usually get the nod over graduates of unis ... Oftentimes, a B from a top LAC will translate to an A from a uni.</p>
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<p>This is false. Look at the undergrad makeup of any top graduate school.</p>
<p>Here are the top Feeder School per capita at sending their students to "top graduate schools", a list relased by the Wall Street Journal:</p>
<p>Top 50 Feeder Schools
1) Harvard
2) Yale
3) Princeton
4) Stanford
5) Williams
6) Duke
7) Dartmouth
8) MIT
9) Amherst
10) Swarthmore
11) Columbia
12) Brown
13) Pomona
14) University of Chicago
15) Wellesley
16) University of Pennsylvania
17) Georgetown
18) Haverford
19) Bowdoin
20) Rice
21) Northwestern
22) Claremont McKenna
23) Middlebury
24) Johns Hopkins
25) Cornell
26) Bryn Mawr
27) Wesleyan
28) Cal Tech
29) Morehouse
30) University of Michigan
31) New College of Florida
32) Vassar
33 University of Virginia
34) United States Military Academy
35) University of Notre Dame
36) Emory University
37) United States Naval Academy
38) Macalester
39) Brandeis
40) Bates
41) University of California, Berkeley
42) Barnard
43) Trinity
44) Grinnell
45) Tufts
46) Colby
47) Washington University
48) Washington and Lee
49) Case Western Reserve
50) Reed</p>
<p>As you can see, there are just about as many LACS as there are Universities.</p>
<p>Harvard is combating grade inflation...take a look at recent Crimson articles.</p>
<p>"Here are the top Feeder School per capita at sending their students to "top graduate schools", a list relased by the Wall Street Journal:"</p>
<p>It's already been posted a billion times why that ranking is flawed, why do people still use it?</p>
<p>Indeed. The Thing That Wouldn't Die.
My own modest attempt at deconstructing this awful study, from back in March:
[quote]
That WSJ article is very misleading, and needs to be taken with a large grain of salt. First of all, it applies to <em>professional school</em> admissions only--Law schools, medical schools, and business schools only--NOT graduate school admission in say, math or biology (or any other discipline).</p>
<p>But it's not even a good study of feeder schools to the "top" professional schools, due their arbitrary limiting the study to the "top" five in each category, and some very glaring omissions even within those choices.</p>
<p>The absurdity of this study can best be illustrated by considering Stanford University, which the article ranks as their #4 feeder school to "top" professional schools, just behind Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. But if a person graduates from Stanford and decides to attend Stanford's business school (#2 in US News), or its law school (#3 in US News) or its medical school (tied with Columbia at #8 in US News) that person doesn't count, in this study, as one who went on to one of the "top" professional schools in those fields. By strangely limiting their "top" schools to only five in each category, they eliminating a host of other "top" schools that are the equals of their choices by any possible measure--excellence, fame, prestige, you name it. Below is the "fine print" from the bottom of their article explaining their methodology. </p>
<p>
[quote]
"We focused on 15 elite schools, five each from medicine, law and business, to serve as our benchmark for profiling where the students came from. Opinions vary, of course, but our list reflects a consensus of grad-school deans we interviewed, top recruiters and published grad-school rankings (including the Journal's own MBA rankings). So for medicine, our schools were Columbia; Harvard; Johns Hopkins; the University of California, San Francisco; and Yale, while our MBA programs were Chicago; Dartmouth's Tuck School; Harvard; MIT's Sloan School; and Penn's Wharton School. In law, we looked at Chicago; Columbia; Harvard; Michigan; and Yale."
[/quote]
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I agree that the methodology in that study was ridiculous. Obviously Harvard would be the top feeder school, considering that its law, medical, and business schools were all used as "top graduate programs". Why weren't any of Stanford's professional schools used in the rankings? Its business school is ranked 2nd, its law school ranked 3rd, and its med school is 8th. The study should have encompassed more grad schools than it did. It overlooked many top grad programs and often included programs that were ranked lower than those that were not included.</p>
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<p>Why weren't any of Stanford's professional schools used in the rankings?</p>
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<p>I didn't post the article, but this was because Stanford would not provide up-to-date data to the WSJ. They used the top 5 professional schools in each category that were able to give them data for the same year.</p>
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They used the top 5 professional schools in each category that were able to give them data for the same year.
[/quote]
This may well be true...but it doesn't make the article/study any more useful or accurate.</p>
<p>Not all LAC's are the same.</p>
<p>Not all Universities are the same.</p>
<p>There is no way that one could state that all LAC's are more rigorous than all universities. A general statement suggesting such is even absurd.</p>
<p>You need to look at individual schools. I would suggest looking at the Fiske Guide. In my opinion, Fiske does a pretty goood job at "ranking" the rigor of academics at individual schools on a scale of 1-5.</p>
<p>it really depends-
overall a U may have more rigourous testing- if the prof isn't actually doing the grading herself- but has grad students do it- may be more involved over an LAC where they don't have grad students.
However you also might consider that in a school with smaller class sizes- small enough that there is no place to hide in a seminar class of 15- that you are actually expected to have done most if not all of the readings and do a lot of writing as well. In an LAC there is no getting away with not attending classes as you can in some universities where you can just show up for the exams.</p>
<p>I don't know if you guys know much about these schools but how is the inflation at : Kenyon, Skidmore, and Wabash?</p>