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<p>It happens to a few students. My daughter had a high school classmate who had to choose between Swarthmore and Cornell. </p>
<p>More often, though, students will be choosing between universities and LACs a bit lower down the food chain. But the differences between the two environments are still worth considering carefully.</p>
<p>How are the resources allocated between undergrads and grad education at a research university? How does the budget for undergrads compare at a research university with a similar LAC?</p>
<p>But I don’t think you can unilaterally say “all uni environments are A” and “all LAC environments are B.” I think you choose between various options that are out there on the basis of personal appeal of those options, not because of some greater classification scheme they fall into.</p>
<p>The adcoms at these schools like to boast that “we could fill several freshman classes with any random selection of your children without being able to tell the difference,” when in reality much could be said about the schools they represent.</p>
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<p>Lots of students do something similar – attend a community college for two years, then transfer to a university. Some state university and community college systems are set up with large numbers of community college to state university transfer students in mind.</p>
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<p>Harvey Mudd does have good offerings in CS, though.</p>
<p>[Computer</a> Science](<a href=“http://www.hmc.edu/academicsclinicresearch/catalogue1/catalogue-current/academic-program1/department-programs1/computerscience.html]Computer”>http://www.hmc.edu/academicsclinicresearch/catalogue1/catalogue-current/academic-program1/department-programs1/computerscience.html)</p>
<p>We haven’t talked about temperamental issues. My S is an introvert. He did have a choice of u of Chicago, Brown and Williams. Had he been more outgoing I think he would have chosen U of C as being even quirkier than Williams. He really liked its larger scale. As it turns out, he found Art History as a profession which makes Willuams the obvious choice, but the culture if the uni was appealing.</p>
<p>As for getting restless and needing time abroad, that happens to kids at unis too.</p>
<p>“My point is that Ivy vs. LAC is something of a false dichotomy (really false in Dartmouth’s case). Most of the Ivies are first cousins of LACs, if not full siblings.”</p>
<p>My d. has found the differences to be FAR greater than she would have anticipated. My own experience (not Ivy, but UChicago) also found the same thing. The differences were massive - in allocation of resources, advising, mentoring, non-STEM research opportunities, class sizes, teaching, TAs, office hours of profs, ability to get recommendations, the list goes on. And yes, the course offerings at the Ivies are deeper, when the departments are larger than they are at the respective LACs (sometimes, they aren’t). Oh, and sometimes, the EC opportunities at Ivies are substantially greater.</p>
<p>I love this thread because we are in this exact predicament and don’t know what to do. Brown was S’s first choice because of the freedom of the curriculum - he would be able to explore many of the social sciences and humanities while majoring in comp sci. Unfortunately, he wasn’t admitted there. </p>
<p>So his choices now lie with Haverford, a very small LAC that really fits his personality. The kids there seem very much like him and share his views. He’d be able to explore the social sciences and humanities as much as he wants between Haverford and Bryn Mawr, but he would have to give up some of the other “stuff” that he might find at a larger U, like his other choice - CMU. </p>
<p>The comp sci is definitely stronger at CMU, but the liberal arts aren’t. There are way more choices for ec’s, more kids to interact with, more excitement going on, etc., but you lose that personal connection with the professors. There’s plenty of research, but how hard would it be to get a position when there are so many others wanting to do the same thing? The internship and career possiblities are also better at the larger U - companies are lined up for cs students if the program is a good one (both Brown and CMU do well in this area). And isn’t that the end goal no matter where you go?</p>
<p>I have no idea what S will choose in the end, and at this point, neither does he.</p>
<p>Internships too, but Smith has seemed amazing to me as reported by many Smith parents and Sarah Lawrence has done very well by a student I sent there. She worked at Vogue and has now been hired at NBC through school connections.</p>
<p>Mini, my D did not find massive differences between Barnard and Colimbia. She got a NYS Federal judge who teaches at Columbia very involved in her and writing recs. Might be an anomaly.</p>
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For what it’s worth, when we toured Wesleyan, the guide was a kid who had transferred from Haverford because he said there was nothing going on on campus there. So some LACs may be more active than others.</p>
<p>I think Barnard is a special case (and in a good way!) Though of course, as your d. probably noted, there are certain departments at Barnard (theater, creative writing, and, by reputation, chemistry immediately come to mind) which are far stronger at Barnard than at Columbia, and much more undergraduate-focused.</p>
<p>I agree with the above, though. If a LAC (not Barnard) doesn’t fit your personality, etc., there isn’t anything else there, so you end up “settling”, “making do”, being part of a smallish subculture, etc., etc., because there isn’t anything else there. That happened to me at Williams 40 years - where I got a GREAT education - but I wouldn’t do it again.</p>
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<p>It, does happen as others in the land of CC have already attested to. One schould not go into the application process with the mindset that it is going to happen, but if it does then the kid must make the choice between many good choices where there really isn’t going to be a 'wrong" choice.</p>
<p>My D chose between Dartmouth (which is really more like a LAC), Amherst, Williams, Barnard, and a few other LACs. She went to admitted students days, loved them and would have been happy at any of them. At the end, she felt, that she really did feel the difference between 2000 and 4000 students.</p>
<p>mini, I know that you are honestly reflecting your own experience and your daughter’s, but honestly I just can’t see it. In terms of my own personal experience, my wife and I both had FAR more personal involvement with professors at my mid-size research university than any of our friends at Williams (where I had a girlfriend for awhile, and where her high school boyfriend went), Wesleyan (a best friend from high school), Vassar, Hampshire (her sisters), Amherst, Swarthmore, or Smith (cousins with whom I was close). And the people we had personal relationships with included professors other people read about in the Times or the New York Review of Books. And – as I have said many times – our TAs were hardly chopped liver. My TAs included future department chairs at Harvard, Yale, and Michigan. Some were great teachers already, and some weren’t, but they were first-rate thinkers, and they repaid the effort of getting to know them.</p>
<p>And my kids, at Chicago: One did run into some issues with advising and mentors in a large department. Some of that was the kind of bad luck you can have at an LAC – her last year corresponded with a sabbatical for one quasi-mentor and an unexpected maternity – adoption – leave for another. The other was on a first-name basis with every faculty member in his department, and worked closely with several. One, the department’s best-known member, offered a seminar one fall on research methods, in large part to help himself with final editing on the book he was writing. After the term ended, he continued meeting with the class on a weekly basis for the rest of the year, because he and they were both enjoying it and learning from it. </p>
<p>We know lots of kids currently (or recently) at LACs. Kids whom I know well are currently attending at, or graduated within the past three years from, Wesleyan, Carleton, Amherst, Oberlin, Vassar, Smith, Haverford, Ursinus. My parents both went to LACs, too. I have relatives and friends who are or were on the faculties of Colby, Williams, Vassar. I have no doubt whatsoever that LACs provide great education; I think far more people should think about them as serious options. But not because they are clearly better than the alternatives – more because they are just as good, in a different way.</p>
<p>By the way, one of the kids I know in college now turned down CMU’s Computer Science school for a LAC. She was not 100% sure she wanted to do CS, and she knew that she was not completely up to speed on the latest-latest. She’ll never know how she would have done at CMU, but it’s hard to imagine it could have been much better than the experience she’s had at the LAC. Including one summer working in a nationally prominent research university CS lab, and another working for the ultra-prestigious employer of her dreams. There’s more than one way to cross the finish line.</p>
<p>Hunt - there probably were things going on at Haverford, but they wouldn’t necessarily appeal to everyone. It’s a pretty quiet place, I think. They usually have things like singing groups or small performances or games going on, something like that - very low-key. Haverford is really for a certain kind of person - more intellectual pursuits maybe than loud party options.</p>
<p>May I ask, JHS, what LAC that was where the young woman had such a good CS experience? D is considering CS, and I’d love to know if any of the LACs she was admitted to was particularly strong in this area.</p>
<p>And yes, this sort of choice does happen. My D is currently deciding amongst Princeton, Carleton, Middlebury, Bowdoin and Olin (which is sort of it’s own thing: LAC-like teaching focus and mentoring, but with a STEM-oriented curriculum).</p>
<p>Re: #36</p>
<p>Look for either ABET accreditation in CS, or a CS course listing that includes junior and senior level courses in most or all of the following subjects:</p>
<p>Algorithms and complexity
Theory of computation, languages, and automata
Operating systems
Networks
Compiler design
Databases
Software engineering
Security and cryptography
Additional electives that may be of interest, such as graphics, user interfaces, and artificial intelligence</p>
<p>If interested in computer hardware, check for courses in:</p>
<p>Electronics
Digital systems
Computer architecture</p>
<p>Yeah, I forgot that Harvey Mudd actually calls itself an LAC, my son did apply, but never visited. He got waitlisted, but it wasn’t that good a fit - he really didn’t want a traditional liberal arts education.</p>
<p>I went to a lackluster state u. For personal reasons, I left hs and “ran away from home” and school took me without a senior year because my grades, activities and scores were very good. I knew I needed to get away in August, and they said, “come on down.”</p>
<p>My dreams of sugar plum shiny privates were dashed, but I paid for my education entirely myself. (You probably have a glimpse of problems I had.)</p>
<p>I was able to be the proverbial big fish, was the only student in my department who graduated with honors, had amazing relationships with profs and garnered an Ivy acceptance to grad school (which other personal circumstances ruled out.)</p>
<p>I made lifelong friends, still live in the area, kept close to my mentors, got awarded best dissertation in my field.</p>
<p>The lack of a certain kind of attention was due to the raging sexism of the time which would have been addressed by a woman’s college.</p>
<p>However, I did meet a beloved H (no longer – sigh – but I do have another one), and did okay.</p>
<p>Same school is now taking both kids into its embrace for masters with hopes of shiner PhD’s. We’ll see.</p>
<p>The point is we should never paint with too broad a brush.</p>