<p>Well, the NRC did a great job with the department rankings for the undergrad and a lot of people prefer it to the U.S News now. God for them. But what about department rankings for the LACs? does anyone have those? how do I know where the math or economics department in amherst stand?</p>
<p>I don't think department rankings are especially useful at the undergraduate level. And since LACs have no graduate programs and faculty who spend nearly all of their time teaching, I don't know how you could come up with any kind of meanginful rank.</p>
<p>Rugg's Recommendations on Colleges lists departments that are considered strong at a particular college by the students who go there.</p>
<p>YOu can look at each school at the number of faculty in particular department, where they got their doctorates from, research interests, etc. And look at the number of upperclass electives offered by the department.</p>
<p>what about online. i don't want to purchase</p>
<p>dendankin...
NRC rankings are NOT for undergrad. They are strictly rankings of faculty quality as it regards to research at the GRADUATE level.
That is why liberal arts colleges are NOT included.
Schools that have great graduate programs can, but do not necessarily, have great undergrad programs, and vice versa.</p>
<p>Your best bet is to go to the best liberal arts college you can, and check out the faculty and course listings in the departments that interest you to help you decide.</p>
<p>Actually the NRC measures both quality and effectiveness of the faculty.</p>
<p>You can go to the IPEDS COOL website and find out how many students graduate in math and econ at Amherst compared to other LACs. I think very small numbers of graduates at an LAC in the major would suggest that you avoid that LAC for that major. For example, Amherst had 5 grads in math last year and 48 grads in econ (out of 409 total). St Olaf had 41 grads in math and 62 grads in econ (out of 689 total).</p>
<p>Collegehelp...</p>
<p>I don't think you have any justification for that statement...
Amherst has a vERY strong undergrad math program. For whatever reason, it is a small program that does not attract a lot of majors, but that in no way means it is a poor program. You just cannot generalize that way... especially when talking about the small programs at liberal arts colleges.</p>
<p>since most profs now have websites, get on them and look at the syllabi, homework and tests for some entry level courses (calc 2, intermediate microeconomics, et cetera) with which you would be relatively familiar as well as some comparable advanced courses. </p>
<p>the problem with looking at the number of graduates in a major is that extremely difficult majors at schools (those that are most rewarding) often wind up with relatively few graduates precisely because of their difficulty.</p>
<p>H&B-
I think the size of the department has something to do with program quality at LACs (but it is not the only thing, of course). It has to do with resources, opportunities, options, number of course offerings, how often the courses are taught, number faculty, and so on. Overall reputation doesn't necessarily imply quality within a particular department. Quality is not uniform.</p>
<p>Amherst has 9 faculty in math. St Olaf has 27 faculty in math. Amherst offers about 22 courses in math. St Olaf offers about 36 courses. The department at Amherst is actually a combined math/compsci department. St Olaf, I believe, produces more grads who get PhDs in math. I am sure the five math grads at Amherst learned a lot of math but I would not advise prospective math majors to choose Amherst over St Olaf unless overall prestige was important to them.</p>
<p>i think the best way to assess department strength at a lac is to ask a student or recent alum. i dont think size of the dept can tell the whole story. for example, psych, english and bio are typically popular majors, but there are schools that are definitely weaker than others in these fields</p>
<p>Not an easy way out, but good advice:
<p>Some things I look for are:</p>
<ul> <li>department accreditation by a professional association related to the subject, </li> <li>faculty size compared to the number of graduating majors in the department </li> <li>where grads of the department go on to graduate school or employment</li> <li>any recent or pending changes in funding for the department (search the school's press releases, and the student newspaper archives), </li> <li>special facilities or capabilities of the department (department library, research facilities, special equipment, etc.)</li> <li>how many prof's in the department are tenured, how many are full-time, how many are just visiting or are not tenured. </li> <li>the philosophy or subject approach of the department. This can take some digging, and you may have to put some divergent pieces together to see if the department's goals/philosophies are a fit with yours. Two equally sized departments at different schools can have very different approaches.</li> <li>I also like to get a hold of the actual course schedules (not the catalog which merely lists courses that may or may not be offered on a regular basis) for a few semesters and see how many classes the department typically offers, how large or small they are, and whether they fill up quickly or are over-subscribed. A department is only good if you can get into classes without too much trouble. </li> </ul>
<p>Another piece of advice that I also find helpful came from the Philosophical Gourmet site, which ranks Philosophy graduate programs but also has a section discussing how to evaluate undergrad programs, is to (1) find the rankings for top graduate level programs (these are usually more readily available) and then (2) look at the faculty bio's and see how many received their doctorates from the top grad programs. Of course, at large universities, you'll also need to find out how many of those faculty actually teach undergraduates. </p>
<p>There are, of course, many other things to look at when comparing undergrad departments, and I'm sure others will add to these suggestions.</p>
<p>I'd rather do this kind of research on my own than rely solely on rankings, which usually only look at a few key elements, not the broad picture of what an undergraduate's experience is actually likely to be.
</p>