<p>Not all PhDs are created equal. What is more important is the caliber of programs graduates attend.
What annoys me is that people seem to imply that you can only get a highly quality and individualized education from an LAC which is just completely untrue. While you may need to make more of effort to forge connections with professors at large universities, most professors are more than willing to mentor undergrads. Being able to make connections with others and advocate for oneself is a very important skill to have, so I don’t see why having to do it at an earlier stage is a bad thing. This is something strong proponents of LACs never seem to address. In addition, for someone planning to go to grad school, the presence of grad students at one’s institution is a tremendous resource.</p>
<p>Poeme, good to hear that you are having such a great experience at Penn. But there are many undergrad paths to a physics PhD. My uncle and cousin were/are both physics profs. Guess what? Both recommend LACs for undergrad physics education. We understand (after several posts) that you feel a research university is the best option. And you have repeated your points several times. Heard and understood. For SOME students, the research university may be a better choice. But maybe not for all. </p>
<p>For example, based on your posts I am going to guess you came in with a strong physics coursework background and quite a few AP credits (thus allowing you time in your schedule to take more grad level courses). A student who comes from a high school with less rigorous science & math prep might well get more out of the LAC experience; not everyone is going to exhaust the courses offered – unless, of course, they are a superstar like you. Also, not every student is sharp-elbowed enough to get good research experience at a large university. So the four years at an LAC help them develop skills and confidence to prepare for grad school. Those LAC students also may develop better writing and critical thinking skills than the average research university student does, too. Some LACs (like Harvey Mudd, for example) think those non-science skills are essential – and they have pretty darned good physics PhD production numbers to prove out their approach.</p>
<p>I suspect the adults on this forum can see something you can’t – the course of a career in anything (including physics) is long – spanning at least 40 years. Of course there are routes a student can take that can derail them altogether from a career in physics. But there are also quite a few routes that can lead to successful careers. Also, a lot of students at research universities will NOT achieve PhDs in spite of taking the “best path” according to you – you have no way of knowing whether the LAC environment might have suited those students better, and if they might have had more success with it.</p>
<p>Well in my previous responses I assume I did not consider the impact of a student’s previous background.
I agree the LAC environment would probably be suited for someone who comes from a smaller or less rigorous high school as they may not have developed the necessary skills for success in high school. People like this will usually get lost at a larger university even if they do have the potential to be very successful. I know several cases like this at Penn. Many of these people feel like they were at a disadvantage because they were unsure of how to deal with professors and did not know how to adjust to the fast past of college. Perhaps these students would have benefitted from smaller class sizes and would have felt more comfortable interacting with professors in a smaller environment.</p>
<p>However, for the very independent student (which may not be as common as I believe), this is definitely not as necessary. I went to an extremely competitive high school in the state with over 4,000 students. If you did not advocate for yourself, you would get lost. I did not feel like most of my high school teachers knew me all that well or were particularly invested in me as a student and I have actually had a significantly easier time interacting with professors than I did with my teachers in high school. So this has definitely colored my educational experience and made it an easier transition to college.</p>
<p>“Not all PhDs are created equal. What is more important is the caliber of programs graduates attend.”</p>
<p>So what are the stats that show the Big U grads attend better programs?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I’m not sure why this is commonly considered a characteristic specific to LACs. Harvey Mudd has extensive breadth requirements, as do some research universities like MIT. At the other end of the scale, there are schools with minimal or no breadth requirements, including both LACs like Amherst and research universities like Brown.</p>
<p>I would agree that the degree of “breadth” requirements beyond the science/math area for physics majors varies by LAC, but most have more than Brown and Amherst.</p>
<p>Mudd is a little unusual. They have an extensive technical core requirements, and also require students to do a “concentration of courses in a single discipline or in an interdisciplinary field chosen from the distinct areas of liberal arts study offered at The Claremont Colleges”. This has to be in a humanities, social science, or art field.</p>
<p>Then they also take their major courses and some additional humanities, social science, and art courses.</p>
<p>Their specific mission statement is:</p>
<p>“Harvey Mudd College seeks to educate engineers, scientists, and mathematicians well versed in all of these areas and in the humanities and the social sciences so that they may assume leadership in their fields with a clear understanding of the impact of their work on society.”</p>
<p>So they have very specifically set out to do something more than a pure STEM college approach.</p>
<p>Hey all, just wanted to throw my two cents in. As a student who is looking at LACs and loves physics (and will be taking AP this school year), I’ve seen far more opportunities available for research at the smaller private colleges. I believe it’s because of the smaller physics programs in comparison to the mighty few hundred strong programs available at larger research universities.</p>
<p>And in terms of graduate classes if you are sufficiently advanced, I’ve heard that some LACs have connections to larger research universities if they are in the same city. This connection allows students to take graduate level courses or even conduct research.</p>
<p>And on a personal note, sometimes people want to attend an LAC in order to get a strong base in many fields, or even find that the goal they’ve had their whole life was in a field they actually didn’t enjoy, allowing them to try other fields of study without having to jump to another college in the University.</p>