LAC...why doesn't everyone want to go there?

Parents Forum
61

<p>Here are just a few reasons for not choosing an LAC:</p>

<ol>
<li> tremendous amounts of resources at your disposal (this is probably the most important of all),</li>
<li> excitement</li>
<li> access to the most brilliant minds in the world (world famous professors),</li>
<li> cutting edge research taught in class,</li>
<li> anything you want to eat at any time of day or night,</li>
<li> better party scene,</li>
<li> diversity—you will always find someone like yourself,</li>
<li> anonymity of large classrooms,</li>
<li> a degree that is recognized by everyone and their mother,</li>
<li>huge alumni networks,</li>
<li>abundance of class offerings,</li>
<li>great on campus recruiting,</li>
<li>sink or swim competitive nature can bring out the best in students,</li>
<li>more of the opposite sex,</li>
<li>more majors/minors to choose from.</li>
</ol>

<p>I can go on and on but I am getting bored. Before I get attacked for saying these things, keep in mind that the things I said are GENERALLY true. They are not always true but, as a general rule, they are correct.</p>

<p>The bottom line is that every person has a different personality and everyone wants something different out of an education. Personally, I cannot see how anyone would want to attend an LAC over a major university. Again, don’t attack me for having an opinion; we all have one!</p>

62

<p>okay, i'm not making this a lac vs nonlac thread, but i'll list a bunch of things that I love about my school:</p>

<ol>
<li><p>teaching. my prof. for international business was the president or something of an international aerospace firm. my marketing prof is the president of a very large marketing firm, my management prof is a very big managerial consultant. i could go on... the professors have real world experience. they're not teaching to you out of the book, theyre not standing up there lecturing on and on.. it's very involved, with real world examples... papers, case studies, essays, etc help us to get more involved with this process. the prof's are a great resource to have. they know what theyre doing. also, we don't have TA's. which really makes me happy, because i dont like that anyway.</p></li>
<li><p>the coursework. in my one finance course, we had a "game" throughout the semester where we had to manage a stock portfolio throughout the semester and that was great because we really did have to do our homework and pay attention to what is going on in the world around us. in my international business class we had a "game" that was a simulation between all of the groups in my class (8), and we had to build a company from ground up, and you took care of every business decision week by week making decisions in this game.. everything from stocks to finances to operations etc, it was an awesome learning experience. in addition to things like that, our school has partnered up with large corporations in the area which get us a lot of internships and we do a lot of work hand in hand with them. i personally have done projects on Tyco and GM. I've been to (and learned about) the wolfgang candy plant, the harley davidson plant (it's so cool to see harleys being made), and have learned about the innerworkings of many other very large organizations. </p></li>
<li><p>class sizes. this semester i have six courses. class sizes are like, 15, 12, 10, 11, 18, and 24. i know every single person in all of my classes on a first name basis. i know all of my professors, and they know me as well. this definately wouldn't be the case in classes with 100+ students in them.</p></li>
<li><p>job recruiting. as mentioned above, we're a great school for getting internships and whatnot, specifically because of our relationship with other businesses around here. i had a wonderful internship over the summer, and since then i have gotten another job out here. at my job today, i was on the phone with people in the following states ohio, michigan, texas, and florida. its great to get your foot in the door at places, especially while youre still in college. </p></li>
<li><p>sports. college should be about getting an education, not about what your football teams record is. its amazing how much money schools put into their football program. i'd much rather see that money getting put towards something thats more valuable to everyone, like for example... tuition. as much as i do love football (im an eagles fan), i'm glad my college doesn't have a football team.</p></li>
<li><p>parties. lac's party just as much as other universities, and at a party, with a smaller campus, youre going to know more of the people there, and i dont know about you guys, but i think it's more fun to go to a party where you know the people than a party where you don't. </p></li>
<li><p>school organizations. we have tons of organizations that anyone can join. i myself am a member of the college democrats, which was a huge sucessful club around the time of the election. we were in the news paper, on TV, and all sorts of wonderful things, just getting the word out. i'm also in habitat for humanity, and almost every weekend we work on houses in our area, and every spring break we head out for a week to build houses down in florida. nothing like spending all of spring break putting a roof on a house, painting a house, cleaning up trash, or framing a house..etc.. and these clubs are also a lot of fun because you know everybody in them, as it's a nice small school. i participate in a few other clubs here and there (anime club, math club) as well, but don't have time for them on a regular basis.</p></li>
<li><p>the students. like i mentioned above, you get to know pretty much everyone, and its a great place for making friends.. i had a random person ask if i wanted to study with him last semester because he remembered i was in one of his other classes.. we're now great friends.. there are all sorts of people, from various different economic classes.. as well as people with different educational backgrounds.. i know some students who got 1500 on their sat's, as well as some who got 1000 on theirs.. yet they get along and make for very interesting discussion.</p></li>
</ol>

<p>now for things i don't like about our school.</p>

<ol>
<li> class times - because of the smaller amount of people not as many sections are given in each class. this makes room for scheduling conflicts to occur. luckily none of this has affected me, but i have heard stories.</li>
</ol>

<p>that's pretty much it :) i'm not trying to say a lac is a better learning environment, but for me, these are reasons why i love my school. :)</p>

63

<p>Fendergirl, what LAC do you go to? I thought that youi attended Penn State.Most LACs that I have seen do not offer any sort of business curriculum. Thus, I am curious about your school.</p>

64

<p>nope, don't attend penn state :) here's a link to my school's website.. <a href="http://www.ycp.edu/%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.ycp.edu/&lt;/a> ... we have the 5 year MBA program and everything..</p>

65

<p>Achat, what sent me "over the edge" was your statement, "I just know that I have been in the computer science field for 24 years now and recruit for my own group and for my company. At the entry level, we are looking for smart people who are intellectually curious - not necessarily people who know how a particular technology very well."..which was a response to my point about job prospects following graduation. I was only speaking about why my son chose RPI for compsci vs Allegheny, Wooster and Oberlin, LAC's which he had been accepted to. </p>

<p>Without characterizing your statement, I find it interesting that you are an MIS department manager, which after my indelicate post, became the department of an investment banking division of a major bank, and that when hiring, "At the entry level, we are looking for smart people who are intellectually curious - not necessarily people who know how a particular technology very well." Competency in technical areas require a vast array of integrated skill sets which no amout of intellectual curiosity can overcome. Yes, a smart person can learn a particular programming language with on-the-job training. And after some years of on-the-job experience that person can haphazardly pick up some of the compentencies needed for systems development and analysis. But why would any manager hire someone without any education when there are hundreds of "intellecturally curious" computer science grads that can begin to productively work on day one? If you were reporting to me, the first question I would ask is why I am paying $50k per year plus benefits to an entry level hire who cannont write a line of code let alone develop a program which will properly interface with an existing system consisting of hundreds interactive files and subroutines when our HR department received 100's of resumes from recent compsci grads, and probably more than 25 from grads of top 10 universities since your are in the investment banking division of a major bank!!!!! To me, that just does not seem at allcredible. And if you tell me that they are "intellectually curious", I will ask you to step into my office for a chat. Oh and close the door behind you. And combined with your statement about the Colgate merit scholarship, I must conclude that it would be wise to question the veracity of any of your posts.</p>

<p>I am sorry if I seem too harsh, but I know that there are many fraudulent posters who reside here and all other MB's and it is important to point them out if their posts seem very questionable. It is also why I think it is important for people to provide more specifics in their post. Doing this provides more credibility and offers readers much more important information in answer to questions they may have. I believe that posters may withhold some info in order to maintain some degree of anonymity. </p>

<p>That's about it for now.</p>

66

<p>i believe achat is correct.. at least in my few experiences.. i don't think you necessarily need the degree to succeed, but a willingness to learn can be a pretty powerful factor.. for example, two interviews, if person A goes to a company with a degree in whatever from yale, and person B goes to a company that had some college but hadn't graduated.. and if person A acts completely bored with the interview, and not excited about the job at all.. and person B comes in and knocks the socks off the interviewer, and is very excited for what he can do for the company.. i'd hire person B. What the degree is in doesn't mean everything - it's what's best for the company. (my own two cents). for example, a friend of mine had left college early because he was offered a job, and still hasn't finished college, yet he's been offered job's at multiple game programming companies (blizzard, electronic arts, etc).. because they know what he can do for them... even though he never finished his degree...</p>

<p>just my two cents...</p>

67

<p>fendergirl, anyone who goes to a Bela Fleck & the Flecktones concert is okay in my book! But here is what is happening today in the work place. Once you post a job opening the HR department will usually receive 25, 50, 100+ resumes. No department manager is going to interview every prospective new hire. So you screen throught the resumes to get the top 10 or so. So if your a major investment banking company you have gotten 100 resumes for the entry level MIS compsci job and 25 are from top 10 compsci university grads, 50 are from other compsci grads and some with a few years of work experience, and one from an LAC chem major. Do you thing this student will even get an interview? No HR person would do that in my opinion. </p>

<p>If you are a small company you may only get 10 resumes. But they cannot afford to bring in a new hire who will not be able to do anything on day one and probably have minimal competancies 6 months down the road. </p>

<p>Our commpetative business environment just doesn't work that way. In the past it sometimes did. I grew up in Endicott, NY and almost my entire family were IBM'ers. My dad began working on the Carrol(?) presses which made those ubiquitous punch cards. He had a golfing friend(ah, the IBM country club in Westover) who was in a management position and eventually ended up in corporate in Armonk. Anywhoo, he got my dad a job in facilities planning(they designed, planned, and coordinated manufacturing moves and installations). He eventually worked his way up the ladder and by the time he retired he was working with ME's and EE's on his projects. He mentioned m any times that he couldn't have done that by the time he had retired which was in the late 70's.</p>

68

<p>I am not saying that achat is wrong but originaloog made some pretty good points. </p>

<p>fendergirl, sorry to tell you this but a company will not even interview person B if the job requires a college degree. Unless of course we are talking about an entry level position and person B will have matriculated by the time they are hired or something like that.</p>

69

<p>haha, original, i've seen bela fleck & the flecktones twice :) they are so amazing. (how did you know i liked them?)</p>

<p>shyboy, did you not understand what i said when i said that a personal friend of mine has been interviewed and offered jobs at major companies, and he doens't have a degree? so many compsci kids go to college with hopes and dreams of being game programmers... yet my friend gets offered these jobs even without having the degree.. i'm just trying to say that, although it doesnt happen often.. it definately does happen.</p>

<p>another example (this isn't really all that relavent), but i make websites for places.. ive done a couple businesses, and some other sites.. as well as some local bands and whatnot.. and i have never taken a course in web design.. or in web programming (at least not yet).. yet i know someone who went to school for web design and they are now working at circuit city. i know this is a different field than other stuff.. but just saying, it does happen..</p>

70

<p>Originaloog, since you have said I am a fake let me clarify: I am an IT manager in the investment banking division of a bank. I don't know about "MIS department manager". I do hiring for my group and for other groups within my department but I have a department head, so I am not the department head. Before coming to this bank, I started in 1982 in AT&T Bell Labs on PDP 11s. After that, I worked for IBM in Danbury CT (which moved to Poughkeepsie) in mainframes in the Data Systems Division on an operating system called TPF (TRansaction Processing Facility) which could run as a VM guest as well as native, then NEC Systems Labs (in Princeton NJ) on Unix systems, then Morgan Stanley and then Instinet, a neutral broker. So that is my history of working in this field for 24 years. I started in 1982 but I got a Master's degree from City U of NY (I know not a premier institution like RPI). At NEC, I worked on the Unix
operating system on NEC workstations then I moved to a group that worked on looking at Corba implementations including NECs own Corba implementations.
If you search in the old forum, you can also see I said that. So, I am not lying.</p>

<p>I work in proprietary trading division of this investment bank. I am wary of saying it's name because then nothing about me including my location would be private would it?. Our group implements trading strategies that are created by quant types. We have hiring of two kinds. The entry level, we do hire from colleges such as RPI. But we are looking for people who can understand and implement simple algorithms etc. But not too much of say OOT because we think we can teach them. We had a guy come in from Cornell as a summer intern who is a sophpomore right now. All he did last summer was write perl scripts to report orders to NASDAQ and NYSE. Perl scripts! When we interviewed him we asked him questions but we did not ask much. He was smart.</p>

<p>Now to hire someone right out of college, we give him a programming test which consists of C and C++ questions. Not too hard. The test measures understanding of and implementation of simple algorithms. We do look at his courses but we see how he does in the test and how he can communicate. Hope I have answered your question.</p>

71

<p>At IBM in Danbury, I worked on Assembler language on IBM 360/370 in the TPF division. I also worked on IBM 3088 Channel controllers for a while. I worked on the SNA operating system implementing lower and middle layers of SNA on TPF. At NEC I mentioned my experience. At Morgan Stanley, I was hired to write communications servers that allowed mainframes and Unix workstations to interoperate and to send data from mainframe databases to Unix workstations. For example, a mainframe talking to a Sun Unix workstation or AIX workstation of IBM. </p>

<p>Then I said enough systems stuff, so I transferred to a applications programming group within Morgan Stanley that worked on fixed income securities. Interesting stuff but as is usual in a bank, it goes through cycles and fixed income was not 'in' in those days (mid 90s), so I interviewed and got the job at Instinet. At Instinet, it was also working on applications stuff. I worked in first connecting Instinet electronically to markets in Europe and then to upgrade the link to NASDAQ. I rose through the ranks at Instinet and was able to leverage that into my current position here. It is a combination of managing some people, designing stuff but still technical. I am not a department head. BUt I go to some campuses and I do hiring for my group when needed. I also do potential weeding for my department where other department groups would hire these people.</p>

72

<p>At the end of my Instinet stay, I worked on a project (as a senior lead with people under me) in smart routing algorithms. This meant looking at market data and sending order (equity) to various markets in the US, NASDAQ and ECNs and NYSE. </p>

<p>As a result of that experience, I was hired here. As I said it is an investment banking division of a bank whose ads you see in the tv - meaning it has a huge consumer and retail division but our division is investment banking. We are a market maker as well. Here, I am implementing proprietary trading strategies that also use market data from various sources. The two jobs are similar.</p>

<p>When we hire new people, they are put to use writing simple things like reporting systems for these front office systems etc. in C++ or perl etc. If you can write a program, you can do this job.</p>

73

<p>Thanks Achat. I believe everything you just posted and will leave it at that. You also clarified the entry level hiring question as well. You are looking at compentencies in computer programming as one component of the hiring process. That's good. I believe you will agree that, while knowing the rudiments of C or C++ is a necessary skill set for entry level programming, compsci grads come away with a very significant array of high level skill sets which are important for an IT department. In fact RPI and most compsci departments do not even offer programming language courses past the entry level C++ or Java. They assume that you will learn these on your own and most compsci grads will come away knowing 3,4 or 5 languages. BTW, because I am a civil/hydraulics engineer, the difference between IT and MIS eludes me.</p>

<p>I assume that the overwhelming majority of new hires in entry level IT are compsci majors or minors because of what they can offer you in terms of compenancies. This is a sincere question because I am curious to know the answer. What qualities, other than some basic programming skills, must a nontech grad offer you to bring them in to your IT department? Do they actually compete with compsci grads or are you talking about positions which require knowledger that compsci majors are lacking in, such as economics, finance, statistics, etc? That would make a lot of sense to me.</p>

<p>BTW, I looked at the archive of your posts and you seem like a "good egg". Sorry for the tenor of my prior posts.</p>

74

<p>Well, if you send me an email, I can also email you back and confirm that I work in an investment bank. And I can also tell you what specific questions I ask in the programming test!</p>

75

<p>fendergirl, </p>

<p>You say you have a friend who works got numerous job offers at major companies and does not have a degree. OK, so what does that mean? I know of many such people as does almost everyone else in the world. That does imply that he/she has a job that requires a degree! You also say that you know someone with a degree who works at Circuit City. Big deal! Did he go to school so that he can work at Circuit City? Perhaps he has a relatively high position in the company. If not, I doubt he is planning on staying there for the rest of his life. He is probably just working there until he finds a better job. </p>

<p>Come on, who do you think your fooling? If you really think you can successfully compete with people who have degrees for jobs that REQUIRE degrees then by all means go ahead and drop out of school. I wont get mad.</p>

76

<p>Some interesting points in this thread.</p>

<p>There are lots of entry level jobs where only minimal specific subject knowledge is required. The actual content of many real jobs is not really learned at any school, but rather is learned through on-the-job training. Specific subject knowledge is less important for these jobs than the apparent ability to pick up new material quickly, since that's what will be required in any event. Graduates of top LACs, and liberal arts colleges of large universities, can be competitive for these jobs because prospective employers believe that they are smart, and that's what is needed. Specifically, an applicant who has only sufficient specific knowledge but can demonstrate superior intellect can be hired over a technologist with tons of additional training, where that training is deemed likely to be superfluous in any event to the organization's specific needs. This doesn't surprise me at all.</p>

<p>There are of course other jobs where specific subject knowledge is paramount. Extensive technical training is obviously appropriate for these jobs. These technologists are usually not choosing between LACs and the liberal arts departments of universities. Comp Sci may be one of the few areas where there may be some overlap.</p>

<p>As to another topic that's been raised: I've wondered myself about the employment opportunities for LAC graduates below the very top tier. At the very top schools, the investment banks and consulting firms will pay a visit to campus. Below this level, if the school is not in a major city that the employers are visiting anyway, I doubt many top employers will come out. It's just not worth their time for the number of prospects they would get to see there. You can just look at the recruitment data for the various schools and see the number of employers that visit campus. This is a legitimate issue to consider, if graduate school is not an obvious immediate next step for you. Of course people can still get jobs, but they may have to do a lot more legwork themselves, in addition to their busy course schedules.</p>

77

<p>monydad, I graduated from City u of NY in 1981. City U of NY is not a premier institution. I have managed to do everything I could (and wanted) and more that I ever wanted out of my career. I wanted to do systems programming with IBM. I did that. I did not get a campus interview and if you will remember, 1982 was a bad recession year. I got a job at AT&T Bell Labs in systems engineering (writing memos) but through my own efforts in late 1981. I managed to get the job at IBM which was then my dream job. I was interviewed off campus (but essentially as an entry level programmer). I quickly learned about assembler language programming, SNA etc. It was exciting stuff. I got out of mainframes and work on Unix systems when that was the latest rage. I worked on Wall Street on anything I have wanted so far. I haven't been outsourced. That is not to say it can't happen. It can, I can't be that confident.</p>

<p>I actually don't know if LACs have as much campus interviewing as say RPI in the technical and engineering field. And the examples I was giving of someone getting a job with McKinsey is not in IT. I don't really know the state of affairs at my son's LAC with computer science and don't really care. If you will look up the McKinsey website, you can see they hire from LACs.</p>

78

<p>BELA FLECK... woo woo!
the coolest.</p>

79

<p>One of the questions my kids always ask the college ad com's is about co-op's or internships. Many of the colleges that we've visited have either an internship or a co-op program. Elon University pops up on this board once in a while as a middle of the road LAC in NC. They talk about internships as an intregal part of their program. York University, where the above Fendergirl goes, also has internships - at least for comp sci majors. Even though they probably do not have the campus interviewing that big colleges have, the internships are a big help in landing a job for lac grads. I've noticed that it's pretty much a part of the talk at every college now.</p>

80

<p>When our D started looking at colleges, both TheMom and I, who both have degrees from research universities, were strongly biased in that direction. On paper, D's #1 choice was Columbia. We visited Northwestern, Georgetown, Harvard, Yale, Columbia, NYU, and Stanford. We also visited LAC's Smith and Barnard. My D's choices--and our own sense of priorities--began to change. She didn't even bother to apply Columbia, so put off was she by the cog-in-the-machine sense of the undergrad experience she got from the students there. Whereas, based on her experience at Smith, she applied to Wellesley sight unseen.</p>

<p>She is now in her first year at Smith and, of Shyboy's list of benefits of research universities, has: tremendous amounts of resources at her disposal, including a research assistant position for her first two years; so much excitement that people have commented that she glows when she talks about Smith (my mother in-law could hardly get a word in edgewise); access to some pretty brilliant minds, including some that have taught in the Ivy League (and, funny, but a lot of offspring of Ivy League profs send their kids to LAC's); a great deal of social and economic diversity; food and housing rated in PR's top 20 (housing #2)...and apparently with some justification (her "dorm" is a Victorian house built in 1879); small intense classes--who thinks anonymity is good?; and an alumni network that is ferocious (as is Wellesley's). For my D, a large Greek-dominated sports-centered party scene was a negative in her considerations, so mileage may vary.</p>

<p>To crib a line from the Smith propaganda, an LAC is a place where it can be four years all about you. Only 2-3 students want a particular class? They will make it work. Opportunities...which ones do you want? My D is looking a junior year where Summer/Fall is spent in Washington, D.C. and Spring in Budapest...and this knocks out time at Oxford or with the Royal Shakespeare Company. Both NYC and Boston are in easy range of a weekend trip for special events. Socializing in the sense of meeting guys, if you have the time, can be a bit thin if you stay on campus but both Amherst and UMass/Amherst are 20 minutes away and Northampton, a three-minute walk, is the local center of everything. But otherwise their are friends and activities aplenty.</p>

<p>Some research universities are great places to be. TheMom has worked at UCLA for almost 25 years and I still have a special place in my heart for schools like Georgetown and Yale. But no one should make the mistake of condescending to LAC's or having pity on those who go there.</p>