Also may be R1s get known due to their research using graduate schools and undergraduate schools relish in reflected glory.
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I love the OPs appreciation for the LAC experience. My D attended a LAC and also had a wonderful experience in every sense (academically, socially, research opportunities, etc.). In general, I am a big fan of LACs.
Still, I am a proponent of each student finding colleges that are the right financial, academic, and social fit for that individual. For example, we visited a couple of LACs with my S and he felt the student body was just too small â for him the best fit college (with the highest merit aid) turned out to be a mid-sized university which had a larger student base and small classes â he had an equally wonderful four years. And FWIW I had a great experience at a very large university many years ago. It is about affordability and personal fit. There is no one right answer for every student.
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Yes. I do agree. This is only a personal one application cycle experience of an average good international student in STEM with graduate school as the next step and no regard for D1 sports etc.
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Those âbusiness insiderâ articles can be, instead, called âads for standardized testing and for expensive private colleges that our people and customers attended.â It takes colleges which already have the reputations as being âfor smart kidsâ, and manages to both boost the âeliteâ colleges that the founders and the top executives attend.
Yes it is, in large part, a self-congratulatory piece âlook how smart we/you are, we/you attended colleges with the smartest peopleâ.
The claim that ND students are, somehow, âsmarterâ than CMU students (for example) is ridiculous.
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I now have a working theory that for the sorts of colleges that like to say all or most of their financial aid is needs-based, college-funded research jobs are becoming a sort of shadow merit aid program.
That sort of feels conspiratorial, but I am not sure it is really deceptive. Their point is to the extent they have funding for unconditional grant aid, they are directing all, or at least most, of it based on need. But if research has become a really high-end form of work-study, well, that isnât necessarily taking away from need-based grants.
Or maybe it is! Money is fungible, but college funding often has lots of strings attached, so sorting this out without a comprehensive audit is not necessarily possible.
Anyway, to your pointâI know affordability is often a difficult issue for International students. And even if there is supposedly equality in needs-based aid for International students (not always promised, and specifically not typically true for in-state versus out-of-state schools), that may not be enough to meet the budget needs of students coming from countries where it is not the norm to save up what seem like crazy sums to pay for college.
So, whatever role they are serving for the institution, it does seem like assessing the availability of paid research positions could be a good idea for many International studentsâor indeed anyone who might be uncomfortable with their expected contribution.
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I agree with you on that.
I also agree with this. Some schools encourage and put greater emphasis on undergrad research than others. My point was that an R1 offers a potential for an undergrad to do more in-depth research, but whether in practice it happens or not depends on the college and the student.
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That is interesting but how much are these awards? Never heard of anything substantial from campus research jobs 6-10k may be?
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Iâm very fond of the saying there are many roads to Dublin, and this definitely seems like a case where the roads can be different but in some ways parallelâbigger LAC with lots of faculty research? Mid-sized research university with a lot of support for undergraduate research? Both sound promising to me, and I can definitely see either (or both, or neither) making sense for a given kid.
To the OPâs point, though, I think for various reasons that International students may not realize how robust some of these roads can be in the United States. Indeed, I would again suggest this is true even for US applicants. Meaning I think there are a lot of US families who know about some big public universities, and maybe know something about the most famous private universities, but generally donât know much about the many highly-selective LACs and not-quite-so-famous-among-the-general-public universities that might be pretty good roads for some students.
Of course people in, say, academia know all about those schools. So do many people who are making hiring decisions for very selective employers. But it is actually quite understandable why until you get seriously involved in the US college selection process, you might not be such a person.
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Definitely, and I think this becomes one of the potential reasons to go one way or another. Like, if you have a well-developed research interest, or at least subfield interest, and you are confident about competing for undergraduate research opportunities at a university which is deep in that areaâgo for it, right? Assuming it meets other criteria like affordability and location and such.
If you are someone who maybe wants to get involved in research earlier as an undergrad, but does not have such a focused interest yet, indeed who may be open to opportunities in diverse fields, then maybe a well-chosen LAC could be right for you.
I think the OP is right that the second of these paths is less well-known among many International families (and for that matter, I think many US families). But once you get that information, I donât think there is one answer for all students.
Indeed, it is really the amazing variety of the US higher education system that is one of its chief distinguishing virtues. Unfortunately the costs are often a distinguishing vice, but if you can afford it, there are typically many different paths available.
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Most undergraduate research assistants are not paid, except summer interns. Moreover, where this is funded, the funding is often part of NSF grants (or grants from other institution) for undergraduate research, not part of the institutional funding.
The two reasons that these colleges have moved to financial aid rather than merit aid are A, they have come under fire for making it difficult for low income kids to attend these supposedly"elite" colleges, and B, merit aid is to attract academically accomplished kids, and these colleges have no need to do this, since they cannot accept the vast majority of academically accomplished kids who are already applying.
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I mean, 6-10K sounds like real money to me. Not a full ride merit scholarship, of course, but I think for some families that could help make their expected contribution more comfortable. Sometimes these are one-time deals, but increasingly it looks like students at some colleges are getting these multiple years, and so that would add up to more.
I also note that I believe paid summer programs, at least at the more desirable schools, tend to include housing and meals in addition to the cash amount. Again, that can be a non-trivial contribution financially, particularly if done more than once.
Anyway, since this just was a subject of our Amherst visit, here is Amhertâs page:
https://www.amherst.edu/academiclife/student-faculty-research
According to that page, in 2020 73 rising sophomores and juniors got summer support for STEM research, apparently a different 106 students got what they call Academic Internships as summer support. Then 77 seniors got senior thesis support, and 100 students (not necessarily seniors) got Academic Internships during the academic year. So, it looks like in 2020, there are around 180 summer paid positions and 180 academic-year paid positions/awards. Again, it looks to me like at least some people could get multiple such positions over their time.
Then the page says in 2021, they started a new summer program to fund even more non-STEM students (20, and it could be for one or two years). I think some of the other named programs overlap the above, but it seems to me like there is a separate program for study outside the US.
If you click on the Academic Interns page, it also explains that departments can fund additional positions on top of these college-funded ones.
So exactly how much could an individual Amherst student eventually rack up between departmental internships, college-funded internships, international stipends, the senior thesis program, and summer programs (possibly multiple summers, including saved rent/food costs)?
No idea. Indeed, for all I know they try to keep any one student from getting too much of this.
Stillâthat sure does seem like a lot of opportunities. And growing.
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That is very interesting theory and supporting evidence.
My kids all did research at R1 universities and got paid. MIT offers the option of course credit or cashâŠand my kid did both (not at the same time) depending on his schedule. One kids research led to two paid fellowships-- one overseas (expenses covered).
It was NOT difficult finding paid research spots. My kids are not go-getter typesâŠ
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That was my impression too, but then they said something different at Amherst, and I looked it up, and sure enoughâAmherst appears to be providing a lot of funding to academic year programs these days, including to non-STEM students. Departmental funding (which I suspect is where research grants would go) is in addition to all that.
Of course this is just Amherst. As I said before, I would not in any way assume this is now some universal feature of how LACs work. But as I am currently poking around, it appears this is not unique to Amherst.
Nor unique to LACs. At our Rochester visit, they were also promoting the availability of paid research positions for non-STEM students. So I looked that up too . . .
Turns out Rochester does in fact have all sorts of âinternalâ funding, managed by their Office of Undergraduate Research. Just like with Amherst, some are summer programs, but others are during the academic year (or sometimes both). Some are specific to Natural Sciences and Engineering Majors, but some are for students in humanities or social sciences. Some are small, but again it looks to me like you can get them multiple times. Some are bigger, although there can be far fewer of those.
Again, I donât really know how much all this can be stacked up to in practice. But I guess I was surprised to find out how much of this Rochester is now doing. Of course Rochester also offers some good merit scholarships, so maybe I should not be so surprised. Indeed, some of these are apparently designed to be awarded at enrollment.
MIT or many other top Private R1s would have different level of opportunities as well as truly solid students.
I am comparing LACs with public R1s like UCs, UIUC etc. If you are good enough to get into MITs and Stanfords of the world and can afford them that is certainly a different deal altogether 
This was also something we were told at Rochester, that some people did volunteer positions, that others did unpaid positions for credit, and that others did paid positions. Not absolute proof, but according to our guide, paid positions were not hard to get.
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My research inclined kid did not look at any LACs for undergrad. Intentionally. He now graduated. And not going to grad school. At the time of entry though, grad school was a serious option.
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Since this threadâs purpose is to highlight differences between LACs and R1s, could you perhaps elaborate on the reason? I think itâll be useful to future readers of this thread.
What might research oriented applicants be overlooking or be unaware of?
Thanks!
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I do not agree that there will be more opportunities but only for a few, at a public research university. I think it depends on the school.
My daughter attended a well known public research university and did research (some was paid) for all 4 years. She also had several publications. This was not unique to her, it was quite common.
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