<p>Can anyone compile a list of a few LAC's, in or near a city, that are top tier schools?</p>
<p>Thanks</p>
<p>Swarthmore near Philly.</p>
<p>I think the only true LAC's IN a city are Barnard and Macalester. There might be others but those are the only I can think of.</p>
<p>Swat, Haverford, and Bryn Mawr (Philadelphia)
Barnard (NYC)
Occidental (LA)
Rice (Houston)
Cooper Union (NYC)
Sarah Lawrence (near NYC)
Wellesley (near Boston)
Reed (Portland)
Lewis & Clark (Portland)
Rhodes (Memphis)
Trinity (Hartford)
Goucher (Baltimore)
Case Western (Cleveland)
Macalester (St. Paul)
Vassar (near NYC)
Bard (near NYC)
Providence (Providence)
Claremont Colleges (near LA)
Skidmore (near Albany)</p>
<p>Rice and Case Western - LACs????</p>
<p>Rice has under 3000 undergraduates, and Case Western has under 3500. They may not technically be LACs, but they're LAC-like in size.</p>
<p>maybe you should familiarize yourself with what LAC means......Liberal Arts College. Size is not an element of LAC. I can assure you Rice doesn't consider itself to be a Liberal Arts College.</p>
<p>
[quote]
With approximately 2,900 undergraduates and 1,900 graduate students, Rice combines the strengths of a liberal arts college median class size of 16 and student-to-faculty ratio of 5:1 with the resources of a research university.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Rice is more of a LAC than Harvey Mudd, which is always considered a LAC on CC! </p>
<p>Anyway, you don't have to agree with me. Come up with your own list.
<em>sulks</em></p>
<p>I think the fact that Rice has the resources of a research uni makes it ineligible to be considered a LAC - can't think of any LAC offhand with one of the largest medical research facilities in the world at its disposal.</p>
<p>Don't need to make my own list....just trying to not mislead the OP.</p>
<p>warblersrule, I agree with most of your list except Vassar, Bard & Skidmore, which do not feel particularly close to those cities.</p>
<p>If you count Worcester, Mass as a city you can add Clark & Holy Cross.</p>
<p>Yes, I debated about Vassar, Bard, and Skidmore. NYC is about 30-40 min or a short train ride away, so technically the colleges are "near the city," but the colleges themselves are relatively isolated. The same applies to Carleton, which I left off the list for that reason.</p>
<p>Each of those schools is much further than 40 minutes from NYC, I believe.</p>
<p>Oberlin is closer to Cleveland than Carleton is to Minneapolis. And both of them are a lot closer to their respective cities than Vassar is to NYC.</p>
<p>Having never been to NY, I wouldn't know. :/</p>
<p>I got most of the schools/info I listed from the</a> thread on the Parents' forum. :)</p>
<p>Lesson learned: Next time, just send people straight to the source. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>Vassar is about 1.5 hr train ride to NYC. It's relatively easy to go there coz there's a train station near campus and the round trip ticket to the city is only $25.50. It's not hard to go but a lot of ppl stay on campus more often. Still, compared to many LAC's in rural areas, Vassar has a great location.</p>
<p>The schedule says 110 minutes from Poughkeepsie to Grand Central Station. The station in Poughkeepsie is about 3 miles from campus according to the Vasser website. On the plus side, it is possible to go into the city without a car. On the negative side those times really aren't feasible for a dinner in town. </p>
<p>For comparison:</p>
<p>It would be about the same travel time to get from Swarthmore or Haverford or Bryn Mawr into downtown Philly and then on to Penn Station in NYC on Amtrak. To Washington DC is about 30 minutes longer.</p>
<p>Unbeknownst to many, Vassar actually has a small "campus" in Manhattan, but it's not really noteworthy. I actually think it's just one building on the Upper West Side that enables students to easily intern in the city. Vassar, Bard, and Sarah are all quite a trek from New York City, and most of the students at those schools that I know never come into the city.</p>
<p>Holy Cross has avery nice campus in mid-size Worcester,1 hour from Boston.</p>
<p>TCNJ is about an hour(probably less w/o traffic) from both New York AND Philadelphia</p>
<p>New College of FL is in the resort city of Sarasoto:)</p>