Hi,
I recently received an early acceptance letter from a liberal arts college I really liked. I liked its campus, its small size, its food, almost everything about it but I’m not sure about attending a liberal arts college when I want to major in something sciency. Do you think that generally, liberal arts colleges would provide you as good of an education for science majors as research universities would? This might be a kinda dumb question but I would like to know if I can still get a great science education and get into medical school as a biology/pre-med major in a liberal arts college. It DOES offer Bachelor of Science, not just B.A., which is good to know. Would employers from science-related industries think any less of you if you have a degree from a LAC rather than a research university? And I apologize if I unintentionally offend anyone here who is majoring in science in an LAC. I just really want to know what you think because most people I know who are science majors are attending research universities, while others like business/music majors seem to attend LAC colleges.
Any help is appreciated, thanks alot!
Twelve of the 23 “Top Choices” on this online list are liberal arts colleges: “The Experts’ Choice: Colleges with Great Pre-med Programs.”
LACs are great for science undergrads.
You will may have a better shot at getting support in difficult STEM coursework at a LAC. What LAC is it?
@intparent University of Richmond
Big thanks to everyone who commented so far! I appreciate your taking your time to give advice.
Biology is popular enough as a major, and medical school (which does not require any specific major) is popular enough as a post-graduation goal, that most reasonable colleges, including LACs, have good offerings there. Smaller departments may have fewer subareas to take advanced courses from; whether that is an issue for you depends on your interests (you can look at on-line catalogs and schedules to check what advanced courses are available at each school).
Also, do not worry about the degree title BS versus BA. If the school offers both, you can choose based on which version’s requirements fit your interests better.
Richmond is an excellent school. I would not be concerned. Congratulations on your acceptance.
Look at alumni-earned PhDs in STEM fields on a per capita basis:
http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/infbrief/nsf13323/
http://www.reed.edu/ir/phd.html
About half the top 10 colleges by this measure, and a little more than half the top 50, are LACs.
Sometimes you’ll see push-back against these numbers on CC (suggestions, for example, that LAC alumni may be gravitating to weak programs, or that these numbers only reflect a greater inclination to pursue academic/research careers among the kinds of students who choose to attend LACs). There may or may not be a solid basis for these suggestions; I haven’t seen good evidence either way. To me, it stands to reason that LACs will tend to do a better job than large research universities at motivating and preparing undergrads for graduate-level research. At a LAC, classes are smaller, they are almost always taught by professors (not TAs), and so there can be a greater volume of professor-graded papers and essay/long-answer tests.
The down-side to LACs is that they generally can’t offer as many courses and majors as a big research university can. Also, a LAC may not as easily be able to attract superstar scholars (relatively few Nobel laureates, for example, are affiliated with LACs). In my opinion, the academic advantages of LACs tend to outweigh these disadvantages for most good students in the arts and sciences (unless, perhaps, you are comparing them to a few tip-top research universities.)
@Themclos Thank you!