fwiw, my oldest’s main criteria were west coast, good bio and psych departments, academically strong, small class sizes. Note that overall campus size isn’t on there. She applied to 10 schools and of those, I think 5 were private LACs and 5 were large state universities. She ended up at a LAC but of her top 3, 1 was a large state school.
My middle kid (rising junior) has just started looking and we’ve toured one large state school, 2 medium-sized schools, and 1 LAC and so far she liked one of the medium sized schools best but hasn’t ruled out small or big in general.
Both of my kids wanted smaller (IMO) schools while I much prefer larger campuses. One ended up at one with 10k students (a public flagship, but smaller) and the other at a 3.5k STEM school (so smaller, but fewer majors so each major had more students). Both wished, at times, that they’d chosen bigger schools. Looking at those same faces, taking classes from the same profs, eating at the same diners and cafes, gets old around junior year.
But I think you’ll know after visiting a few of each variety.
Majors. At the large state schools, there tends to be many more majors. At a place like Ohio State there is 200+ majors. At an LAC, it is more like 50. The extra majors come a lot from the additional colleges and schools. Things like engineering, education, health sciences, business and agriculture. If you have a very specific interest (e.g. Soil Science) you may have to look at a large university.
Surrounding environment. Even if the University is remote (State College, PA), it is still big do to the size of the college. The large state university cities also have everything a 18-23 year old is looking for. Compare this to Kenyon. A LAC in a larger city (Macalester) doesn’t have a large impact outside the immediate area. What happens at a large state school can impact the whole state.
Sports. Sports can be big at an LAC, but it is very localized. At the big state schools it can be a national event. A home game on a football Saturday in a power 5 conference can be quite a spectacle. No LAC can rival “Jump Around” at Wisconsin no matter how much they love their lacrosse team.
Class size. The bigger early classes that occur at the large schools allow students to hide. This can be bad if you are the type of student that needs someone to notice if you don’t go to class. You can easily graduate from one of the larger departments at a state school and not have a single professor know who you are if you wish.
Advisors. I think this is a wash. It depends more upon the individual advisor than the school type.
Name recognition. Almost everyone for large state schools. Even the best LACs have poor name recognition outside the immediate area and educational elites.
Some people like both types of colleges and choose by other factors, while for others size is a defining characteristic.
For my son this year, and for my husband and me back in our day, the choice was very clear. Each of us explored a variety of colleges, and each of us ended up strongly preferring top small liberal arts colleges.
We celebrate these aspects of small liberal arts colleges:
-small classes right from freshman year, with the rich discussions these allow
-professors and staff who really get to know their students in and out of the classroom
-emphasis on good teaching as well as on good research in awarding tenure
-all research opportunities go to undergraduates
-a very strong sense of “community”— tight relationships with other students, strong alumni network, and time spent with professors on committees/in dining halls/at their houses/in the community
-easily able to participate in several different extracurricular activities, and easy to take on a leadership role
Neither my husband nor I ever felt our college was “too” small, and neither of us studied abroad.
I was surprised to hear someone mention Greek life as a feature of LACs, when the vast majority of the top small liberal arts colleges we explored do not have ANY fraternities or sororities… whereas all of the larger universities we explored either had fraternities or eating clubs. The presence or absence of exclusive social organizations depends on which college or university rather than being related to size. A lot of the most prestigious small liberal arts colleges do not have any fraternities (Amherst, Bard, Bates, Bowdoin, Carleton, Colby, Connecticut, Grinnell, Haverford, Macalester, Middlebury, Skidmore, Vassar, Williams, plus many of the women’s colleges, etc.).
A reason one might prefer a larger university is that there are more course offerings at larger universities. And if you have a less common research/study interest, you may have a better chance of finding a professor who shares it at a large university. Finally, the average Joe on the street will have heard of the sports teams at some large universities, will know at least some of the Ivy League schools and other top universities such as Stanford or MIT by name, and will recognize the name of the state flagships as well. Graduate schools, employers, and people who were top students themselves, or have relatives who were top students, will know and be impressed by the top small liberal arts colleges, but the names are not as well known among the general public.
Visit colleges of a variety of sizes and see if you have a preference.
My kids enjoyed their Greek experience. It made their large U smaller.
At my small LAC most guys were in the Greek life.
You asked, “What types of students typically end up at each?”
I think that a variety of students attend each type, and you will find like-minded peers at either. I also think that most students ultimately could be happy at either, even if one seems to be a “better” fit for them than the other.
It does seem that a larger university might be a great fit for a confident go-getter who seeks out opportunities and is comfortable asserting him/herself. The student who goes to office hours and seeks out professors and opportunities will thrive. Larger settings also might work for someone who enjoys anonymity in their classes and on campus, and would rather listen to a lecture than participate in a discussion. (But there are still plenty of discussion classes at large universities when you get to upper level courses.)
At small colleges, professors are very aware of their students as individuals and tend to suggest opportunities to you. E.g., unsolicited by me, my professors suggested courses I might take, topics that might interest me, committees I might join, and scholarships to which I might apply. One of them recommended to the college that I become a peer writing tutor.
Small colleges also help you connect socially. For example, Williams sends every freshman on a small group Ephventure together in August, and then the freshmen live all year in “entries” of about 20 freshmen and two junior advisors (who are unpaid and do not have a disciplinary role; their role is to help their freshmen get to know one another and the college).
Did you ever wonder where professors send their own kids to college?
However, that same article says that liberal arts colleges educate about 3% of the nation’s college students. So if kids of college faculty are about twice as likely as other kids to attend liberal arts colleges, that means that 6% of them attend liberal arts colleges.
Of course, college faculty, being in the higher education industry, are probably more aware of liberal arts colleges’ existence than most other parents. Other parents and their kids may not even realize that liberal arts colleges exist, so the kids obviously won’t apply to or attend them.
The 3% number is for college students generally. However, the specific comparison cited in the article is faculty kids vs. other kids from professional, high-income families. Both of these groups are unusually well informed about colleges relative to the general population. Both are much more likely to attend LACs than the general population.
But while both groups are more likely to attend LACs, the point is that the LAC preference is especially pronounced among faculty kids. According to the original Siegfried & Getz study (Tables 2 and 4), the actual percentages were 14.0% for other high-income professional kids, vs. 28.0% for faculty kids specifically.
Just two data points. a suggestion, and a possible issue.
My oldest wanted a larger university. After starting at university, she ended up changing her major to something that typically would not have been available at most LACs, and specifically is not available at any of the small schools that either daughter had looked at. She did take advantage of some of the opportunities that would usually only be available at a larger school. Many (probably most) students do end up changing their majors after starting university.
My youngest felt she would be more comfortable at a small school. We looked in both the US (at well known LACs) and in Canada (Canada does not use the term “LAC”, and instead refers to them as small primarily undergraduate universities). Her first semester as a freshman she ended up with two classes that had 15 or fewer students per class. Both were taught by full professors. This probably would not have happened in a larger school.
There are advantages each way.
My suggestion is that you visit both some larger schools and some LACs. See where you are most comfortable. At three of the smaller schools that we visited my daughter was able to meet with professors one-on-one immediately after taking a tour of the school. Both daughters also got to sit in on classes at the end of tours at many of the schools that we visited.
One issue that we did run into: Our in-state public flagship is very good, but large. The LACs around where we live in most cases have little or no merit based aid, and full cost would have been prohibitive (~70,000 per year). For my younger daughter to find an affordable small school she was pushed to either quite far away in the US (midwest or south), or to Canada. She chose the latter partly because it is physically closer to us. Regardless, there may be a cost reason to prefer one size school versus the other.
2/3 of my kids chose large unis because they wanted available classes at all hours, and, among other things, they asked about accessibility to pizza and burgers in the middle of the night. As they got further into their majors, the classes were more personal and interactive with their professors.
Third child chose a smaller campus in the city. His classes started large and are now smaller. It depends on what you feel will be most comfortable for your lifestyle.
After my freshman year, I transferred from a school with 50K students to one with 3K students. At the big school, the classes were so big that I didn’t feel like I was part of a classroom, the teaching assistants couldn’t speak English, and there were too many other distractions (like playing basketball with my frat bros) that kept me from academics.
I thrived at the smaller school, where the smaller classes and more personalized environment made all the difference in the world.
None of my professors knew my name at the large school, and if I wasn’t doing well, that was my tough luck. Every one of my professors knew my name at the small school, and if I did poorly on a test, they’d help me out.
Everyone’s different, but the smaller school worked better for me.
If you want to major in education or child development, a public university probably would be more suitable. Those fields aren’t as well covered (if they’re covered at all) at most LACs.
However, almost any college (LAC or university) will have a psychology department.
IMO, it may be a misconception to think that LACs are more suitable for shy, introverted people.
At a LAC (or small LAC-like university), you’ll probably be under more pressure to participate in classroom discussions. You may have more writing assignments at a LAC. They’ll be graded by a professor (not a TA), who may get to know not just your name but also how you think and express yourself. So if you’re the kind of person who’d sometimes prefer to remain anonymous/undisturbed at the back of a big lecture hall, or engage with faculty and classmates only on your own terms, a LAC may not be ideal.
The LAC social scene may be a little more intimate and low-key (depending on the school).
But even at a big state u, you can request a substance-free dorm, avoid fraternities/sororities, and otherwise seek out a quieter social life.
In any case, a LAC may not even be an option if you can’t find an affordable one you like and that also has the majors you want.
As @tk21769 suggests, the biggest differential is the type of education you receive.
Compare the size of the biggest class at a large university with the biggest class at an LAC. An intro economics class at our state flagship had 500 students in a lecture hall versus a max lecture size of 60 at one LAC. That large intro class likely will not be taught or graded by the prof that “wrote the book,” but rather by a grad student. This is not necessarily a bad thing. The grad student may be more interested and a better teacher than the hood ornament prof that wrote the book. But understand that it is virtually impossible for anyone to grade more than a midterm and final for a class that size, Thus, you are not going to see a lot of individual, graded assignments, and certainly not a lot of papers.
A friend of mine who attended an Ivy back in the dark ages wrote one paper over the course of four years. By comparison, at an LAC, I wrote an average of about ten papers a term. A school like Hamilton has made writing a skill it insists on, and has cross curriculum writing requirements. This would not be possible at a large university.
Whether this makes any difference overall in the final analysis is up for grabs. If it did, the result would be large swatches of better qualified graduates coming out of LACs, and I don’t sense that result at all. But, it may well mean that an LAC is the best place for a given individual seeking to develop writing and speaking skills.
The social issue is a double edged sword. To be sure there are many more people, and thus more social opportunities, at a large university. I have seen some who absolutely thrive in this type of setting. I have seen others who can’t find their footing. The flip side is that a smaller LAC may (but of course not always) forge closer friendships. In the end, visit and consider what will be best for you as an individual.
I can’t speak about education as a major. I always thought that the best teachers had a broad and balanced education in the liberal arts. I am sure that there are educators who disagree and assert that an understanding of teaching theories is essential, or that an education major is needed to get licensed or employed. Still there are LACs with an education major, and it is certainly worth a look-see.
I loved UT-Austin, which had 48,000 students when I attended. I made an effort to get to know my professors. I think most of them knew my name. There was always something to do. It’s not like you see 48,000 people at once, except on football game days, which are amazing. It’s like a big city with a bunch of neighborhoods. I hung around the engineering building a lot and had a great group of friends. But then I could branch out and ALWAYS find something to do. I was there for six years (BS and MS) and would have been happy to stay longer.
Having said that, I don’t think a big school would have been a good choice for D - she gets stressed too easily. She’s at a small LAC and thriving.
As others have said, visit a couple of each if you can, to see how you like the vibe. There are advantages and disadvantages to both. Advantages of LACs are smaller classes, easier interaction with profs, close community, more personalized attention, undergrad research, and being able to get to know staff and the college in general, which will allow you great opportunties that you might find yourself competing for at a large Uni. I struggle to think of advantages at large unis, because I love LACs, but there will definitely be more classes, activities, and sports to choose from, as well as possible large career fairs, though recruiters go to LACs too.
Disadvantages of LACs are that they tend to be a little more isolated, you might get fed up with the same people, possible lack of activities, fewer class choices, and inability to be anonymous. Disadvantages at larger unis are that your Intro level classes are likely to be large, it’s harder to get to know profs and get individual attention in general, it can be hard to stay on top of things when you fall behind, and it can be really hard to get to know people when there are thousands of people on campus. It’s sounds like you should be open to everything at this point.
Like anything, there are pros and cons to both. It’s about what is most important in your kid’s individual situation. Each kid is different. I generally think, minus an extreme situation, they would all do just fine at either but would thrive in the environment best suited for them. Then the question of finances comes up. How much is that thriving worth? That’s a very subjective issue.
All I know is my wife and I attended our large state Us. Our son attends a highly selective, small private (bigger than classic LAC but very small compared to state U. Essentially it’s an LAC for sake of discussion). We received a good education, he’s getting a GREAT one. The level of service, resources, peer group, depth of academic aura and involvement is far superior. It’s just a different environment with a totally different set of expectations (and resources to help fulfill those expectations for those who engage - yes you still have to engage!). You would expect that, otherwise why would you be willing to pay for it. (I realize there’s a whole different conversation about actual cost, aid, etc.)We love the focus on undergraduate academics, student life, and job placement. You have to be sleepwalking to not participate.
You can do quite well at either.
I have to disagree that it’s hard to get to know people on a large campus. I am an introvert and had absolutely no problem meeting people. I met one of my best friends on the first day in my dorm, and another close friend the first day of calculus class. I also had no problem getting to know professors. And I had some of the best professors in the world - UT has quite a few engineering profs who in the National Academy of Engineering - including my dad :). When I tell colleagues who some of my professors were, they are amazed! Experts in their fields.
@tk21769 makes a great point about the misconception of LAC’s being more suitable for the shy introvert. The class participation concept is a real thing. Where S attends, most courses have an element (if not majority) of discussion. You better be prepared. Like anything else, some participate more than others. He would tell you he challenges himself to be a useful (to the conversation) contributor and has a different level of confidence in sharing and supporting / defending his ideas. It makes for far more interesting courses and has led him to add a Political Science minor to his business major. The depth of discussion has truly piqued his interest. I think that’s quite valuable.
@tk21769 brings up a good point about preprofessional majors. We have to be careful not to mix up LACs with the broader concept of a liberal arts education. Chances are high that a college graduate interested in a teaching career these days will need at least a masters degree to really make themselves marketable. That leaves lots of room for a broad-based baccalaureate education punctuated by lots of reading of primary texts and individual research. That’s the liberal arts ideal regardless of whether it is taught in the college of arts and sciences (CAS) of a big university or at a stand-alone, small college aka, a LAC. If the OP can determine whether that kind of education is best for her, it will go a long way in narrowing down her choices.
FWIW, the best primary and secondary school teachers I know were all liberal arts majors in college.