<p>I am thinking about applying to some liberal arts schools, but I am not sure if I am a liberal arts person. I want a well rounded education, but I am not sure if the size of a LAC is right for me.</p>
<p>For what reasons would you tell someone not to go to a liberal arts school?</p>
<p>I’m applying to LAC’s because I like the sense of community, and that the professors are focused on undergraduate education.</p>
<p>These are the negatives of which I am aware:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>At a University, you can usually take graduate courses in your major if you are a good student. You won’t have that opportunity at a college with only undergraduate studies.</p></li>
<li><p>If prestige is important to you, LAC’s don’t have the same name recognition as Universities, especially on a national and international level. Far fewer students to get the name out and no publications.</p></li>
<li><p>At a University, you can be mentored by well-known faculty who can write good recommendations for you if you apply to graduate school. However, with so many students, it is probably harder to get to know prominent professors. At an LAC, you might get better mentoring, but the professors don’t usually have as broad a reputation. </p></li>
<li><p>At a University, it is often easier to get into the classes you want because the classes are larger and offered more frequently. At an LAC, class size is often capped plus there might be more scheduling conflicts or specific classes not offered in a semester.</p></li>
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<p>Small size relative to Universities doesn’t bother me. In fact, very large classes with hundreds of students and the lecture on a screen bother me a great deal. I relish class discussion, and am eager to hear what other students think.</p>
<p>Reasons not to go to a LAC?
If you’re diametrically opposed to being “forced” to explore a broad range of topics;
If you’re 100%-God-Himself-couldn’t-change-my-mind set on earning an undergraduate degree in a professional field like engineering;
If you can’t find a LAC where you feel comfortable;
If you’re obsessed with institutional prestige over quality of experience;
If you positively must be associated with a competitive D1 athletic program;</p>
<p>Some things that are NOT NOT NOT valid reasons for avoid a LAC (because they are WRONG):
Don’t believe you can afford it (aka “sticker shock”)
Don’t think you would have research opportunities like at a “big school”
Don’t think you could have a career in a professional field like engineering with a liberal arts undergrad degree
Don’t think there will be a social scene
Think all LACs are way out in the sticks
(I could go on)</p>
<p>Best thing to do is visit a couple of LACs that you might be interested in. I did not think I would like Rhodes until I visited (my first choice at that point was Vandy). But, I was blown away and it immediately became my first choice after visiting. Conversely, I thought that I was going to love Duke, but when I visited I was completely turned off and moved it to “safety” status.</p>
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there are a number of LACs do not have strict distribution requirements, whereas there are many universities that have very strict requirements. I think it would be better to say if you are not the kind of person who is interested in studying a broad range of subjects, LACs would probably not be a good fit.</p>
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<p>I am a big fan of small liberal arts colleges and often recommend them. One of my kids recently graduated from one, one is a first year student at another. So I like them.</p>
<p>However, while the top LACs do have good financial aid programs and do support high quality research, it also is true that they are very expensive, and that research is not their primary focus. If your family earns just a bit too much to qualify for financial aid, but has not been able to put away significant college savings, then you might be priced out of the top private LACs (although some good ones do award merit scholarships). If you are a truly exceptional student who wants to do bleeding edge research in the natural or social sciences, then chances are high that even the best LACs will not accommodate those interests as well as a national research university</p>
<p>IMO</p>
<p>I think LACs & Unis are very similiar these days compared to 20 years ago.</p>
<p>The LACs have stepped up independent research projects. Many LAC students are being recognized on National levels for research.</p>
<p>The Unis have increased Honors Colleges, thus creating “conversational” classes and reducing lecture only courses.</p>
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Differences to me:</p>
<p>Many LACs are residential & housing is usually guaranteed for 4 years. You won’t have to be bothered with finding an apartment, but will be stuck with on-campus dining. </p>
<p>The small size of a LAC may be deceiving depending upon the type of high school you are coming from. Some “large” size high school students find the small LACs actually provide a larger group of friends because the stereo-type cliques are easy to cross – i.e. the jock is also the science lab assistant so you will know him from sports or from lab.</p>
<p>A few visits to LACs will be worthwhile.</p>
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<p>My primary point on affordability is this: don’t discount a LAC out of hand because of the sticker price. Until you receive a financial aid package from a private institution, you probably don’t know for sure that the institution is unaffordable to you. The vast majority of LACs are going to offer significant merit-based aid. </p>
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<p>I respectfully disagree with that, but we may be talking about two different things: breadth of research topics versus undergraduates’ access to research opportunities. Again using Rhodes as the example because it’s where I went and work, you’re right that the breadth of the research opportunities are limited. We have biological/medical research opportunities with St. Jude that I’ll put up against any other opportunity in the nation. Same with our digital archive of primary documents related to the civil rights era or one professor’s collection of images from Madagasgar. But, you won’t find a particle accelerator or a radio telescope or an archive of original Shakespearean manuscripts here; it’s just not where our partnerships lie. The assertion that more topics are covered at a R1 than a LAC is undeniable.</p>
<p>But, I believe that undergraduates have much better access to participate in research at a LAC than a R1. At a LAC, as you pointed out, everything is about the undergrad. At a R1, the undergrads are there to subsidize the graduate students who, by the way, get first dibs on research opportunites. R1s do not exist to allow undergrads to participate in research. The best students will participate in research to a limited extent. But at a LAC, the opportunites exist exclusively for the undergrads.</p>
<p>If you want to experience research as an undergrad, I think your best chance of that happening is at a LAC. If you want to research one specific topic, then you need to find a school where that one topic has institutional support, which will more likely be a R1.</p>
<p>^ Some LACs require a master’s level research thesis of every senior (e.g., the ones with a high percentage of future PhD earners):</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/676826-ranking-ivies-recent-phd-production.html?highlight=ipeds#post1062118154[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/676826-ranking-ivies-recent-phd-production.html?highlight=ipeds#post1062118154</a></p>
<p>The above link lists the top 100 schools, not just Ivies, for all fields combined.</p>
<p>Leading universities have advantages not only in the breadth of research areas they cover, but also in the scale of supporting resources (including library holdings, observatories, museums, labs and equipment, not to mention the sheer number of dollars per capita that leading universities spend per year on research). No LAC in the country can compete with Michigan’s natural history museum system, Yale’s Beinecke rare books library, or the $1.5 billion Johns Hopkins spends per year on research (a big chunk of which surely goes to student labor). </p>
<p>On the other hand, the only truly indispensable research tool is the human brain. The Ph.D. productivity figures vossron cites are a good indication that LACs indeed do an outstanding job of motivating and preparing students to do research after they graduate. I usually would not hesitate to recommend a LAC over a university to a kid headed for a career in academia.</p>
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<p>Maybe so when you consider all 150-200 liberal arts colleges.
Among the most selective 25 or 50, many don’t. As far as I know, none of the schools in the New England Small College Athletic Conference (NESCAC) do. The top Quaker colleges usually don’t. Reed does not. Carleton does not offer much, although most of the other ACM schools offer more (and are cheaper than the NESCACs to start with). Rhodes is probably one of the best, most selective LACs that offers significant merit-based aid. </p>
<p>Colleges publish the number and average amount of merit scholarships they award in their “Common Data Set” reports. Google the college name + “Common Data Set”. According to the ones I’ve reviewed, LACs that grant merit scholarships typically award about $10K on average to about 50-100 students per year. But no LAC offers an aid program competitive with what the top Ivies have begun offering in recent years, which amounts to massive discounting for families earning well over $100K/year.</p>
<p>So the question might be: does the research training at the LAC offset the presence of better facilities (used primarily by profs and grad students) at the research U (where the LAC grads will also end up)?</p>
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You’re confusing a liberal arts education with a liberal arts college.</p>
<p>It is just as easy to get a well-rounded education at a university as at a LAC. In fact, many if not most universities (e.g. Columbia) require it.</p>