<li><p>How are liberal arts colleges different from universities (other than usually smaller size)?</p></li>
<li><p>Do they literally focus more on the arts? </p></li>
<li><p>Why would you choose a LAC over a university?</p></li>
<li><p>A diploma from the best LACs and one from the best universities, which is better in terms of employment or graduate school admission? (For the purpose of this comparison, say Amherst vs. Yale)</p></li>
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<li><p>LACs tend to have small class sizes and teachers who are devoted to teaching. Large universities tend to have larger class sizes and teachers who are devoted to research.</p></li>
<li><p>"Liberal arts" includes the sciences, humanities, social sciences, and fine arts. Basically, liberal arts includes everything that isn't strictly vocational/professional training. However, you will find LACs that have engineering programs or that even focus on engineering, so this is not a hard and fast rule.</p></li>
<li><p>People tend to choose LACs over universities because they want an experience more focused on undergrads than one will find at most large universities (but not all, and not all the time). They may also choose LACs because it is easier to break in to some extracurricular activities, play intercollegiate sports, or what have you.</p></li>
<li><p>A diploma from a well-known LAC is likely to be just as valuable as a diploma from a well-known university in most cases. There are probably exceptions to this, as there are certainly employers out there who have heard of and will be impressed by the name "Yale" and will not have heard of "Amherst." For graduate school purposes, I doubt it makes much difference in most cases. Having said that, top professors at top schools who are in the same departments tend to know or at least know of each other. A recommendation from a top professor you had as an undergrad is always useful when applying to grad school.</p></li>
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<p>different strokes for different folks. i would never consider a big university!</p>
<p>There is more to the story, however. A LAC will have devoted teachers, but not necessarily internationall famous professors on the cutting edge of public debate or research. You will probably not have access to nearly asd many resources/research materials. And there are universities which supply these things with some of the advantages conferred by a LAC. Princeton is almost entirely undergraduate and focuses on teaching, Columbia College is small in size, Dartmouth certainly has the cozy "feel" of one. It's not such a strict dichotomy; it requires greater scrutiny and a more informed choice.</p>
<p>LACs have limited course selection within specific majors as well as across different disciplines. Their faculties are often inferior to faculties at universities employing graduate students. Graduate students are a major source of cheap labor for professors facing "publish or perish" tenure tracks. The best faculty go where the best graduate students are located. </p>
<p>Research opportunities are more limited at LACs and especially at LACs in rural locations. Universities have more money to spend on expensive research equipment for science, etc. </p>
<p>Name recognition is greater for most universities than for LACs. The only exception is within the academic setting. Most graduate admissions staff have heard of quality LACs that few others in American or internationally have hear of.</p>
<p>The benefit of LACs is that you have the opportunity to develop stronger friendships because you see the same students more often. </p>
<p>If you want the best of both worlds, attend a research university with graduate programs but with an undergraduate student body of between 4000 and 8000. These universities will be small enough to give you the LAC feel but big enough to create significant academic and research opportunities.</p>
<p>People tend to be more familiar with big universities; after all, liberal arts colleges aren't typically used in national rankings, like USNEWS'. Yale would probably be more helpful than Amherst in terms of prestige and familiarity, though the education is probably equal.</p>
<p>Familiarity for most people is not defined by US News. Many LACs are well known and regarded within their area/region, and among elites on a more national basis. </p>
<p>In any case, is it really more necessary to impress the uninformed than to attain a quality education that fits one's desires and needs?</p>
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A LAC will have devoted teachers, but not necessarily internationall famous professors on the cutting edge of public debate or research. You will probably not have access to nearly asd many resources/research materials.
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<p>The problem with this analogy as razorsharp already pointed out is that most of the *international famous professors on the cutting edge of public debate or reasearch *are not teaching undergrads but are following the money and working with grad students who can help them accomplich this research. It is almost unheard of that they would be teaching a freshman level course.</p>
<p>One does go to college beyond freshman year (I should hope). </p>
<p>It's true some of these people are able to ignore all but grad students. Others frequently enjoy teaching (or are required to teach) undergrads. I've had some excellent seminars at Columbia with such people.</p>
<p>
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Their faculties are often inferior to faculties at universities employing graduate students. Graduate students are a major source of cheap labor for professors facing "publish or perish" tenure tracks. The best faculty go where the best graduate students are located.
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<p>This analysis crucially hinges on how you choose to define 'inferior' and 'best'. If you are defining these words in the context of research prominence, then clearly the research universities tend to win. But the truth is, just because somebody is a great researcher doesn't necessarily make him/her a good teacher, especially to undergrads. This is a serious problem at many major research universities where many of the profs are simply bad teachers. Furthermore, many of the profs simply don't WANT to be good teachers, especially to undergrads, as they see that task as a huge waste of their time that they believe could be better spent doing more research. This is why you have the phenomenom of profs at research universities who deliberately choose to spend as little time as possible in preparing undergrad lectures, and it shows. </p>
<p>I had a prof who, for his lectures, would simply read the textbook outloud, word-for-word. That's all he would do. It got to the point where students would simply stop showing up, as after all, we all know how to read. We can read the book ourselves. There's no point in going to lecture just to have the book read to you. But I think that's precisely what the prof wanted. If nobody ever went to lecture, then he could simply stop holding it. In other words, it seemed to me as if he was deliberately trying to do a poor job of teaching undergrads so that he wouldn't have to do it anymore. I can recount numerous other incidents where profs clearly didn't want to be teaching class. </p>
<p>Heck, it go to the point where I wished that my high school math teacher was the one teaching my college math courses. Clearly my high school math teacher wasn't a star researcher. But at least he was a good teacher. More importantly, he actually enjoyed teaching. Many of the actual math profs I got were not good teachers and clearly didn't enjoy it, despite the fact that many were eminent for their research. </p>
<p>At many major research universities, the granting of tenure and other promotions are determined by the quality of your research, not the quality of your teaching. You can be a terrible teacher and still get tenure. I've seen it happen repeatedly. LAC's tend to be dfferent. At a LAC, if you're a bad teacher, you're unlikely to get tenure.</p>
<p>The salient point is that even if have a Nobel Prize, that doesn't mean that you're a good teacher. I and many others have taken classes with profs who were world-renowned for their teaching, and frankly, often times, we would have preferred to instead have a prof who was a less prominent researcher, but who was also a better teacher. Just because you're a brilliant researcher doesn't mean that you know how to express your ideas in a manner by which undergraduates can understand you, or even that you WANT to be able to express yourself to undergraduates.</p>
<p>i only wanted LACs, and even now, a few years after graduating, I would apply to LACs if i had to all over again.
-I'm not paying 40K per year to be just a number
-I want to be able to talk to profs, and for them to actually know who i am when i go to the office hours; and when its time for recommendations, you have a plethora of options
-i dont want to be in classes over 50 people- no opportunity for discussions/debates
-when i walk through campus, i want tp be able to recognize faces, and say hi to everyone i know
-people wsay they dont want to go to a LAC because they wont be able to meet as many people- but seriously, if you go to a school of 10,000 students, how many do you actually think you will know? at my graduation, it was awesome because it was personalized, and out of the approximately 450 students, i probably knew 90%.
-its actually one big supportive community
-its a lot more exciting to meet a fellow alum form your LAC because you dont see them everyday- how many people do you see each day wearing the t-shirt of some big college? small school alumni have a more personal network.
-despite what many people on these boards think, i think there are more opportunities for student research at LACs because they encourage you ot work independently, as well as making close connections with a prof who is eager to help you out
-profs are there to actually teach you, not just lecture you/spend 90% of time conducting research/working with their grad students</p>
<p>i would absolutely recommend an LAC for undergrad, and a large U. for grad school.</p>
<p>I copied this from a poster a couple of years ago:</p>
<p>I spent half my college career at each: Bryn Mawr College (with lots of classes at Harverford & Swarthmore) and Harvard College. Here's the best way I've come up with of explaining the difference as far as the student experience:</p>
<p>A good LAC is like a formal sit-down restaurant. Helpful waiters lead you to a booth, bring you the menu and explain the options available. There are several choices for each course, and each one will be nicely prepared and brought directly to your table. It's very safe and cosy, and you're unlikely to be surprised or disappointed by anything you order. But if you want something that's not on that menu -- or if you don't like the people you're seated with -- you're just out of luck.</p>
<p>A good university is like the midnight buffet on a cruise ship. There are literally thousands of choices, from sushi to enchiladas to chocolate truffles, and if you want something you don't see on the buffet, you can ask them to whip some up for you. You can sit wherever you like, with whoever you like, and change seats several times if you want. You can return to the buffet to try different things multiple times. However, it's your job to pick the food you want and your responsibility to bring it to your table. There are helpful staff members available to give you a hand if you need one, but you have to get up and find them and ask them questions. If you just sit at your table and wait, you're going to starve.</p>
<p>So there's no way to say which is better for you without knowing your personality. I felt stifled and bored at an LAC, and I had a much better time constantly trying out new things at a university. Conversely, I had friends at Bryn Mawr who loved the feeling of being taken care of and knowing everyone, and would have been totally lost and lonely at a university.</p>
<p>Obviously the best thing you can get is a combination LAC/research university, or a "LAC-ish" university. The best example is probably Princeton. Let's face it. As columbia2007 mentioned, Princeton is basically a LAC. It's a LAC that just happens to have a bunch of excellent graduate programs, but it's still basically a LAC in terms of its size and its strong undergraduate focus. The same could be said to some extent for Brown, Dartmouth, Yale, and Columbia. Even MIT and Caltech (especially Caltech) have some LAC-ish qualities although they are certainly far more focused on technical subjects than most LAC's are, although Harvey Mudd is also a technically focused LAC.</p>
<p>I see nobody has touched on a key issue. The goal of any college professor is to get tenure.</p>
<p>Thus, you can learn a lot about institutional priorities by looking at the criteria for awarding tenure. At most research universities, teaching undergrads takes a backseat to research and publishing in tenure decisions. In fact, spending too much time teaching undergrads can be the kiss of death.</p>
<p>At the top LACs, teaching undergrads is usually the number one criteria for tenure. It is more typical for students, even freshmen, to know their professors, talk to them outside of class, etc.</p>
<p>Here's an article by a Nobel Prize winning chemist on undergrad science education that outlines the key differences between LACs and research universities quite well:</p>
<p>The author attended an LAC. Got his PhD at Berkeley. And was teachng at UColorado when he wrote this article. He is now head of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.</p>
<p>What I find surprising is how liberal arts colleges is an exclusively American phenomenon. Someone else explained to me in another thread the historical reasons behind this; it's surprising how this is one part of American culture that never caught on elsewhere.</p>
<p>Entomom (post #13) How you explained LAC's vs large university atmosphere is priceless. One of the most annoying things on these threads is how LAC lovers vs. University lovers seem to become very personal on this situation. And if you didn't agree that a LAC was the best thing- (or vice-versa) you were just an uneducated slob- who could not understand the better things in life.<br>
It really does come down to personal preference. My d could not even think of being in a small environment. She would find it too confining and might become bored too easily. She did apply to a few research/lac environment schools and found that to be a good combo. Those schools might include U of Rochester, CMU, Tufts, Brandeis and I am sure there is a whole host of others.<br>
I promised myself that I would not post unless it was for a NY school, or a poster that I've been in contact with- or something that I really had personal experience with (I am trying to break my cc addiction) but I thought your analogy of buffet dinner vs. fine dining was too good to pass by without responding to<br>
Bon Appetite!! PS--- I love buffets.</p>
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I see nobody has touched on a key issue. The goal of any college professor is to get tenure.</p>
<p>Thus, you can learn a lot about institutional priorities by looking at the criteria for awarding tenure. At most research universities, teaching undergrads takes a backseat to research and publishing in tenure decisions. In fact, spending too much time teaching undergrads can be the kiss of death.
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<p>Uh, didn't I address this very point, in post #11?</p>
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What I find surprising is how liberal arts colleges is an exclusively American phenomenon. Someone else explained to me in another thread the historical reasons behind this; it's surprising how this is one part of American culture that never caught on elsewhere.
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<p>Well, the 2 most popular sports in the US, the NFL and NASCAR, have never really caught on anywhere else in the world. The Superbowl and the Nextel Chase for the Cup pales in comparison to the popularity of the FIFA World Cup or the UEFA Champions League. </p>
<p>However, more to the point, I believe that LAC's are becoming increasingly popular in Canada and in Europe, especially in the Netherlands and Germany.</p>
<p>F1 makes soccer look exciting--and I am a big race fan. They need to bring back real shifting and passing. Most of the time it's a crazy start and a parade of laps.</p>