Re the teaching assistant issue – all the LACs we toured talk about professors teaching and no TAs, but if pressed, will.admit that the first year courses are generally large and have smaller discussion sections. Like a big state U. And at the LACs the TA is an undergrad vs. Grad student at big state U. So do not let the tours and half info at LACs sway him in that department. Instead ask at big state U how to make it seem smaller. Then he can decide with more info.
“all the LACs we toured talk about professors teaching and no TAs, but if pressed, will.admit that the first year courses are generally large and have smaller discussion sections”
This hasn’t been my family’s experience. And in the few dozen LACs we visited, “large” was considered to be around 50 students and was typically just a handful of classes a year, if that, not the hundreds that can be found at universities. I was surprised when a good family friend who went to Dartmouth told me a few of her classes numbered as high as 300, as Dartmouth is known to be a college with a stronger undergraduate focus.
Don’t let the size issue or the nomenclature cloud the discussion.
Just because something is classified as an Ivy (Brown) doesn’t mean it’s anything like another Ivy in terms of vibe (Harvard). Just because something is an LAC doesn’t mean it’s not filled with pre-professional/competitive types (I won’t name names so i don’t get flamed) and there are plenty of universities filled with kids who have deep intellectual interests and are not there to grade-grub or get their ticket punched.
The tree business is non-negotiable, I get it. But you are getting lost in myth and half-truths if you are excluding a small or medium sized university because you think it will be too big. One of my kids went to MIT- and the number of myths and half-truths and downright untruths that folks post here (and believe in real life) would fill a book. He never had a class taught by a TA (but TA’s did run labs and review sessions- just like at some LAC’s). He had Nobel prize winners teaching, despite the myth that the famous folks just do research and cash their paychecks. He had seminars with 11 other students, and lectures with 50-- just like at an LAC.
Stop labeling- it’s not helping.
I think trees and LGBTQ-friendly are your two dominant criteria. After that- you need to do research.
If the college has its class schedule on-line, you may be able to use it to see what class sizes may be, and whether there are TA-led discussion and lab sections associated with a given faculty-led main (lecture) class.
@agatha1939 Regarding TA’s at large universities. Several facts may complicate your interpretation.
- Students in honors programs and honors courses will be taught by faculty, not graduate students; almost always by tenure-stream faculty, not by adjuncts. Where students of your son's background and capability have a chance to do so, they should enroll in honors courses and sections of larger enrollment courses whenever the honors option is available.
- In courses with large enrollments, while the main lectures are given by faculty, often the recitation sessions or discussion sections are led by graduate students. But even then, there are usually "honors" discussion sections that are taught by faculty.
For example, as a faculty member at a large university I often gave intro-level courses in which I did all the lecturing. Honors students enrolled in my course also enrolled in the “honors section” – discussion section. Those students attended the large lectures but I met with them in another section once per week, and they had additional readings and written assignments (papers, projects) as well – for which I was the instructor, tutor, and grader.
- At the best universities, a large (perhaps introductory) lecture by a famous professor-researcher may be attended by all students, but then PhD students may lead discussion sections and grade the exams. My brother attended Caltech, both as an undergraduate and PhD student. He has a BS and PhD in physics. What could be more exciting than attending the original "Feynman Lectures" as a first year undergraduate taught by Richard Feynman himself? And then having the challenge several years later as a TA doctoral student administering a discussion section of Physics 1 of further interpreting, embellishing, and explaining the concepts. As my brother once put it to me, at a college like Caltech you just KNOW some of the students whom you are teaching are smarter than you are! So you stay on your toes, you take your assignment as a TA very seriously, you prepare!
At the same time, in some subjects (e.g., math and English), and especially at larger universities, the TA’s may be a variegated lot of PhD students with different degrees of preparation as TEACHERS, but not of honors courses. Although the university may have a program for assuring that international TA’s were highly competent in English, the undergraduates in their courses sometimes had to contend with TA’s who spoke with an accent (in a course on math or statistics, for example). So when you visit a larger university, you do want to ask who teaches the discussion or recitation SECTIONS, not just the lectures.
- At small colleges, while the primary instructors may be excellent scholars and lecturers, they are unlikely to be Richard Feynmans, and they may not have the depth or breadth of experience based on their research programs as the best professors at large universities. But the better-ranked small colleges have a core faculty who are superior teachers. And colleges have different ways to use the skills of their faculty. This accounts for why so many small colleges are highly productive of future PhD's. The teachers know their stuff, and they know how to teach and profess it. This isn't simply a matter of "selection" of highly competent students. The teachers matter. (Take a look at the links that I posted earlier about undergrad origins of doctoral degree recipients.)
At Reed, the large introductory humanities course (Hum 110) was required of every first-year student. Two or three lectures per week. And one 2-3 hour seminar (“conference”). The faculty teaching a given lecture were likely to be specialists on that subject, and they took turns – teaching subjects in which they were specialists (their main research area) to the large lecture attended by all the first-year students. But they also taught (led) one of the seminars (conferences), with 10-15 students for the entire year. This was a really good way for first-year students to get to know many faculty, via their lectures, yet also to have a more intimate ongoing discussion with students in their section, led by a faculty member who likely gave a subset of the lectures during the year.
In sum, one needs to be careful not to overgeneralize about the quality of the learning and teaching experience. Each college’s set-up needs to be evaluated separately.
The few TAs we had at Oberlin when I attended were restricted to assisting Profs in grading lab/homework assignments and providing tutoring to students who needed it.
They were not leading discussions or teaching entire courses as I’ve seen was the case at larger research I universities.
Also, most classes at my LAC averaged around 15-20 students with a high of 45 for an intro survey to an extreme low of 2 for a seminar class and 1 for some private reading classes I was taking. And I was at one of the larger LACs.
Also, while largeish lecture classes of a few hundred did exist, they were a practical tiny handful and could easily be avoided if one wasn’t inclined to have such large classes. All were taught by Profs, not TAs who were there strictly to grade written assignments/labs.
They also tend to be either highly popular courses with great Profs(A popular politics class with an engaging Prof which politics major friends raved about…but I passed on due to having more compelling course options ) or courses imparting perceived critical skills(i.e. Intro CS course for non-majors meant to fulfill science/partial quant distribution requirements an older college classmate took. Passed on that because I already took 3 CS courses for majors in which the very first course covered 3 times the technical material of that non-major intro course).
Also, keep in mind that the prereqs to being a TA is that one must not only have taken the course before, but excelled in it.
That would be seriously odd as I’ve actually taken graduate level classes at Columbia including some 8000 level classes meant for GSAS PhD students preparing for their written/oral exams and found the workload to be comparable to my undergrad with most of the classes actually being less rigorous/lighter and one being greater in quantity, but not in rigor.
One surprising thing from taking those classes…the numbers of grad and undergrad students complaining of classes with 200 pages of reading/week which I and other alums from my LAC and peer LACs ROTFLOLed about…especially considering that’s an average load for many of our intro-survey classes most of us took as freshman/sophomores.
Hi @agatha1939! I just joined this thread and read through several, but not all, of the posts. I will admit straight up that I am from the upper Midwest and have an affinity for the level of community and camaraderie at the schools from this area.
I was glad to see that you’ll be making visits to this area. If there is any way to do it when schools are still in session, that is a bonus. At least that is what we found with my S16 and a S17, However, if you can’t swing it, plan to spend time and $ on visits once S18 has his acceptances. Either an Accepted Students event, or just a regular day, will give him a feel what it’s like to be a student there - classroom visits, meals in the dining hall and an overnight stay, etc.
My S16 is at Grinnell. I know it’s is in the middle of a cornfield, in Iowa, but the campus and town do have a lot of leafy trees - BUT, to be honest, it’s the Midwest, so there are not a lot of leaves ON the trees from late October until mid-late April. I assume this is true of the schools in the NE area, as well. So take that into account. Emory, in Atlanta, and maybe Wash U, in St. Louis, have shorter winters, and, therefore, more “leafy” time. It’s probably going to be difficult to get cold snowy weather AND leafy green campuses, all in one.
Anyway - The student body at Grinnell might be a very good fit for your son, as there is a fairly large LGBTQ community there, and being gay is a total non-issue. President Kington is a gay black man, who lives with his white husband and their two kids, in Grinnell, (since 2010). The welcoming and chill community of Grinnell, is what lead it to be my son’s #1. Your S18 would probably qualify for a very nice merit scholarship, with those stats, too. They are one of the few more “selective” LACs that are fairly generous with Merit, as well as financial aid. All the “science” programs, including social science, are strong there. Check out their programs and contact their departments, if you want more info. Grinnell has only 1 required class - the Freshman Tutorial, so it is very easy to have at least a Concentration, in addition to a Major. Grinnell area is “Iowa conservative” - so still very nice, and friendly. My son’s friend canvassed for the Democrats, this past fall, and had no problems. Nearly all the professors and staff, who presumably lean liberal, live in the community. Lastly, Grinnell has a large endowment, and their facilities, are top notch!
S17 is headed to St Olaf, for life “on the hill,” as they call it. The Oles are a bit less intense than the students at both Grinnell and Carleton. Most students are involved in extra curriculars: sports, fun crazy clubs, political activism, but most especially the performing arts. Their large choir program is very well known, as well as their ensembles, orchestras, band, theater and dance. I would say the kids are liberal, but a bit more mainstream. My son and his friends, two of whom will also be attending, even though we didn’t even know they had applied, until after acceptances came out. They have some amazing academic programs (check out their Conversations program, on their website) and a majority of students study abroad, at some point, even if it’s just for the 1 month January term. We love Carleton too, and though it seems the student body there is full of varsity captains and study body presidents, they are still a very welcoming bunch, and their academics are amazing. We have 2 friends going there, next fall, and they are both wonderful kids. I believe being gay at Carleton, would also be a total non-issue, and the same for Macalester, although I know you mentioned there was something your S didn’t like about it.
Glad you found that your family might qualify for aid, after all! I found the Net Price Calculators at the schools where S17 applied this past year, to be quite accurate. So definitely complete them for every school you and your S are interested in. The more questions they ask, the better the result. Especially if there are questions pertaining to GPA, test scores, etc.
You are doing the right thing, to help your S come up with a list. Neither of my boys could have done it on their own. We toured some schools locally, so they could compare big and small, and they both decided they much preferred the residential community life of most LACs. I found schools that fit their criteria, AND that I thought had at least a fighting chance of getting in to, and we visited as many as we could reasonably get to. I had a blast on week-long campus visits, with both S16 and S17. It’s the only time I’ve traveled with just one son. If you husband can go, that is great, but my hubby had switched jobs and didn’t have the vacation time.
So, in the Midwest, I recommend checking out (alphabetically): Beloit College (WI), Carleton, Grinnell, Lawerence University (WI), Macalester and St. Olaf. Wash U St. Louis is much farther south, but another school you may want to look into. Also, there is an honors college at Univ Wisconsin: https://honors.ls.wisc.edu/, which has a large, lovely leafy campus, right on a beautiful lake.
I don’t know a lot about the campus environment and academics of the schools out East, so I’ll let others speak to that. I was wondering if you checked out this, on the Princeton Review website. I know Grinnell is highly ranked as a LGBTQ friendly school: https://www.princetonreview.com/college-advice/lgbtq-college-guide
Good luck and feel free to PM me if you have any questions, and I’ll be keeping an eye on this thread, to read what others have to say. You are off to an amazing start, with this many responses already! 
Another word on the TA issue (a perennial one on CC):
In my experience, and my wife’s, and my children’s (at a different, though similar private research university), the presence of graduate student TAs was a positive aspect of the experience, not a negative. If you are at a first-rate university, you tend to run into first-rate graduate students. My TAs in college included future department chairs at Yale, Harvard, and Michigan, and a judge recently on President Trump’s list of possible Supreme Court appointments. In law school, I had a course taught by someone who was by then a famous visiting scholar; my wife had her as a TA in college four years before that, while she was writing the book that made her reputation.
TAs served a really valuable function in bridging the gap between what undergraduates knew and cared about and what professors at the top of their fields knew and cared about, and they modeled for us what it would mean to be someone like us who was completely dedicated to one particular field. Grad students (including the TAs) also expand in a meaningful way the community that exists around any particular subject matter. Plugging into that kind of community is really valuable for an undergraduate, and graduate students provide a lot of heft and vitality.
I had only one course taught by a graduate student, and it was a tiny seminar I took completely voluntarily because that grad student had been my TA in a different course and I worshiped the ground he walked on – he was one of the most interesting people I have ever met. It was a great, great course. My daughter’s key intellectual relationship in college turned out to be with a graduate student in her department, whom she met when she took a graduate course her first year. They clicked, and the grad student became a really important mentor, especially when it came time to write her honors thesis.
I should not be understood to be arguing that research universities provide inherently better education than LACs. In general, I think high quality institutions on each side of the divide produce excellent results, that are somewhat different, by significantly different methods. What I AM saying, though, is that graduate student TAs are an integral part of the educational system at research universities, and at strong universities they are a valuable part of that system, not a negative to be tolerated.
Re: TAs
An understated benefit of having a TA in addition to a faculty member teaching the course is that two instructors may have different ways of explaining something, one of which may work better for the student. Also, if a large course has several TAs, that can mean more instructors to ask for help during their office hours if needed.
@agatha1939 - I think it’s clear that the only thing missing here is some first-hand experience visiting a few LACs. Despite the subject line of the thread, your son does not sound as if he is searching for a narrow academic specialty. He’s a bright kid leaning toward the social sciences. Full stop. Virtually every social science has a quantitative component to it these days. I would encourage him to keep his options open and experiment with different courses in a few different departments. LACs were designed with kids like your son in mind.
Since the northeast has the greatest concentration of LACs, I would begin my search there. You can hit Vassar, Wesleyan and Trinity in one day, if you stay off the tours.
I just wanted to offer some advice that I would caution against letting your S narrow things down or eliminate options too much early in the process. It sounds like you are trying to get him to widen his focus and keep options open so that’s good. Next spring he wants to have choices and despite having very specific things he is looking for he may not find a college that ticks every box. Kudos to him if he does! But it’s good to have choices and he may have to weigh some things next spring. My D had some very specific criteria and for example started out wanting to be in a warmer climate but ended up at one of the coldest schools in the country because it checked all the other boxes and she wasn’t finding what she wanted in the south. She wanted a small LAC but applied to some bigger schools and said she thought she could be happy there by being in the honors college and doing her sport through a club instead of being on a varsity team. So try to get him to keep schools on the list that fulfill most of his criteria. Also, his thinking may evolve throughout the process and you don’t want to have narrowed down too much that he doesn’t have a school that fits his evolved thinking.
However, undergraduate programs in social sciences are often designed for minimum quantitative work, perhaps at the AP statistics level (calculus for economics). Students interested in more quantitative treatment of social sciences may want to check how supportive the departments are of such interests.
Op, regarding post #149, I would recommend taking the tours as the vibes are very different.
My kid’s LAC uses undergrad fellows for some grading and peer tutoring, not for teaching or leading discussion sections. They do supervise labs, I believe. Professors host office hours.
Harvard, a research U, actually does use undergrad TAs to teach sections. http://harvardpolitics.com/harvard/harvard-undergraduates-teaching-harvard-doesnt-want-talk/ - not only grad students.
Hello everyone! I didn’t mean to cause an argument about TAs vs professors teaching, but it was great to read all different opinions about them. I just want to clarify a few things:
@blossom I am not excluding medium size universities, quite the contrary, I prefer them. But it’s not me going to school, it’s my son and he does have his preferences. Now, they may be wrong impressions that will change once he visits a few places, but I am working with what he’s saying right now. If it was about me, the debate would be about Columbia vs Chicago, 2 urbans universities in the middle of big cities with NO nature (bugs, animals, critters) at all… my son and I could not be more different on that!
@mackinaw Thank you so much for your explanation on all sides of the TA vs professor debate, I have learned a lot. The quality of instruction is a big concern for me too so I will make sure to evaluate each school setup individually and with no bias… hopefully!
@morningside95 Thanks for your description of Midwest schools, I really appreciate it. St Olaf is so far my son’s number 1 school, although this is only based on online reviews of how nice kids there are. But it does seem that St Olaf has also strong academics and a great music department, things that are very important for my son, so we’ll definitely visit it.
My son and I are still in the beginning of this search so things will probably change a few times. I am still trying to figure out exactly what he wants/needs, I don’t know about other people’s kids but mine doesn’t give me too much details lol! But step by step I’m learning more and more, for example, the whole “I want a rural school thing” was really about not wanting an urban school like Columbia or Boston College, not really about the location. He wants to be in a residential college, with a real campus feel, with trees and grass and peace… not individual buildings located all over the city. So that changes things a lot and give me way more options.
The weather is VERY important, there’s no way he will consider schools in the south or west, he wants COLD COLD COLD and snow (I understand, I’m the same way, Canada has my perfect weather!). In fact, I think after being in a school with nice non-aggressive/competitive kids, the weather would be his 2nd most important criteria, so that helps to decrease the number of schools I should research more.
The LGBT part… this is mostly my requirement. As far as he is concerned, all schools in US are liberal and he will be OK, and that may be so (or not, I’m not sure), but regardless, I do have my own concerns and want him in an environment (school AND location) where he will be accepted and not only tolerated. I think that if I keep our list in the NE/upper Midwest with schools closer to medium-size/big cities we will be fine. But I’m open to research any other school that I may be ignoring in other locations.
I am preparing a list with ALL schools recommended in this tread and will spend this weekend researching and reading about them. Then, I hope to put together a draft list with my son of “likely” schools to apply and choose a few to visit. He does need to visit a small LAC, a medium size school and a bigger university to have an idea of what he really likes or not and I’ll try to go with him now during classes so he can talk to student and teachers if possible.
Finally… my son is very good in math and had great scores/grades without prepping or studying too much… but really likes social sciences. So I want him to find a school where both of his strengths will be supported, in a small LAC, a big university or something in the middle. As long as he is happy – socially and academically – I’m fine. But I’m new on this so I’ll probably be asking lots of questions and making mistakes, so please let me know anytime I need to refocus or check something else that I’m missing.
Thanks a lot, this thread has been the best learning experience I could ever ask!
FWIW, my son said he wanted a LAC and one that was somewhat isolated. He talked to a lot of friends who had graduated before him and were at different types of schools. He felt that he would learn better by being in smaller classes with more participation and the ability to get to know his profs. He felt that at a school that wasn’t too big and that didn’t offer a lot of distraction, the students would be more committed to the school community and that was important to him. He wanted a school where the students were engaged but avoided those that had a reputation for being particularly competitive. We made him look at a few other options (from big state schools to research universities as well as a few schools in more urban areas) and it only made him more convinced of his preference. At that point, we realized that there were SO many schools out there that there was little to be gained from trying to convince him to add any more schools to the mix just so that there would be more “mix”.
@agatha1939, I think it’s a great strategy to look at some of the other options (bigger/urban) while you’re out visiting. Do that so that he can be sure of his preference. But if he is, let it go. No need to complicate things. You son looks like a strong student, so if he has a couple of good matches/safeties as well as some of the reachier schools, I suspect he’ll be fine.
It seems pretty clear that not only have you never been to the U of C, but that you refuse to listen to anyone who actually knows anything about it. I’m sorry, I know that sounds harsh, but it seems that you AND your son are working with so many preconceptions in place that he really may miss out on schools that he would love.
Presumably, you do not mean the kind of “Iowa conservative” who voted for Steve King, who would probably not be considered very nice or friendly to LGBT people and non-white people (Grinnell is not in his district).
@Consolation other than nature (Lake MI? Jackson and WA parks?), what’s off about that characterization of U of C?
If you are visiting Carleton and St. Olaf, I would recommend adding in Macalester and Univ. of MN with a department visit focus at UMN. I’m not sure if it was where we stayed or where went out to eat when we visited, but Minneapolis had a very visible and thriving gay scene (and I mean this in a low-key way – lots of groups and friends comfortable with themselves and surroundings). Minneapolis was a treat of a city with lots of recreational opportunities and outdoorsy ethos even in the city. Such good food, bike paths, access to lakes, nice folks, easy navigating for such a large city. And cold!