<p>What does one mean by this? How is a college pre-professional or intellectual?</p>
<p>Pre-professional means that it trains you for a specific job. For example, focusing on law school as an undergrad so that you can become a lawyer, or doing pre-med as an undergrad in preparation for medical school. For colleges, intellectual just means having students who enjoy learning for learning’s sake. These two are not opposites. You can certainly be a very intellectual type who’s taking just courses in architecture.
A technical school, for example, would be pre-professional because their courses train you to become an accountant, a designer, or whatever. Basically courses that have a job in mind.</p>
<p>Usually the contrast is expressed not between pre-professsional and “intellectual” but between pre-professional (or “vocational”) and liberal arts programs. </p>
<p>A “purely” liberal arts curriculum does not have (or has few) majors such as business, accounting, engineering, communications, journalism, theater, and architecture. Instead the focus is on the arts and sciences (economics, physics & mathematics, literature, art history, etc.)</p>
<p>One can attend a School of Architecture as an undergraduate, graduate with a Bachelor of Architecture, and quickly enter that profession. Or, one can major in Art History (Environmental Science or whatever) at a liberal arts college/university, take some courses in physics and studio art, graduate with a Bachelor of Arts, then enter grad school to get a Masters of Architecture. The B.A. alone would not qualify you to become a practicing architect.</p>
<p>I’d make a slightly different distinction, between “pre-professional” and “purely academic.” Even among LACs there are marked differences in student culture and orientation. When D & I visited Wellesley, it seemed everyone we met had very clear career goals; most were planning to go to medical school, law school, or graduate business programs. There was a kind of intense efficiency to the place, with the sense that everyone was headed somewhere, mostly in the professions, and undergraduate education was principally a means to that end. When we visited Swarthmore the vibe was very different. It was intense, but intellectually intense; students mainly seemed to be single-mindedly pursuing their studies for the sake of learning, not as a means to an end. I have no idea where the Swarthmore students will end up. Historically, more of them have ended up in Ph.D. programs, but in many fields academic employment prospects are not great. Perhaps as many Swatties as Wellesleyans will end up as doctors, lawyers, and I-bankers. But in the meantime I think their college careers may look and feel somewhat different. Personally, I much prefer the more purely academic Swarthmore model, but then I’m an academic. Others have no patience for it because they’re in a hurry to get on with their professional careers and don’t want to waste time on anything that doesn’t advance that objective. Both Swarthmore and Wellesley are great schools—and no doubt some Wellesleyans would complain that I exaggerate the pre-professional flavor of the place, but I’m just reporting our experience. Take your pick.</p>
<p>I take either to describe the mentality of the student body at a given institution.</p>
<p>An institution that is pre-professional can be described per the following: a very significant proportion of students intend to pursue careers in business, medicine, law, or engineering. The college experience is a means to an end, and not an end in of itself. e.g., Harvard, where over 40 percent of recent graduating classes have gone into business, finance, etc.</p>
<p>An institution that is intellectual can be described per the following: the school itself successfully promotes ideals of learning for learning’s sake, giving back to the community, living lives of purpose. The typical student is interested in philanthropic work, working in education, continuing on to graduate school. e.g., Amherst, where over 50 percent of recent graduating classes have gone on to working in education, nonprofit groups or governments.</p>
<p>kwu hit it right.</p>
<p>what other colleges would you guys consider purely “academic”?</p>
<p>^ The University of Chicago, for sure. I’d say Haverford and Bryn Mawr. Wesleyan. Probably Reed. Grinnell? Oberlin? Carleton? Among the Ivies, Yale more than most, though most have some of this flavor.</p>
<p>Swarthmore is regarded as one of the more intellectual schools out there as well.</p>
<p>So if I attended a liberal artsy college, then it would take me longer to enter a specific profession?</p>
<p>
If you plan to go into something like engineering, then possibly.</p>
<p>For liberal arts fields, no. A psychology major at a LAC has the same job opportunities as a psychology major at a university.</p>
<p>Claremont McKenna, despite for being a liberal arts school, def has a preprofessional feel to it… lots of kids entering knowing they want to go into business, law etc. Even liberal arts schools can be preprofessional in culture.</p>
<p>what other liberal arts schools could you go to that have accredited engineering schools (like swarthmore)?</p>
<p>^ Harvey Mudd.</p>
<p>
Bucknell, Harvey Mudd, Smith, Lafayette, Union, Trinity (TX), Valparaiso</p>
<p>Rice, Case Western, Lehigh, and Caltech are not LACs, but they are fairly small universities.</p>
<p>On which side does actually going out and gaining real-world experience fall?</p>
<p>Neither. You gain real-world experience from experiencing the real world.</p>
<p>Of course. But surely, there is more experience to be gained in certain environments more than others, such as learning about urban planning in an isolated LAC versus actually being in the city?</p>
<p>Cornell and San Luis Obispo have two of the top Urban Planning departments, neither is near a big city.</p>
<p>Er, studying Art History at either NYU or Columbia helps… the MET, the MoMa, the Guggenheim, the Frick Collection, the Whitney Museum of American Art.</p>