Talk to me about college size. DH and I both went to small, private LACs and loved our experience. D23 comes from a good local prep HS with graduating class ~120. I took her to some small LACs in northeast that she really liked. But DH and I don’t know much about medium to large universities. She’s visited our state university, and one other large urban school she really didn’t like. She’s wants to be sure she knows her professors, that’s important. She also wants to go to law school. What can I tell a 17-year old about middle- and large-sized universities when I have never been a student at one? Will going from 400 to 10,000 be too much? Can one make good connections?
There are things that can make a big school smaller. My undergraduate university had about 8000 enrollment but my school within the university had a fraction of that (as one of 6 or 7 colleges). So it felt small - all freshman had to take a series of classes and you definitely knew professors and peers - but had all the other offerings from the other schools. The same is true for my older D - she went to an even larger university, over 20,000 undergrads but her school was small and again, the same benefits. So, it depends… One thing I would look at is class sizes: not just averages which can be skewed but actually look at the classes your D would take and see how big they are. It is harder to get to know the prof in a class with 150 -200 students. If the bulk of her classes will be 15 - 40, much easier to make those connections. A few required larger classes might not be a deal breaker but if your concern is that small feel, then you don’t want too many.
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Will it be too much?
No clue.
Can one make good connections? Yes.
My daughter is at Charleston - 10K kids - but she is a Fellow and has a few other scholarships, is starting a club, and has 6 faculty members supporting her.
My son now has great relationships with his engineering professors at Alabama - but for the first year he didn’t. Was it their fault? No. He was intimidated to go to office hours and seek help in other ways. No matter where you go - the student has got to want it!!
So I would put the “can I make connections” question back on the student - because it’s up to the student.
btw - today you have Living Learning Communities where people can get tied to others, Honors Colleges with smaller classes which help make these large universities smaller, and there are clubs of varying interests and sizes. There are also majors which may have few students in them , thus giving a student a chance to bond - so any school can do.
For Law, you can major in anything but you need great grades and a great LSAT. Some think to go to the best school possible. Others say you should go to a school where you can stand out - better to be a top dog at your mid level ranked college than the middle ranked person at Harvard. Many law students today seem to work before law school too.
Best of luck to your daughter.
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I went to a small LAC. My spouse went to Cal Berkeley. Our experiences could not have been more different, but were both great.
If your child is good at advocating for herself, she would probably do fine at a larger school. She just has to find her own “family” within the larger school — maybe in a sorority or Honors College or smaller major department.
That said, a LOT depends on the school itself. Some big schools can provide very small school-type experiences.
We recently toured one of the larger schools on D22’s list and toured the not-small business school there that brings in 600+ new students each year — it turned out to feel like one of the smallest, most intimate learning environments we have visited!
At that large university, the first year students are all divided into small cohorts for a “first year experience.” They live together and are assigned to an instructor with an office in their residence who guides them as they do year-long explorations of possible majors and concentrations within the business school and simultaneously create their own business and market a product or service. During our tour, we ran into two of the instructors who stopped what they were doing to talk to the group — very warm, welcoming, and informative. The passing students were obviously close with them.
The depth and level of major-specific advising at a school like that can be superior to what a small LAC can offer. And there are big school resources, too.
For a future lawyer, I would look for an Honors College at a larger school that provided a similar experience to what we saw in our business school tour.
You already know all the advantages of the small liberal arts option. But it might be worth some visits to see other options. Definitely go deeper than just the general campus tour, though. Some schools feel huge and more bureaucratic at all levels; others don’t.
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My daughter is a big public flagship. I was super worried about the size. She’s in honors college and in a fairly small major and has had amazing personal contact with professors and advisors. She had dinner with a prof weekly as a freshman, went on a hikes with profs and their kids, has gotten hand written notes, was able to tutor the children of professors, TA, etc… She’s had a much more personal experience than her father and I had a school less than 1/2 the size.
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What didn’t she like about the big, urban school? I think it’s about where she can see herself. D20 fell in love with a 3000 student LAC from the get go. She also felt great about other small schools, and really gravitated towards schools in quiet, peaceful settings. When we brought her to 2 schools with 7000 students each, she was visibly uncomfortable and was bothered by the “crowds”. Conversely, some students feel smothered by the small nature of LACs.
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Once your child starts taking upper level courses in the major, it’s very likely they will know their professors, and classes won’t be as big.
I went to a very very small LAC (900 students) my freshman year. I can’t remember the name of one single professor I had there. In addition, some of my classes were required by almost every major and were in large auditoriums.
I transferred to a university with 25,000 or more undergrads. But by that time, I had chosen a major that I actually stuck with! I can remember the vast majority of my professors, and had very good relationships with them. And my classes were usually 20 students or less.
Some folks also feel that being in the honors college is another way to make the larger school feel smaller.
But YOUR kiddo needs to feel good about where she goes to college. So…have her write down the characteristics she wants in a college. That should really drive her decisions.
As a sample of one….my kid graduated from Santa Clara University which had about 5000 undergrad students. BUT this kid’s second choice college was University of South Carolina.
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Also wanted to add that a large school in an urban area can feel much different than a large school in a small town. It is worth checking out both in person, in my opinion.
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Not gonna lie, that sounds kinda weird.
This depends a great deal on her major(s) of interest. You’re going to have far smaller classes in, say, Russian or Celtic Studies than in more popular departments like econ and CS.
I attended a research university with ~6500 undergrads but majored in unpopular departments. Most of my classes were very small (10-15 students at most), and I got to know the faculty very well. They’d stop me in the hallway to recommend a new book, ask how my PhD applications were going, etc. It was a very different experience from my friends in engineering and poli sci.
Her honors college had kind of a house professor for each floor. Her prof hosted floor dinners, hikes, and movie nights. Good for meeting new friends and freshman bonding. He often brought his family. My D loved it.
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Talk to me about college size. DH and I both went to small, private LACs and loved our experience. D23 comes from a good local prep HS with graduating class ~120. I took her to some small LACs in northeast that she really liked. But DH and I don’t know much about medium to large universities. She’s visited our state university, and one other large urban school she really didn’t like. She’s wants to be sure she knows her professors, that’s important. She also wants to go to law school. What can I tell a 17-year old about middle- and large-sized universities when I have never been a student at one? Will going from 400 to 10,000 be too much? Can one make good connections?
You can make good connections at larger schools. You just have to work at it. For example, I went to a large university with about 18-20k undergrads. A couple of my freshman year general ed classes were in a lecture hall that housed 800 students.
BUT I was in the honors program, which meant that I got to take some classes as a freshman & sophomore that were more like upper division seminar classes, with about 20-25 students and the professor (no grad student TA). That was pretty great. And since I was in the honors program, I got my 1st pick of housing, which meant at the time (this is before LLCs started at every college everywhere) that all of the other students in the honors program picked the same dorm that I did…so all of the people on my floor were like-minded, serious students…it was easy to find stuff in common with them.
Because of the seminar-style honors classes in freshman year, I learned quickly that talking one-on-one with professors wasn’t so scary, so that helped me become way more brave in going to office hours, which, in turn, opened up other doors for research opportunities and stuff like that. I got invited to take a graduate-level statistics class, which led to a research assistant opportunity with one of the professors in my major.
I didn’t have a professor advisor sitting down with me each term to review what classes I was going to take the following term, but if I had wanted that, all that had to happen was pretty much for me to ask.
In my UD classes, I saw a lot of the same faces all of the time. The big university didn’t feel very big. It was a great experience.
I don’t find that to be weird at all. My daughter attended a school with 16,000 undergrads. She graduated and is still friendly with her profs. She went bike riding with her profs, went to bbqs at their homes, tutored one profs daughter in math, etc. Other students had similar experiences (dinners, etc). She also traveled with one prof and 3 students for a summer research position as a rising sophomore.
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One of my kids went to a small school with under 5000 students total. It was perfect for her. She was very involved and received an outstanding education, but was not particularly close with her profs until grad school.
My other child attended a school with 16,000 undergrads. It was perfect for her. She was very involved, was (and is) friends with profs, dinners with them, group invitations to their homes for bbqs, etc. Intro lectures worked out nicely and despite 100-200 students, they were set up as discussion based classes (not suggesting this was the same as an LAC) and she became close with the profs. Once the intro science classes were finished, all classes were small- anywhere from 20-40 (again, not suggesting this was the same as an LAC).
Size matters in that it needs to be right for the particular student. The experience will also depend on the school.
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So my daughter went to a known pre professional performance private school with 144 total students. Not per grade but total to the school. She loved it.
She didn’t see herself at a large uni. She went to small lac of 1388-1800 students. She transfered Junior year. Her classes were small like 10-25 students. Also babysat for professors, dinners especially holidays, coffee, great mentors etc. She is comfortable with accessibility to professors and one on one contact.
Saying this she visted my son at Michigan. Yes, large for her but the main part of campus she didn’t feel it was so large. He also had classes of 25 - 35 with a few very large 150 student classes especially first year. But, he had the same contact with professors, mentors etc as my daughter did. Not any harder to access professors at big university in our experience. Just email, call and lots of times just walk by their office or lately zoom call in… It was just as personal relationship as my daughter had.
I would visit the campuses it even just some small, medium and large campuses to see what feels right to her. This is what we did and she knew right away the size she wanted.
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Yes size matters and remember it really depends on what the student wants. Not what you think is best. I would have hated small classes of 10 people and didn’t want to know my professors. I much preferred my classes of 500 where everyone was a number. Grading seemed more fair to me where everyone was anonymous.
I realize this isn’t the norm, especially on cc. But that doesn’t mean it’s not a valid preference or opinion.
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My son went to an itty bitty elementary school and pretty small middle school - much of the time there were 6 students in his grade. He made the jump to our very large public HS but found a small program within that school. When it came time to look at colleges. He liked the small LACs a lot but really like the smaller sized mid size ones. He went with one of those but since the school has two different liberal arts colleges and campuses he choose to start at the small two year campus in a rural area and then will move next year to the larger big city campus. It was the right move for him. He needed the smaller size to get used to the experience and now feels ready to make the move next year. He as offered the chance to move this year - he has the credits but turned it down to have the experience he came for.
My daughter didn’t want the smaller campus - it was too small and too rural for her. She did like small LACs but only got to see one. She chose to apply to the larger campus only and it was a no go. Probably because she wants engineering and theatre and there is no engineering school at this LAC. It’s one of the 3/2’programs and not something they prefer to cater to and then that double major becomes almost impossible. Instead she got into and will be going to one of the school’s that would be in the same group as that one but does have an engineering school and a theatre program with a way to do both. It was simply a better fit. She needed a little help from the other school’s rejection letter to realize what she really needed as the right fit but that’s the key.
Size matters in that the fit may be wrong. So for me - I went to the school my son does go to but only the larger campus. When I went to large state schools to tour I felt too small and like a number. When I went to small LACs, I liked them but sometimes felt too noticed. I needed the LAC that was a little larger and part of a full university system to feel like I could find my place and comfort level. My daughter due to Covid had less of a chance to see the schools on campus and that made it harder and more confusing. I made a last minute push to get her to some of the campuses and that helped her realize the right fit. It’s the three bears - you have to find what is exactly right for your child. Actually they have to find it.
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Make sure you are doing the math correctly.
A U with 15,000 students may have a business school located somewhere else, a Vet school located somewhere else, a medical school in a different city, and a music conservatory which is in the same city but is a self-contained unit- classrooms, practice rooms, dorms, etc. a few miles from campus. So the actual feel of the undergrad experience could be much smaller than the total university headcount.
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Some students prefer larger university due to the diversity of options found at larger universities. A SLAC may only have two or three professors in smaller departments which limits the number of classes offered and options for connecting with professors.
I’m a fan of LACs and attended one myself. My husband attended a larger university and didn’t get much support as an incoming first year from a small high school that did not offer advanced classes. He figured it out but there were hiccups.
At this time I would concentrate a good fit school that offers major and extracurriculars she is interested in. While she may decide to go to law school, like medicine, most students who come in intending to apply to law school don’t. Law students come out of all size schools and many different majors, so it isn’t something you need to plan for unless you intend to finance it. Personally, I wouldn’t drastically limit my child’s undergraduate options to save money because they might want to go to law school.
My son started at a tiny elementary then moved to a larger private school (graduating class 100) then in 10th grade moved to the large public (graduating class 800).
He chose to go to a state school with 18,000 students because they had a vet school which was his goal. He got into the honors program but didn’t stay in it on advisor’s advice. He made tons of connections with professors! They helped him get jobs, research opportunities and learning opportunities. He even has ended up playing squash with some of them. This school is in a smallish college town where faculty and students are known to have good connections. It is all a matter of if you try. They may not seek you out but are very open to help when you reach out to them.
You need to look at each school’s culture. My husband went to SMU and then to grad school at a large state school and then to a T14 law school. Several of my son’s friends are at excellent law schools so it is what you make it. Go to a school that your child will thrive in be it large or small.