Small College VS Research University

College Search & Selection
1

<p>10 Reasons to Go to a Small College</p>

<p>July 28, 2010 09:22 AM ET | Lynn F. Jacobs, Jeremy S. Hyman </p>

<p>Share ThisOne of the critical decisions to make in choosing a college is between the research university and the small college. In the spring, we looked at the case for the research university. This week, we consider what advantages a small (or liberal arts) college has to offer. The typical small college is a school that has an enrollment of less than 5,000 students, doesn't have a graduate school, and has a student-to-faculty ratio of under 10:1—some are even as low as 5:1.</p>

<p>Here are some of the pluses of choosing a small college:</p>

<ol>
<li><p>You get small classes. Unlike large research universities where you could regularly find yourself in lecture halls with many hundreds of other students, at a small college you'll rarely be in classes of more than 50 students; in most cases two-thirds of your classes will have fewer than 20 students. (Again, the U.S. News Best Colleges rankings include the percentage of classes under 20 at each school.) The small class environment will give you a much greater opportunity to ask questions, participate in discussion, and have a professor who actually knows who you are. It's always nice to be a real person, rather than a nameless spectator in the crowd of a mega-university.</p></li>
<li><p>All the teaching is done by professors. Since most small colleges only grant undergraduate degrees, they don't have graduate students. And if you don't have graduate students, you don't have to stick graduate students in the classroom to get trained on how to be a professor. This means that you won't have to deal with inexperienced TA's teaching your class. (It doesn't mean that you might not get stuck with inexperienced young professors. But with many colleges "tenured in," and with not much chance for professors to change jobs in this ultra-tight economy, there should be fewer beginning professors compared to the steady stream of green graduate students coming into the research university.)</p></li>
<li><p>Your professors will be more committed to teaching. At many research universities, "publish or perish" is still the phrase of the day. As a result, professors there who seek tenure and promotion have to make research their No. 1 priority and teaching, at best, No. 2. At small colleges, on the other hand, teaching is often the main criterion for advancement, so the professors will put more effort into preparing their classes and, often, into developing new classes.</p></li>
<li><p>Your work will be evaluated more carefully. In larger schools, professors, TA's, and/or graders have to rush through huge stacks of papers and exams to grade (that is, when they haven't relegated the grading to a computer), so they don't have much time to offer feedback and suggestions on individual pieces of work. At small schools, the professor will have more time to read your work and offer detailed comments. While to some this might seem intimidating, it's one of the best ways to learn and grow intellectually —if you actually pay attention to the comments, that is.</p></li>
<li><p>You'll have a chance to write more papers. Grading papers is quite time consuming and papers are one of the first things to go when an instructor is faced with a large class. The limited size of classes at small colleges, though, makes it possible for professors to assign more written work (or other sorts of projects). This is important because the more you write, the better you get at writing. And with the rise of the Internet, communication skills are becoming more and more important compared to just memorizing lots of facts. It's also likely that you'll have more of a change to do bigger projects, such as junior papers and senior theses, usually with one-or-one supervision by a real expert.</p></li>
<li><p>You'll have more opportunity for one-on-one contact with your professor. At the big universities, your professor may just be a speck in the distance, someone you would never dare approach. But at small colleges, you will get to know your professors and they will get to know you as well. You often will get better advising than you would at a larger university and this professor will actually know you when the time comes for getting a letter of recommendation for graduate school or for an employer.</p></li>
<li><p>You'll have more freedom in the curriculum. Often smaller colleges are more flexible about requirements and give you more leeway to construct programs that meet your individual interests. Some even allow you to design your own majors or don't have majors at all. What's good about this is that you can take only the courses that you want, rather than sitting in on endless classes that the "college" or the "department" thinks all students should take.</p></li>
<li><p>You'll have more opportunities to collaborate with a professor. At larger schools, the are endless hordes of graduate students waiting in line to partner with a professor in his or her research program. At smaller schools, it's the undergraduates who are called upon to look up the sources, help conduct the experiments, and often even write up—or present at a conference—the findings with the professor. And it not just a work-saving move for the professor; part of the teaching mission at many small schools is to engage the students in the research of the faculty—sort of a shared experience rather than a one-way communication of information.</p></li>
<li><p>You'll face less bureaucracy. At small colleges you will be spared the endless lines at registration, the hand-to-hand combat to get into closed classes, and the sprinting between innumerable offices to try to get your simplest questions answered. Sounds like a good deal, doesn't it?</p></li>
<li><p>You get the feeling that you count. Large universities can be very alienating places. There it's easy to feel that no one cares about you and whether you learn anything. At most small colleges, they have room to care. Group hug, anyone?</p></li>
</ol>

<p>© Copyright 2010 Professors' Guide LLC. All rights reserved.</p>

<p>Source: 10</a> Reasons to Go to a Small College - Professors' Guide (usnews.com)</p>

2

<p>10 Reasons to Go to a Research University</p>

<p>April 28, 2010 03:57 PM ET | Lynn F. Jacobs, Jeremy S. Hyman</p>

<p>May 1 is a new holiday on the college calendar: National Candidate Reply Date, also referred to by many as Decision Day. That’s the day by which more than 2 million students must decide where to go to college and tell the school of their choice. Some students will be choosing between a college that focuses on teaching and a university that emphasizes research. And many will think that a teaching college would always be the obvious best choice. After all, you’re going there to learn, so why wouldn’t you go to a college that emphasizes teaching? But there are some real advantages to the research university that might be worth your while to consider. Here are 10:</p>

<ol>
<li><p>Top researchers can also be top teachers. It’s often thought that professors who are serious about their research programs couldn’t care less about teaching and/or are lousy teachers. Instead, many researchers carry their passion for the field into the classroom and are inspirational teachers and role models. Also, professors who do research generally understand the field better than ones who don’t, so they can explain the material better to students—especially when it comes to more advanced courses and topics. </p></li>
<li><p>Courses at research universities often incorporate the latest research. Faculty who are engaged in research are more in touch with breaking developments in their field. And they’re more likely to include this material—including discoveries too recent to make it into the textbook—in their classes. This makes for more exciting and up-to-date courses that are a whole lot more interesting than courses that are a remix of what’s already in the book. </p></li>
<li><p>The faculty can be more energized. Faculty at research universities are often making genuine discoveries and receiving recognition for their work. Large salaries, prizes, publications in distinguished journals or at prestigious presses, participation in international conferences or workshops: all of these mean prestige to the professor and, simply, feeling good about him or herself. These good feelings can carry over to the classroom when the professor feels genuine excitement and meaning in sharing with the students what he or she has discovered. </p></li>
<li><p>There is the possibility of internships and collaborative research with experts. Studies have shown that some of the best educational experiences for college students take place not in the classroom, but in their interactions with professors outside the classroom, especially in the context of shared research activities. Such collaborative projects provide chances for students to themselves become researchers, and even sometimes coauthors of published papers or copresenters at conferences, either of which is a major feather in anyone’s cap. </p></li>
<li><p>There tend to be more—and more fine-grained—majors. The large size of the research university may have its drawbacks, but one advantage is a larger faculty and a larger range of disciplines taught. This means that students get a lot more choices of majors. For example, at the University of California—Berkeley, you can choose from more than 300 majors and programs. Moreover, within a single field of inquiry, you’ll find many fine-tuned variations: in the biological sciences at Berkeley, you can choose Integrative Biology, Biochemistry, Genetics, Immunology, Cell Biology, and Neurobiology. And then there are more obscure majors, too: you’ll find Demography, Epidemiology, Media Studies, Folklore, Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual and Transgender Studies, and Native American Studies. At a small college, on the other hand, you might find only 25 to 30 majors to choose from. Choice is good. </p></li>
<li><p>There are state-of-the-art facilities for research publication. Research universities have to provide top facilities so that their faculty can properly accomplish the research required of them. That means that the university has to invest in larger libraries and other equipment needed for research in various fields. In addition, the research faculty are able to, and at most research universities are expected to, win various kinds of grants from government, business and other agencies to pay for research costs. All this benefits the undergraduates who can then have access to the fancy lasers, rapid prototyping machines, or whatever else the faculty is playing with. </p></li>
<li><p>You can have contact with graduate students. The fact that research universities devote significant attention to training graduate students is often seen in a very negative light. Some people complain about grad students getting the bulk of faculty attention and, worse, about grad students doing lots of the teaching in undergraduate courses—and being inexperienced, bad teachers to boot. We don’t deny that these can be problems. But undergraduate students can benefit from hanging out with grad students. Often grad students are willing to mentor and advise undergraduates about careers, and, yes, graduate school. And their devotion and serious involvement with learning sets a great example for undergrads to follow. </p></li>
<li><p>You get a chance to take graduate courses—if you’re up to it. For a student who is really interested and serious about a field, there is nothing more rewarding than taking a graduate course. These courses are more advanced and specialized than any undergraduate course, and they give you a taste of what it’s like to play in the big leagues. And this can be an opportunity for students to make the critical leap from just mastering a field to actually advancing the field through their own discoveries. </p></li>
<li><p>You could get an advantage for admission to graduate and professional schools. Graduate and professional schools tend to think that students from research universities will be better trained than students coming from smaller colleges, especially when the research universities have faculty members who are well known in the field. Graduate and professional schools put extra faith in letters of recommendation that come from professors whose names they know. It’s the top researchers in the field who have the best name recognition. </p></li>
<li><p>You can network with distinguished and well-placed people in the field. Researchers generally have great connections and can help their students get networked with key players in the field. These days many researchers will take students with them to conferences and introduce them around. This is a great way to get established in a field and launch yourself in a job or career. </p></li>
</ol>

<p>One final note: We do not mean to suggest here that no faculty teaching at colleges are engaged in research and that every faculty member at a research university is doing research. There are fantastic researchers who work at colleges, and faculty at research universities who view tenure as their license to loaf. Nevertheless, in general, research universities expect faculty to spend a large portion of their time on research, while colleges generally expect less research.</p>

<p>©2010, Professors’ Guide LLC. All rights reserved</p>

<p>Source: [10</a> Reasons to Go to a Research University - Professors’ Guide (usnews.com)](<a href=“http://www.usnews.com/blogs/professors-guide/2010/04/28/10-reasons-to-go-to-a-research-university.html]10”>http://www.usnews.com/blogs/professors-guide/2010/04/28/10-reasons-to-go-to-a-research-university.html)</p>

3

<p>A few research universities are actually relatively “small”. Caltech for example has only 950 undergraduate students.</p>

4

<p>Research Uni > Small College</p>

<p>I like a relatively medium sized university rather then a small college.</p>

5

<p>“A few research universities are actually relatively “small”. Caltech for example has only 950 undergraduate students.” +1</p>

<p>Yeah, I was thinking of the same thing when I first came across the above articles! Nonetheless, I decided to post this thread for the fact that I believe there were quite a few sounding points to take home, and could perhaps reveal fresh perspectives for some college prospects here on CC. So, let’s be constructive!! :)</p>

<p>PS. I chose the word ‘versus’ for distinction purpose only not as to which is better. Each has its own merits imho.</p>

6

<p>Small-ish research unis FTW.</p>

7

<p>In my opinion, the ideal is a small to mid-sized research university with a LAC-like college of arts and sciences. All the USNWR top 20 national universities more or less fit this description. They give you the best of both university and LAC.</p>