Top Notch National Universities Vs Liberal Arts Colleges

College Search & Selection
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<p>if more people knew about top liberal arts schools like williams, bowdoin, and middlebury they would definitely choose them over universities</p>

<p>these schools all have over hundreds of millions of dollars to throw at a class size of around 500</p>

<p>we’re not just talking about quality of education, but also huge multi-million athletic centers, modern hockey rinks, amazing dorms and food, great research opportunities - catered for you. faculty student ratio of less than 9:1. career services that will help you get jobs at goldman sachs, or get into top med school (all these three schools have around 88-92% admit rate into TOP med school programs)</p>

<p>… is this even up for discussion?</p>

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<p>mercedes and which are the universities that the applicant would “definitely choose” over for Williams, Bowdoin and Middlebury?</p>

<p>note: Williams College is my favorite LAC</p>

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Berkeley, NYU, Princeton, ASU, etc. Most universities are overrated.</p>

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<p>hippo, so you are grouping Arizona State University with Berkeley and Princeton and say that they are all overrated?</p>

<p>just the fact that you group ASU with the other two pretty much explains your ability to judge quality of college education.</p>

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<p>Yes it is. Hence this thread.</p>

<p>The kinds of attractions mercedesAMG lists are also available at the top 20 or so universities. The average student faculty ratio of the T20 universities may be a little higher than at the top N LACs. However, some of the T20 (most of the Ivies, Chicago, Duke, Stanford, WUSTL) actually have more classes with <20 students than Bowdoin, Carleton, or Wellesley do. (<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/708190-avg-class-size.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/708190-avg-class-size.html&lt;/a&gt;).</p>

<p>Most of the T20 universities have other attractions that the LACs generally don’t. These include Nobel prize winning researchers (and by extension, research), courses in less commonly taught languages (and other arcana), and some of the best research libraries in the world. </p>

<p>Don’t get me wrong, I like LACs. I agree that if more people knew about them, more top students would choose them over universities. However, I also believe that most fully informed students, those who do have the choice, would tend to choose top universities over top LACs (simply because those universities offer just about everything the LACs do, and more … albeit without the intimacy of a 2000-student campus).</p>

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<p>It all depends on the student. Some fully informed students love the intimacy of a LAC, some find it stifling. Some love the opportunities of a university, some find it disorienting.</p>

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<p>“Berkeley, NYU, Princeton, ASU, etc. Most universities are overrated.”</p>

<p>One could add Cornell, Chicago, Northwestern, Hopkins, Michigan, Texas, UCSD.</p>

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<p>I’d bet the overall ratio is 10:1 kids going from LACs to large Us over the other direction.</p>

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<p>^^wouldn’t that be primarily because LACs don’t have the same capacity to take transfers?</p>

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<p>That’s a rather big “albeit”. That’s like saying, “New York City offers everything Vancouver does except small size and fresh air.”</p>

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<p>No, more kids just want out after seeing the same people day and night for a year or two.</p>

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<p>^^so, you admit universities place a low priority on community?</p>

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<p>^ you can have community, just not always with the same people.</p>

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<p>Is the average six-year graduation rate for the big U vs. LAC enlightening in the OP’s context?</p>

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<p>Sort of like, “serial community”?</p>

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<p>Though you may not think so, it’s possible to have overlap in several different communities, some closer to you, some not. Your involvement in any one community may change from time to time. There’s simply more room for fluidity in a larger university (but not so large that establishing any sense of community is near impossible).</p>

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<p>whoever grouped princeton with ASU is stupid</p>

<p>other than the ivy league (minus cornell, upenn, and brown), i would pick the top LAC’s i mentioned (williams, bowdoin, middlebury)</p>

<p>any advantage at a T20 will NOT be the same at a top liberal arts. there is just less money available for each student, and that goes all the way from quality of life (bowdoin has #1 food ranked in the nation) </p>

<p>to facilities (visit middlebury’s facilities - you have a library that cost more than most T20 libraries, but for less students)</p>

<p>to post-grad opportunities (again, because there is more attention, focus, and money spent on each student).</p>

<p>Overall, It is really tough to say one is better. The same advantages can be said about working for a HUGE company (less mobility and promotion, less attention from manager/CEO, extremely bureaucratic) VERSUS a private company (higher salary & chances to get promoted, close-knit community, more discussion/collaboration)</p>

<p>these are diff. working environments, just like how a uni or a LAC are diff environments to study in.</p>

<p>now i purposely put a more “positive” spin on small LACs, because too many idiots overlook top schools like williams or bowdoin or amherst</p>

<p>most people will probably excel at large universities and do better there, and thats perfectly fine</p>

<p>hence, why i said it is pointless to discuss.</p>

<p>rough equivalents:</p>

<p>williams = harvard (the “#1” culture)
amherst = yale (…just makes sense)
bowdoin = princeton (kinda more bro-ish)</p>

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<p>I’m very familiar with the concept of overlapping communities; in fact, it sounds an awful lot like Wesleyan. But that’s a very different concept than ditching a community because you’re tired of knowing the same people over the space of not even two years, the model barrons was trying to construct in post #151.</p>

<p>And, while we’re on the subject of knowing the same people for four years, I hope you realize that compared to the average population of a Harvard “house” or a Yale “college”, Amherst, Williams and Wesleyan are virtual metropolises.</p>

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As opposed to your impressive ability to simply regurgitate NRC and IPEDS information? I admit that I included Princeton to get your goat; your exuberance for that school was tiresome when you posted as JohnAdams12 and remains equally so under a new moniker. </p>

<p>It is true that it was not fair to include Princeton with the others. It is very much a major research university, make no mistake about it, but it does lack common professional programs like law and medicine, and it does not require its graduate students to work as teaching assistants. </p>

<p>I see less of a reason to avoid a comparison between ASU and Berkeley, however. The former is both much larger and less selective than the latter, but I am not so sure their treatment of undergraduates differs greatly. The differences between Berkeley and Pomona are much the same as those between ASU and Cornell College.</p>

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I believe you are claiming that the endowment per student, and therefore the quality of resources, is typically lower at a top university than at a top LAC. Let me compare a pair of schools with which I’ve been affiliated, one a T10 university (Chicago) and one a T10 LAC (Middlebury).</p>

<p>According to Wikipedia data, Chicago’s endowment is $5.578 billion for a community of 15,438 students. Middlebury’s is $0.815 billion for 2482 students. So Chicago’s endowment per student is ~$360K, compared to Middlebury’s ~$330K. This is not a huge difference, but I suspect Chicago has significant advantages due to economies of scale. And although Chicago is rich, it is not not nearly the richest of the T20 universities by endowment per student.

Middlebury’s new library is indeed wonderful, especially if you prefer modern to traditional collegiate architecture. However, for research purposes, it can’t hold a candle to the University of Chicago library system, comprising 5 separate libraries housing some 8 million volumes. A 6th, the state-of-the-art Mansueto Library, is now under construction; the main library (Regenstein) is being expanded. When this growth is completed, Chicago will have one of the largest collections of print volumes in the USA and the only top research library system in North America with its entire collection available to students and faculty on a single campus (not inaccessibly warehoused). </p>

<p>Like other T20 universities, Chicago also has state-of-the-art athletic facilities.
([Gerald</a> Ratner Athletics Center - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Ratner_Athletics_Center]Gerald”>Gerald Ratner Athletics Center - Wikipedia))</p>

<p>Middlebury’s annual expenditures on scientific research are less than $2 million; Chicago’s exceed $300 million (about 150x more for a student body about 5x larger). This perhaps is an example of the multiplying effect from economies of scale. Chicago (like other T20 universities) attracts boatloads of research funding. LACs generally do not.</p>

<p>I do like LACs. I prefer the top 30 or 40 LACs to most universities, but not necessarily to the top 20 universities.</p>