The Kenyon love and interest on this post really is impressive. It’s the one on which I was going to comment, too.
We visited it with my 2020 and knew quickly that it wasn’t her place or her people. That said, the students we met there were, without question, the most remarkable and interesting that we encountered on college visits. We visited Ivies, top state schools, etc., and my impression of the kids at Kenyon has stayed with me the longest. I was also appreciative of the transparency that the admissions staff provided.
Kenyon is one of the schools that I think is hard to be ambivalent about. My DS hated it when we went for a visit. I am one that thinks that college visits are overrated, except for Kenyon.
I suppose this may be true at some LAC somewhere, but that certainly isn’t the case for most of the highly rated LAC’s. I have had two kids go to LAC’s (and toured and know the requirements of many more) and I went to UCLA. UCLA has way more general requirements than most LAC’s – I re-looked it up just recently in fact. Not saying that’s a problem or can’t easily be handled, and it’s also true that UCLA will accept more AP credit than most LAC’s. But LAC’s have less general requirements. Their majors also tend to require less courses too which is why double majoring is the norm at LAC’s but far less common at UCLA. My son had two majors and a minor at Bowdoin and was still able to take courses not related to any of those, despite them only allowing a max of two AP courses for credit (he had 13 AP courses he could have applied).
Undoubtably the huge university experience is different than the LAC experience. And I am a big fan of LAC’s – two of my kids have attended LAC’s so far and the resources per student and undergraduate research opportunities are great. And all the schools discussed here are great choices.
That said, it depends on the kid. Some will be “lost” in the big U, some will milk the benefits to the fullest while still making it very intimate. I had a couple classes at UCLA with over 500 students, yet I still ended up knowing the professors. I would say there were maybe 3-4 professors in my tenure at UCLA that didn’t know me. A couple I keep in touch with decades later. And it wasn’t hard to find amazing opportunities – directing plays (with casts that included people who went on professionally), editor of paper, DJ at the radio station, attending a Presidential debate, attending the Academy Awards on the red carpet, internships (during the school year) at major Hollywood Studios, classes from famous industry people, etc.
If you’re the type of person who asserts yourself, even a campus as huge as UCLA can reap most of the benefits of a small school and with the unique upsides of a big one and a major city. The OP mentioned the student paper. My kids both worked once-a-week papers at their LAC’s. At UCLA I was decently paid to produce a 5-day-a-week paper that averaged 60 pages a day and actually was self-sustaining and profitable (it subsidized various other magazines). We were (and presumably still are) the second largest daily paper in LA and had a daily circulation of 60,000 and were invited along with the major press to every major news event in the city (thus how I attended the debates, Oscars, Emmys and interviewed dozens of major stars, directors, producers, etc.). I worked with people who are now major editors at the Washington Post and AP among others and I had pieces reprinted in national publications.
I’m glad my kids attended LAC’s – they were the right choices for them. But for some the big schools can be amazing.
Yes this is exactly how S feels. He’s led clubs with hundreds of members, run for election (outside college), had class with a former Presidential candidate, been to Presidential debates and state conventions, etc.
The key is being someone who asserts yourself. None of this will fall in your lap.
Thanks for this — especially those details about the paper. I looked up how students can get involved at the Daily Bruin and it looks like you have to spend some time as an intern first (this is a position you apply to). If you make it, it seems like the experience is incredible. But it’s not a sure thing.
In contrast, on our tours at LACs, our guides have described the papers as low key, contribute as much or as little as you like. Our Kenyon tour guide landed a regular gig after writing a single assignment. Way more accessible but also not as exciting (no one is walking the red carpet in Gambier!).
I think this is something D can think about in a concrete way to compare and contrast. She’s naturally introverted but will put herself out there for things she cares about. I can see how exciting UCLA can be but still do worry about her having a little time to discover herself, try new things, read books, etc.
She didn’t get into either Yale or Columbia. We head down to LA this spring break—and her good friend just committed to UCLA… so i think she leans that way right now. She’s going to research both more carefully—and I think Smith is sliding to the background right now. We’ll see what happens next!
It’s definitely true that many opportunities are competitive, especially ones that are paid. For example, S would have loved to be a tour guide in freshman year, but they only pick about 10 out of 500 applicants (he got to the last 20, which made it all the more disappointing). I have no idea about the Daily Bruin, but if it’s paid then it will be competitive (though maybe this is just senior positions? S has written op-eds which weren’t paid).
He spent most of the first year trying to find his niche, and joining lots of things. It then started to fall into place during sophomore year and then in junior year he had many great opportunities and had to start prioritizing. Senior year has been more relaxed, focusing on the things he enjoys most.
As an example, with one college organization, he joined as a freshman, got selected as a board member for sophomore year, became president in junior year and then moved onto similar things outside college in senior year. With another he was selected as an editor at the end of freshman year, moved up to managing editor at the end of sophomore year, but decided at the end of junior year he didn’t want to be editor-in-chief as he had other priorities. These positions were all competitive and some were selected by open elections amongst the membership, others by the prior board.
The competitive nature of clubs is something I didn’t realize until my older daughter attended Michigan. So many activities required an application, interview, or other competitive screening.
We toured Ohio State’s business school with my younger daughter this cycle and many of their really impressive ambassadors were involved in a few similar activities. When we did the tour, I asked our guide if those activities were selective. They had a 5-10% acceptance rate.
The ability to join clubs is something to consider, for sure, at large state schools.
Yep, at the smaller LAC’s it’s definitely easier and less competitive to rise to higher levels of involvement in major activities. And that suits many students better, including a couple of my kids. My son was a layout editor at his paper before the end of his Freshman year. My daughter the editor-in-chief at her LAC her junior year. They both stage managed professor-directed school productions by their sophomore year. Both were approached by professors (without even needing to apply) and offered undergraduate summer research opportunities after sophomore year. That would have never happened at UCLA – there were opportunities but they never just came to you with them unsolicited.
My experience at UCLA was that while you did have to apply and start out working activities for free and while the leadership roles were competitive, it wasn’t cut throat or discouragingly difficult if you were persistent and had a great work ethic. I rose the ranks at the Daily Bruin pretty effortless simply because I contributed a lot, was reliable and turned in decent work. I made it to editor because I had ideas and figured out how to sell and execute them. It’s amazing how even in a large place full of smart people who had to do a lot to get there how rare truly reliable and self-directed people are (still true in the work place as well). The “internship” just means you start as an unpaid contributor – no different at most LAC’s, they just don’t call it that. By comparison, even at the editor level my son’s LAC paid a token stipend and my daughter is unpaid as EIC at her’s.
I’m definitely not intending to advocate for UCLA or the big school experience. The LAC experience is right for many students, including my own. But I would also note that the need to compete, to apply, to interview, to figure out how to stand out, to learn how to make your own opportunities, etc. at the big school, for those with the right temperament to do so, all were enormously helpful in post college life. Applying to and interviewing for professional internship or jobs was already a practiced experience. The ability to stand out in the internship was also familiar. By the time I was 3 years out of undergrad I was the spokesperson for a public company. My UCLA friend (same year) was already head of radio media for the White House. Our UCLA experiences prepared us for that. It didn’t prepare everyone equally. No one “trained” us or offered us a guided path, or offered us anything without seeking it, but the natural process of trying to find and excel at opportunities did.
Good luck. There’s no bad choices among your short list of amazing outcomes. Congrats!
I will add to the point about how it’s “easier” for kids to stand out at LACs, and crucially, that it’s unquestionably much easier to have access to professors. For many internships and certainly research positions, professor recs are invaluable.
My kid and many of her friends had fantastic internships and research positions that they simply wouldn’t have gotten without good professor recs. One friend of hers did research at an Ivy school in her sophomore summer, research at a hospital in junior summer, landed a job at a prestigious research institution out of college, and is headed to a PhD at Stanford.
This young woman was a great student, but she landed her first great summer position because of those recs. Those summer positions got her into a PhD program. There are other kids at her LAC who had similar experiences.
Obviously kids can achieve at any kind of school, but it’s the more in-depth experience of the LAC that makes them stand out over what larger colleges offer. In my totally biased opinion🙂
I disagree that LAC experiences are better or more in-depth. They are better for some kids and they are different, but they aren’t universally better. It’s like saying apples are better than oranges.
Completely agree. During S’s DC think tank internship (summer after sophomore year) most of his fellow interns were from Ivies and similar schools who appeared to have got their internships through faculty contacts. He just applied through the website, and undoubtedly faced much longer odds (his boss hired 2 from what I’d guess were 500 applicants). But he applied straight away (unlike some of his friends who procrastinated and waited until the deadline) with a CV and cover letter that cited directly relevant experience, and then impressed in the interview (which happened well before the deadline for applications listed on the website).
So when he got there he was far better prepared than his fellow interns, even though most of them had already completed junior year of college (he knew how to use Excel for a start) and it was easy to stand out even in a virtual setting (during Covid). He’d had a LinkedIn account since high school with many hundreds of contacts and in freshman year of college he had notifications set up on job search websites for relevant job postings - as a high school junior he wrote to our local county supervisor and asked for a summer internship (he even got paid and they asked him back the following summer, then gave him a reference later on).
I think this is a key point. I jokingly like to refer to “Mike’s Law” which is that the very selective colleges and large publics should swap students. The kids that get into very selective colleges have shown they work hard and found ECs in which they could excel. They’ll do fine anywhere. On the other hand you can be a good student and end up at a large public without having to develop the abilities referred to in the quote.
We went to UCLA this weekend for their tour and Admitted Student fair. My D22 is smitten! She loved the energy, diversity and sheer mass of opportunities. Our tour guide was a lot like my D, Political Science/Communications double major, similar interests (wrote for paper, into theater). She talked about the cluster program and office hours, as well as a number of clubs she joined to find her community.
At one point, my D turned to me beaming and said “I love it here!” And that is that. I’m so glad she is excited and proud to be a Bruin. And, the school is truly incredible—beautiful, well-organized, so many interesting classes and programs. (Not to mention the most affordable for us since we are in-state).
I’m a little sad about the path not taken in Kenyon. But it’s not my path to walk.
Thank you all for the thoughtful conversation about the pros and cons of her choices. They were very helpful and constructive—I hope this thread lives on for future students because it really does lay out the benefits of these schools in a concrete way.
Yes anecdotal to be sure, but based on what I’ve seen amongst S and his friends who are graduating this year (or graduated early). Those at the top of the class have had some amazing opportunities and have got great jobs. Conversely he knows quite a few in the middle of the pack who didn’t do any internships and are still wondering about their future and don’t appear to have received any support from the college to figure it out.
That’s what happened for us too. S had been set on going to the East Coast for DC politics. Berkeley and UCLA were his only instate afterthoughts (and Berkeley too close to home to be desirable) - he had 10 OOS admits. We went to Bruin Day and had said prior to visiting his admits that we weren’t buying any more school gear until he’d decided. Part way through the day he said “can I buy a T-shirt now”. And we were done.
I didn’t say universal about anything. Just my opinion.