I just like to get other thoughts on this subject.
We have experience with two kids. One who graduated from a LAC was asked by their chemistry professor to be their research assistant as a sophomore. The other is a junior studying economics at a national university where the research opportunities go to the graduate students.
There was a comment made on a recently popular thread that went off-topic and was closed. The statement made basically said that it makes no sense to choose an elite LAC over an Elite Private University because the University will have more resources and more opportunities.
I agree from our own experience that the National University has more resources than the LAC, and our student has benefitted from them. But on the other hand, having the chance to do research at the LAC was an amazing experience for our other student.
My direct experiences are limited to my university experience and that of my D. I went to a national university and was actively involved in undergraduate research all of junior and senior year. Wrote an undergrad thesis which was one of the highlights of my experience. I also worked summers at school for a different professor as her research assistant. But when we toured that school with our D, the students said undergraduate research was much more competitive now and harder to obtain. Not sure if that’s universally true at the school or the experience of just that one tour guide.
My D is a senior at Purdue. She started talking to professors last year about doing undergrad research. She talked to three professors and was offered three positions. She loves the lab she’s in and it’s a super match for her.
IMO, it’s hard to make sweeping generalizations. D has friends at huge schools that say that while most opportunities go to grad students, they have been doing research since sophomore year. I think a lot depends on the student.
A lot depends on the student, and a lot depends on the subject, and a lot depends on individual professors. One of my kids got a research job (at a National U which has a reputation for ONLY caring about grad students- which was not our experience) and he met virtually none of the requirements. The professors attitude was “you’ll learn”- and he did.
Some professors aren’t as willing to invest in a learning curve, this one was!
IMO each student should seek out colleges that: 1)they can afford to attend; 2) fits their academic and social needs: and 3) feel they can thrive. There is no one right answer for every kid, every major etc.
My D did attend a LAC as a STEM major and was involved in research from sophomore through senior year including co-authoring an article published in an academic journal. Her college experience was exactly what she had hoped for. On the other hand my S, who was a business major, found LACs too small and he had a similarly wonderful experience at a mid-sized university. While he did not do research, he did get a couple of great internships which for positives for him.
One daughter attended a small “primarily undergraduate” university in Canada that the vast majority of people in the US will have never heard of. She had the same experience (except it was not in chemistry). She found plenty of opportunities to do very interesting research. Not having to compete with graduate students was probably helpful. Also, having small classes makes it easier to get to know the professors. This might make it easier for the strongest students to get opportunities.
She now has a very good “first job” in the US which is in a similar area as the research that she did while a student at a small university.
I think that @happy1 pretty much said it perfectly: Find the school that you can afford and that is a good fit for you. Different students will do best at different schools. I think that a strong student can get good research opportunities at a LAC or at a larger university.
However I definitely agree with the OP that “research opportunities” are available at the smaller schools (such as what in the US we would call a liberal arts college).
I’m not usually a fan of rankings, but since my kid’s college fares very well on this one (#22), here’s a link to USNWR ranking for Undergraduate Research/Creative Projects. There are some surprises in here.
MIT
Harvard
Cal Tech
Yale
Princeton
CMU
Elon
Duke & Stanford
Michigan
Amherst
Carlton & Davidson & JHU
Wooster, HMC
Georgia Tech, UC Berkeley, UT Austin
Grinnell
Baylor
Agnes Scott, Bowdoin, Case Western, Dartmouth, Swarthmore, Hope College
Abilene Christian, Cornell, Williams
Furman
ASU, Boston College, Franklin & Marshall, Rice, UCLA, U of Chicago, Vanderbilt
(The list keeps renumbering in a way that hides the ties.)
Daughter went a LAC and was an athlete. She was able to secure paid research opportunities freshmen through senior year in a STEM field and a paid TA position junior and senior years. Don’t think this would have been possible at a national university. Even if she were not playing a sport at a national university, I think getting a research opportunity would have been much harder for her. Having smaller classes and more personal contact with professors who have research assistant needs made it easier for her vs almost “cold calling” for opportunities in a larger class environment, especially freshmen year.
One of my D’s close friends had a paid research position starting freshman year as well. She knew she wanted to pursue a PhD so started researching immediately. This is Purdue.
My D’s friend did the same at TAMU with the same horizon.
I think there is a misperception that large Us are impersonal and relationships with professors are few and far between. That has been very far from our D’s experience. These big schools often do a great job with small seminar classes, specialized advisors, and living learning communities.
At both Lafayette and Bucknell, during the info sessions part of the pitch was there were more chances to research because you’re not competing with Grad students. IMO, from our experience and as we get close to the college selection process again, I would encourage going to the larger university over the LAC. The only caveat is that participating in research was such a fantastic experience.
Our Junior is at a very highly regarded mid-size, and from our experience so far, it has provided everything that the LAC had and beyond, except the chance to do research.
Both my kids at an ivy (so a National University, but not a giant undergrad national university) had amazing research experiences as soon as they wanted (for one, junior year, the other starting at the end of sophomore year). One paid, the other I don’t think was (but I could be wrong). The work they were doing I found extraordinary (but that’s probably true of all of these experiences?). One child will be listed as an author on a major upcoming paper. I think both of them found it pretty easy to obtain these positions. They are close with their professors. One of them knew the professor from class beforehand; the other applied for the position and got it, and then got to know this particular professor. I agree that it sounds like opportunities abound at a range of types of colleges. I wonder if there’s a more objective way to find out if there really are more opportunities at different types of schools.
When my son was at Bowdoin, two professors proactively approached him in Sophomore year to do paid research. The college also provided free on campus housing over the summer to do it on top of the stipend.
When my daughter was a Sophomore at Davidson a professor offered a summer research opportunity and while the college didn’t directly pay for it, the professor helped her secure a third party sponsor for a stipend. It was virtual because of Covid so not sure how housing would have played out otherwise. The next year a professor lined up a summer opportunity that did include pay and on campus housing.
When I was at UCLA long ago, absolutely nothing remotely like any of that happened as an undergraduate, at least for me or anyone I know. As a grad student there, they did completely cover my grad program costs and provide pay on top of it in exchange for TA’ing a class and administering an internship program.
Would you mind clarifying this for me? You advise going to the larger school (larger than presumably the LAC), which is totally fine, but your caveat is that the research (where?) was so great so, again presumably, you don’t want to miss it. Are you saying the research was more readily available at the smaller school?
Asked another way, attending which type of school exactly presents the risk of missing out on research?
I think one thing to keep in mind is whether they think their kid wants to get a PhD or is more likely headed to work or professional grad school. If the former, the overwhelming advice is that undergraduate research, and plenty of it, is very important to be competitive in the PhD applicant pool, particularly in the hard sciences.
My kid attended a LAC, was engaged in more sophisticated research than you can shake a stick at, and had her choice of top math PhD programs. She’s not a unicorn.
One point that really makes this particular conversation unwieldy is the lumping together of very disparate types of schools under “major research university”. It helps to be clear whether one is talking about very large research behemoths that dominate the spending in research or elite private non-LACs, some (but certainly not all) of which also have large spending budgets.
Consider that mighty MIT is only #23 on the research spending list. If the most research happening on campus is what you’re looking for, and you can’t get into JHU, then you ought to be gunning for Michigan, Wisconsin, Washington, 6 or more of the UCs, Texas, Texas A&M, etc.
But of course, it’s not that simple. The very same context that makes Princeton a great place to get your undergraduate degree (notwithstanding their rank of 67 on the research spending list) is what exposes a crack of daylight to make a similar case for a LAC education.
It’s just not black and white. That’s my only real point.
Aside from the research part, the LAC did start feeling small, but the University hasn’t felt too big for our Junior. What appealed to us about the LAC, smaller class sizes, and more individual attention has not been that much different at the University. But, again, this is a mid-size school, not a Penn State.
Our veteran college counselor said as a 17-year-old high school senior for some students a LAC seems like much less of a giant step but when you are a 19-year-old sophomore and have been away from home for a year you might be wishing you picked an NYU.
A LAC might offer relatively more opportunities per student, but this is only helpful if someone at the LAC does the type of research that interests the student. Interests can also change. Personally I started out at a LAC, but as I developed more specialized interests, it turned to be too small and not a good fit. Fortunately I was able to transfer to a research university that was a better fit.
We have toured the vast majority of the “top25” type schools as well as top LACs and they all mentioned and emphasized that research was available, many but not all noting as early as Freshman or sophomore year. Most gave specific examples of such. Way back in the 90s I did research at Duke as an undergraduate and got a hughes grant and was published etc etc , and so were many of my classmates. That particular school has many more research opportunities now than it did then, and every other school we have toured , Uni or LAC, has mentioned how accessible professors and research are. I don’t sense that Uni vs LAC, at least at the top levels, are significantly different as far as undergraduate research opportunities.
Hello? There is research that goes on outside the hard sciences.
Economists do research- and lots of it. No special equipment required. Classics professors do research- and lots of it- and now that archives have been digitized all over the world, less travel is involved than “back in the day”. Political Scientists dominate the research field at some institutions- think back to every election poll and the name of the college which sponsors the research attached to the study. Linguistics, Art History… you name it.
Some posters here seem to be missing that point. It’s not just nanotechnology and nuclear reactors, and even tiny research budgets can use lots of students and yield huge results.
This is my basic point about the LACs. Not only what you just wrote, but even hard science research doesn’t always involve massive equipment and budgets to go along with it. There is also so much collaboration amongst academics (who don’t tend to think about these topics the way they are debated on CC) that smaller schools and teams of researchers work together on projects. My D, for example, worked on a astro project at Wesleyan that involved collaboration with a team at Harvard, and both teams utilized data collected from large equipment on the other side of the planet from them. Bottom line: she was there, and Wesleyan’s research spending, among the very highest in the LAC category, doesn’t approach that of the big boys and girls in the research world.
That all makes sense, but Duke has less than 7,000 undergraduates on campus. With their resources and that scale, I would entirely expect what you describe.
Princeton has fantastic access to undergrad research. Fresh grants open up for a lab that takes undergrads as research assistants. For non-lab independent research, you can go and ask a prof to guide you one on one, and the university separately compensates the prof for taking you on. The prof meets with you one-one-one an hour a week or as necessary to guide you. You get to do junior papers and a senior thesis in the routine course. The university assigns you a research librarian that can lookup material you need for your research. Money is usually not a constraint for most reasonable theses that you want to do for equipment etc.