<p>I know what the basic differences are, but can someone who has first hand experience explain the difference in attending a LAC or UNiversity? How much attention/interaction do you really have with prominent professors at LACs? What about UNiversities? Do you have the same amount of opportunities at LACs as you do at similarly ranked Universities? I am looking at top universities like ivies and top LACs like Amherst and Williams. Thanks alot</p>
<p>ronlivs, A lot of what you get out of a college depends on who YOU are. The "same amount of opportunities" may exist at LACs and at large universities but the difference is in the culture of learning and how the individual student accesses those opportunities.</p>
<p>I'm an alum of the University of Michigan and my son goes to Williams so I have a pretty good basis of comparison. For me, 100 years ago, UMich was absolutely the wrong place as I was reluctant to initiate interaction with professors and didn't take advantage of the wonderful resources available to me. I got a great education but I didn't get close to any of my professors. Other kids with different personalities reached out and excelled. I'm sure the same is true today.</p>
<p>My son has definitely thrived in the personalized LAC environment. Access to professors is a given, formal and informal, and when recommendations are required for internships or graduate school he has an ample list of instructors who know him well and will go to bat for him.
He's found this to be true not just in his major but in all of his classes. The instructors take a highly personal approach to teaching. (This can be negative too: no cutting classes or turning in substandard papers. They come after you. :)).</p>
<p>At most LACs, and not just at AWS, the professors, though they may be authors, artists or experts in their fields, are teachers first. They are there for you. This isn't to say that there aren't great teachers at big universities, but the superstar name doesn't always overlap with the best teaching ablility or inclination. At the LAC it most often does.</p>
<p>LACs - smaller graduating class, smaller class size (100+ classes are rare if nonexistant at most), all classes taught by profs, more access to profs, more individualized attention from advisors/counselors & profs</p>
<p>Unis - more huge classes (often 300+ students), profs too busy w/ graduate teaching & research to give undergrads much attention, classes often taught by TAs</p>
<p>Thanks alot. I am a kind of person who wants to get as many opportunities as possible. I go to a mediocre high school where most graduates go to a state school or local community college; many opportunities, guidance, and resources available to other high school students arent available to me. I try and with some success, find and make use of opportunities I get myself and also try to guide the rest of the students in my school by making these opportunities available to them as well. Also, I want an atmosphere where I could think, discuss issues that I like, and carry out intellectual conversations with peers and teachers without feeling out of place. From what it seems, LACs seem to be a good choice for me. However, I've always envisioned (and am probably wrong) large universities to have many more opportunities for their students simply because they are bigger, have more prominent professors, and have more resources. I was wondering if this is true, or do LACs have the same capacity as the large universities. Also, I want to apply to medical school when I graduate, and I am wondering whether attending a top LAC or university would make any difference. Thanks alot for all your help; I appreciate any input.</p>
<p>Here's an essay about science education at liberal arts colleges and research universities that will give you a good feel for the pluses and minuses of each.</p>
<p>It's written by Thomas Cech. He attended an LAC for undergrad (Grinnell), a large research university for his PhD. (Berkeley), and taught on the faculty at the University of Colorado. He won a Nobel Prize in Chemistry and is currently the head of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the largest private funding source for science related research at LACs and research universities.</p>
<p>Zzzzzzzzzzzzz.......</p>
<p>Another ten year old PhD study. It never ends.</p>
<p>Here's a post I wrote a couple months back on the topic:</p>
<p>I spent half my college career at each: Bryn Mawr College (with lots of classes at Harverford & Swarthmore) and Harvard College. Here's the best way I've come up with of explaining the difference as far as the student experience:</p>
<p>A good LAC is like a formal sit-down restaurant. Helpful waiters lead you to a booth, bring you the menu and explain the options available. There are several choices for each course, and each one will be nicely prepared and brought directly to your table. It's very safe and cosy, and you're unlikely to be surprised or disappointed by anything you order. But if you want something that's not on that menu -- or if you don't like the people you're seated with -- you're just out of luck.</p>
<p>A good university is like the midnight buffet on a cruise ship. There are literally thousands of choices, from sushi to enchiladas to chocolate truffles, and if you want something you don't see on the buffet, you can ask them to whip some up for you. You can sit wherever you like, with whoever you like, and change seats several times if you want. You can return to the buffet to try different things multiple times. However, it's your job to pick the food you want and your responsibility to bring it to your table. There are helpful staff members available to give you a hand if you need one, but you have to get up and find them and ask them questions. If you just sit at your table and wait, you're going to starve.</p>
<p>So there's no way to say which is better for you without knowing your personality. I felt stifled and bored at an LAC, and I had a much better time constantly trying out new things at a university. Conversely, I had friends at Bryn Mawr who loved the feeling of being taken care of and knowing everyone, and would have been totally lost and lonely at a university.</p>
<p>In fairness Hanna, you have also said that you began your transfer plans after your THIRD day as a freshman at an LAC. That indicates to me that you probably never really wanted to attend that school in the first place and probably didn't approach the remainder of your first year with a real positive frame of mind.</p>
<p>BTW, I disagree that a large university is more likely to cook something for you that is not on the menu. While that is true of a few universities, I don't think it is widespread. As a general rule, I think you are more likely to run into bureaucratic red tape, the larger the school.</p>
<p>I do think you analogy of a buffet line versus a sit-down meal is valid. I also think there are students who will find one or the other type of undergrad experience more to their liking.</p>
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<p>you have also said that you began your transfer plans after your THIRD day as a freshman at an LAC</p>
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<p>That was because the third day at Bryn Mawr is "Parade Night," a hazing tradition that I was ostracized for refusing to participate in. So that was a campus-culture disaster unique to that school. I had been very enthusiastic about Bryn Mawr up to that point, and after that point decided that if it was a social mismatch, I'd devote myself 100% to my studies...which turned out to be disappointing, too. Also note that I was not able to transfer after one year and spent the second year there under the assumption that I would never have the option of leaving.</p>
<p>in what ways did you feel stifled at the LAC? Were there less opportunities, research for example, at the LAC than at the University? I am the type of person who certainly does not want to be limited and taken care of, and wants to explore many differnet possibilities. However, it seems that at LACs, your relationship with professors are so much bette r than at Universities, and undergrad classes are of higher quality. Also, some people said that top LACs have pretty much the same opportunities available to students as top universities if one chooses to go after them. So from this, it seemed to me that LAC is a better choice. What does everyone think?</p>
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<p>Primarily because of the smaller number of options. These are all real examples I experienced. You want to take any classes in clinical psychology? There are only three, and they're all taught by the same professor. You think that professor's an airhead? Too bad. You want to take another political science seminar? You'll be taking it with the same 15 students who were in your last political science seminar, whose opinions you've already heard all last semester. You want to be in a mainstage play this semester? Here's your ONE choice, and it's an experimental post-modernist adaptation of a Gertrude Stein piece. You want to do psychology field research as a sophomore? These are the four areas that are currently being studied by the faculty -- hope one of them is actually related to what you want to do.</p>
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<p>it seems that at LACs, your relationship with professors are so much better than at Universities</p>
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<p>Sure, it's probably easier to get close to lots of them at an LAC. But knowing every single professor well is not equally important to everyone. At a university, you have to take the initiative to spend time with the professors that interest you most, so whether you form close relationships or get lost in the crowd is up to you. You also have more profs to choose from, and you can find ones in any field of study who really "click" with you -- as long as you are aggressive about finding them! So which type of school is "better" just depends on you personality and priorities.</p>
<p>Hanna's description of LAC shortcomings has a ring of familiarity to it; my daughter has experienced some of these very issues at her school, and that's one of the larger LACs.</p>
<p>On the other hand, I attended a university and had essentially no extra contact with professors whatsoever. I felt like I more or less could have just stayed home and read the textbooks. There were no research opportunities available to me, that I noticed. Perhaps I was just one of those non-aggressive types. But it stands to reason, with so many students, and grad students occupying the bulk of the profs extra attention, there just isn't going to be much left there. So I'm seeing a few more trade-offs there than Hanna is, I would say.</p>
<p>By transferring in, Hanna has probably missed some of the worst of the university experience: the multi-hundred student intro courses.</p>
<p>This is a generalisation, but when I think of a university education I think of sitting in a lecture hall with 300 other students, as opposed to a LAC..sitting around a table having a conversation with a professor. (NOT a TA)</p>
<p>I like Hanna 's restaurant analogy. My take would be that an (elite) LAC is like a well-appointed Bed and Breakfast inn, while a university is a large full-service hotel. Or, in some cases, maybe an art house cinema versus a major cineplex. Best education is probably a little of each--LAC undergrad, University for grad school or Junior Year Abroad, or AmericanU-Washington semester.</p>
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<p>By transferring in, Hanna has probably missed some of the worst of the university experience: the multi-hundred student intro courses.</p>
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<p>Eh, I don't know about that. Psych 101 at Bryn Mawr had about 90 students, with small lab sections led by TA's. I don't know why a 90-student lecture would offer any meaningful advantage over a 400-student lecture; in either case, you sit quietly and listen to someone talk, and you're going to have to go to office hours to get to know the professor at all. My freshman calculus lecture likewise had 60 students -- way too many for seminar-style discussion.</p>
<p>Most intro level classes are very well suited to a large lecture class with labs for questions.</p>