<p>My friend has recently babbled a bit about liberal art schools. After I checked a little bit about them I have found them to be student's heaven place-But if this is so why don't many students turn their faces to these schools. All their financial aid, percents of students applied and the number of students there are really great. Please tell me more about them. Start by telling me if they offer scholarship to International Students.</p>
<p>“The value of an education in a liberal arts college is not the learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think something that cannot be learned from textbooks.”
—Albert Einstein</p>
<p>[A</a> Liberal Arts Education | College of Letters & Science](<a href=“http://ls.berkeley.edu/?q=about-college/liberal-arts-education]A”>http://ls.berkeley.edu/?q=about-college/liberal-arts-education)</p>
<p>[Liberal</a> arts - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_arts]Liberal”>Liberal arts education - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>Many do not buy into the Liberal Arts concept, subscribing to the notion that college should prepare you for your first job instead. If you want to be, for example, an engineer or accountant, LACs may not be the best choice. There is no general right or wrong choice. An individual should choose based on what he/she wants in his/her college experience.</p>
<p>Many LACs do offer financial aid to international students. I know our college does.</p>
<p>So, does it mean that if one gets into Liberal Arts College, one won’t get a job after graduation? Are they competitive?</p>
<p>Most students don’t look at Liberal Arts Colleges because not all of these schools, beside the best ones, are well-known among the public. The children of this generation are extremely narcissistic and arrogant, and feel an insatiable need to assume the reputations of their schools to feel good about themselves and humiliate others. Therefore, “LACs” are not well-suited to accomplish this purpose.</p>
<p>It is not the case that one who attends a liberal arts college will be disadvantaged in finding work. Ignoring specialized fields–such as engineering, nursing–liberal arts colleges prepare their students well for careers in medicine, law, business, education, et cetera. That is because students who pursue a broad and deep education are well-prepared to think and express themselves with creativity, insight, and experience.</p>
<p>LACs tend to be a bit more grad-school-prep colleges for most of their students than are comprehensive universities that tend to be more job-prep schools.</p>
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This is the vaguest thing I’ve ever heard in my life.</p>
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<p>It depends whom one is attempting to impress. Those who are from the educated elite know the top LACs very well, and they have considerable snob value. If your goal is to impress “the man on the street,” any big football school will do.</p>
<p>Geoffrey Moore, author of the bestselling business book “Crossing the Chasm:”</p>
<p>"The shift from computing to communications also has profound implications for the redistribution of power. As the Internet continues to work its transformation of the globe, the single most powerful force it is unleashing is memes, that class of ideas that are uniquely able to capture people’s imaginations and shape their behavior. Some of these memes are inspiring and uplifting (think spirituality and altruism), some are crass and banal (advertising and, yes, much blogging), and others are dark and pernicious (sexual exploitation and suicide bombing). All are vying for a commitment from each of us, and when we give that commitment, we give it for free and put all our life energy behind it. That is what makes memes so powerful.</p>
<p>"The ability both to create and promulgate such memes and to recognize when a meme is acting upon you or one of your constituents is core to being effective in this new reality. A connected world places an enormous premium on people who are fluent in communications: expressing ideas, positioning offers, inferring power relationships, decoding nuances, deflecting the manipulations of others. We are witnessing the rise of the articulate and the marginalization of the inarticulate, whether in our political and business leaders or in our leading brands and most favored Internet sites.</p>
<p>“In sum, if the past few decades were heralded as the revenge of the nerds, the next few will be the revenge of the liberal arts graduates.”</p>
<p>Discussions of “memes” aside, a liberal arts education teaches one to think, weigh and blend information from multiple sources, and communicate. These skills, when ultimately combined with technical knowledge, often tend to produce the Chief Executive Officers for whom those with only technical skills work. Consider that the effective life of technology these days is very brief - the effective life of liberal arts skills has been thousands of years.</p>
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<p>yea, you have to know the lingo. that’s why most people who gravitate toward the liberal arts come from a household where at least one parent holds a liberal arts degree and where there’s some general confidence and satisfaction with where it can lead. In other words, it helps if you’re already from a wealthy, well-educated background that takes the whole delayed gratification, Protestant ethic, long-term <em>weltanschauung</em> seriously. If not, then, it may just pay you to get a liberal arts degree in order to learn what all that stuff is about.</p>
<p>Both of my parents hold very preprofessional degrees. My mom did undergrad and masters at large state u’s in speech pathology, my dad did undergrad through PhD in engineering all through a large state U. My parents are very supportive and excited i am going to a LAC. They both wish they had.</p>
<p>With her scholarship the total COA of my D’s LAC is less than half of my S’s large in - state U. So much for the constant myth about LACs being so much more expensive - it depends on the LAC, the students ability to gain scholarships, and the State U. </p>
<p>Every large state U my kids looked at all have a liberal arts college - why are people confused about what liberal arts is?</p>
<p>I don’t get it either. Just take the College of Arts & Sciences (or similar name) out of every university and isolate it from other schools such as engineering, nursing, architecture, etc. Poof, there you have it.</p>
<p>The liberal arts and sciences occupy the core of the curriculum at many colleges and universities in America, including a majority of the most prestigious ones. What these schools offer is not training for a specific job, but a general education in the humanities, natural and social sciences (sometimes complemented by basic training for specific career fields). </p>
<p>The goal is to prepare graduates for citizenship, and for the disciplined use of leisure, as much as for productive work. They try to prepare students to live rich, fulfilling lives by teaching them to be good readers of great books, to appreciate the arts, to understand the natural world and human history, to communicate effectively, and to make balanced, well-reasoned judgments. Many employers welcome this kind of education.</p>
<p>The term “liberal arts college” (LAC) refers to a school that focuses exclusively (or nearly so) on undergraduate education in the liberal arts and sciences, with no (or few) graduate programs. Most of these schools are small, with about 2,000 students (compared to 10,000 or more at many universities). Many are located in New England and a few midwestern states.</p>
<p>Wow, tk21769. You know, my S is obviously at Williams, and says he wants to study medicine. So I saw his time there merely as a stepping stone to a professional career, until I read your post. “the disciplined use of leisure”- excellent.
Thank you.</p>
<p>Your piece is also excellent, gadad. BTW, my S and you have PMed. He credits you with helping him decide on Williams, so thank you, too.</p>
<p>As a senior that’s looking at schools (making my final decisions this weeked!!), I have looked at tons of different schools stats and reviews. Overall, liberal arts schools are great things; however, they are more for the arts degrees. English, history, and art degrees from these schools are considered great, but science degrees not so much. Many places provide a liberal arts education, which basically says that you are required to take courses from a lot of different areas of study in order to get a well-rounded education, which is important. Because I plan on being pre-med, I am avoiding liberal arts schools–they simply are not looked at as top notch and do not have the research going on around you.</p>
<p>Not quite right tusuntpulcher^ LACs are known for their science programs and many LAC goers pursue medicine easily after attending - 4 family members I can think of in one second went LAC undergrad and on to Med school after (small LAC to Med school at Berkley, UIUC, and U of Chicago - not shabby).</p>
<p>On the other hand, though some LACs can have some form of engineering program, my S, a serious engineering guy, would not have considered a LAC, though some might disagree.</p>
<p>LACs are not for everyone but again I ask - what is the confusion about liberal arts, especially with their preparation for citizenship and disciplined use of leisure? - (love that, tk)</p>
<p>I’m definitely not saying it is impossible. However, it is a lot easier to get the research background they look for at a larger university, and you are more likely to get in. There is a reason that the top 20 schools in America are relatively large schools, and that 70% of those accepted into medical schools are from these schools. Not impossible, but certainly more difficult. Of course, it is all a matter of personal decision. I could go to my state school for free and do the standard student deal, but that wouldn’t be enough, whereas if I went to a tougher school, I could do the same things and land the interview. When going to a less fabulous school, you have to face the fact that you will be proving yourself to the board of admissions greater than if you went to, say, Cornell or Emory or Carnegie Mellon.</p>
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<p>Now that’s just simply false.</p>