My daughter believes that she’s had an edge in grad school, because a good number of her undergraduate classes had been small, taught “seminar” style, rather than lecture style. In her words, she was already “very used to reading scientific papers all the time”, having to research them, then summarize whatever findings she extracted in writing - so she could review/discuss her work with the prof and peers at the next seminar session.
In her second year in grad school, she is now assisting (holding office hours) in a course that essentially is trying to bring the first-year’s “up to speed”, for many of whom working that extensively with and on research papers is apparently a fresh challenge.
I don’t think this shows up in rankings (and class size was infamously/easily gamed by some colleges), so it might be something to research in the course catalogues of each candidate college, once the choice gets down to the final two or three.
Something else to include might be types of in-person tours that are available, and how to schedule them. Some schools have tours year round. Others have large open houses. Some have department tours, housing tours, etc. that are in addition to a general tour. Info (dates and times) of virtual info sessions would also be helpful.
I’m pretty sure this is part of why many of the good LACs often have really good grad school placement. They are already doing more grad-school-like work in their classes.
And for that matter, this is undoubtedly part of why feederish high schools like ours place really well in such colleges. My S24 ended up in one of those summer programs where you take actual summer college classes, and he took one STEM and one humanities class. He found the humanities class a little challenging at first but then figured out what his professor wanted and did very well. Some of the other students, though, were struggling to get to that point of understanding/meeting the expectations. And these were all very smart kids, but I think many just didn’t have the same prep for classes like that as my kid has been getting in his classes.
And frankly, we have heard many tales of kids from our HS going to colleges where they feel like the rigor took a big step back, at least in their first year or two. Not everywhere, but including some pretty well-known colleges. And conversely, not a lot of stories (like none) of our students feeling unprepared anywhere. Of course if you took a random kid from our graduating class and threw them into MIT, who knows. But pretty much always, if you are actually admitted, even if you are hooked, it seems like people feel like the level of work expected is something they are ready for.
Anyway, all this is in fact why we are being pretty careful about exactly which colleges end up on his list, and things like small seminar-style classes being an early and often norm are absolutely part of what he is looking for. A couple big intro science or math lecture classes, OK. But other than that, maybe not so much. I think he likes those classes too (indeed, he also did really well in his STEM summer class), but he definitely would keep more options open if he continues to build on the foundation he has gotten in HS when it comes to the other sorts of classes.
Regarding your reference to grad school placement by LACs:
Elite LACs place well in grad school largely because of the type of student attracted to LACs and partly due to the fact of lack of a clearly defined career path.
In order to make a fair comparison of private National University graduate school placement to elite LAC placement in grad schools, one should compare only the humanities programs (colleges of arts & sciences) at the private National Universities to LAC grad school placement. This is the most apples to apples comparison that can be made as engineering, nursing, architecture, computer science, and business students are pre-professional students typically not seeking entry into grad school upon finishing their undergraduate degree.
Private National University students experience many small classes taught in a seminar style with exceptional peers and committed, well respected professors.
Sigh. I am so jealous of families with kids at schools that have Naviance or similar databases. That piece of helpful data was not offered at our local public schools.
LACs are doing well per capita in basically every field, along with some universities, but which LACs varies, as does which universities.
One fundamental problem with all this data is the lack of self-selection controls. We don’t know how many people per capita would have wanted to go to a PhD program in these fields to begin with.
Still, I personally think if it is working for a lot of kids per capita in an area of interest for you, that is usually a good sign.
Incidentally, some notable private universities do not have separate divisions in college, but that doesn’t really change the problem of self-selection.
Great list, but it illustrates the problem that I pointed out in my earlier post in this thread.
The second column which adjusts for number of undergraduate degrees awarded by each institution will produce a misleading ranking because pre-professional university students rarely seek a PhD, yet they are counted as part of the number of undergraduate degrees awarded each year by universities.
LACs are almost always 100% filled with liberal arts students. The only fair comparison, therefore, would be a university’s college of arts & sciences undergraduate degrees awarded each year to number of undergraduate degrees awarded each year by any LAC.
P.S. In short, subtract undergraduate degrees awarded by a university in pre-professional fields such as engineering, architecture, business, & nursing to arrive at the number of liberal arts degrees awarded by that university in order to make an apples to apples comparison to LACs.
I agree, although again some prominent universities don’t have much to subtract, and a few LACs do have undergrad pre-professional programs.
One tricky bit is colleges with no undergrad business program but that nonetheless feed business employers. But, say, Amherst and Yale share this issue.
When I help parents and students make college lists, I want them to get the most bang for the buck in terms of getting in and liking the school. I’m looking for data that shows that they have a chance of getting in, but that the students are happy. My two first points are always:
Acceptance rate. Almost no students with a 3.2 need to apply to a college with a 10% acceptance rate, for example.
Freshman retention rate. Happy kids stay at college. So I tend to recommend colleges with retention rates above 80%.
I look at other factors such as gender ratio, student/professor ratio, demographics of the student body. What types of clubs are offered and are they open to all? Is there Greek Life, and if so, how much? Are there big sports teams?
I use n’iche a lot. It’s by far the best source of student opinions organized in a usable way, and it’s relatable for both teens and parents. I’m not aware of any other resource that is able to put opinions into numbers the way n’iche can.
My child’s school has an acceptance rate over 80% and also a freshman retention rate well over 80%.
I think I would expect a highly selective school to have a high retention rate and would be very surprised if it didn’t. But at a less selective school, the retention rate can help distinguish between schools that are getting high marks for student satisfaction and those that are not.
Retention rate is also often a function of student finances.
So, students who attend meet-full-need schools are less likely to have to drop out or postpone college because of finances. If a school that doesn’t meet full need has a sub 80% retention rate it does not necessarily mean that student satisfaction is low, or that students aren’t capable.
Sure, but as an example, SUNY Albany admits 69% of applicants and has an 83% freshman retention rate. ASU admits 88% of students and has an 86% freshman retention rate. I think that’s pretty good. The large majority of kids return for the second year.
Then you can dig further, 4 year and 6 year grad rates. I don’t think the point of this post is to be definitive. Those happen to be numbers that are easy to find and they are good starting points for someone beginning to formulate a list.
Starting this early is so important. My 11th grader is taking chem and then three years of physics (2 years for IB HL), but was not going to take bio. Luckily we noticed that Cal Poly requires bio specifically, so we can try to figure out how to add it (likely will need to be at local community college over the summer since her IB schedule next year is packed)
There are quite a few PhDs awarded in fields that are not commonly offered at LACs, especially in engineering but even (to a much lesser degree) in business when compared to some classic liberal art fields. I think this makes the high overall output of PhDs of certain LACs all the more impressive; ie, even without undergrad major equivalents to some PhDs the LACs are still disproportionately represented. For example, from the attached there were more business doctoral degrees than English, math, and philosophy combined for the survey period. (Note I believe the Statista data includes DBAs for business doctorates, which aren’t research doctorates. Per the NSF site, if using only research doctorates, the number for business doctorates comes down, but is still more than fields like English or History, but not math.)
In addition to the many good ideas already presented, we also looked at alumni giving rates, as we took that as an indicator of long term satisfaction.
I also looked at alumni weekend attendance for the same reason. That data is harder to find (both attendees and original class sizes), so I only researched it for a half dozen or so schools. Unsurprisingly perhaps, there was a strong correlation between giving rates and reunion rate attendance, so in my limited sample giving rates appears a fair proxy for the other.