<p>need your advice. also does anyone know where i can get rankings for art history and psychology undergraduate programs?</p>
<p>I don't know about rankings, but the art dept., though small, has a very good track record for grad school placement. Students regularly get into good schools, including Yale. Obviously there are some LACs with a better known rep. for art history (Williams, Bryn Mawr, Vassar...) but Grinnell is very decent, & if you're looking to be a bigger fish in a smaller dept., it could be a great choice. They have a very nice gallery, interesting exhibitions, good opps. for internships etc., good study abroad opps. etc. etc. Academics at Grinnell are top notch & taken very seriously by the students. Good luck with your choice!</p>
<p>Thanks. Are you at Grinnell yourself?</p>
<p>No, but my son is & he's very happy with his choice of school.</p>
<p>You mentioned "some LACs with a better known rep. for art history (Williams, Bryn Mawr, Vassar...) ". Don't you know anything about Bates too? which school has better reputation for art history Grinnell or Bates?</p>
<p>Sorry - I don't know much about Bates. I think that any top LAC is going to give you decent preparation for grad school, & it's the grad school placement that is more significant than undergrad. placement. Williams is definitely the most prestigious LAC for art history (with very good connections I'm sure) but you can do well from a host of places. My son was invited to fly-in weekends at Williams, but knew straight away that it wasn't a good fit. I would go for the feel of the school (is it a good fit?) & the financial situation (can I afford it?) when choosing between two (or more) good schools.</p>
<p>How did your son determine Williams wasn't a good fit? And Grinnell was? May be can tell me about "the feel of" Grinnell?</p>
<p>As I'm only a parent of a Grinnell student, not a student, the 'fit' thing is a bit hard for me to talk about. However, if you go to the Admissions website, I think there are contact students to ask questions to, so maybe you could explore this with them? I do know that it's a pretty egalitarian, laid back, academically intense, "quirky", creative kind of place. By now I know a few students who go there & they're a great bunch. I'm sure Williams is a good fit for some, but my son had a hard time with the wealthy jock/heavy drinking scene he encountered. Though of course, you can't get a balanced picture from a couple of days & many other visitors may have had an entirely pleasant time.</p>
<p>for psychology and art history, you must check out connecticut college.</p>
<p>bishopcrusoe anyway thanks for info.:)</p>
<p>huskem55 Really? in fact i was waitlisted there and i was thinking not to remain on waiting list since it only 39 in us news rankings.</p>
<p>dont worry about the rankings- conn is easily a top 30 school, and is very well known for art history and psych.</p>
<p>how do you know it? that it's so well known for art history and psych? Are there some rankings of art history and psych undergraduate programs? where can i learn what reputations particular LAC's have?</p>
<p>Verycurious,
I am curious. How did you decide where to apply? What were your criterion? What are you looking for? This will help people try to help you...any of the big guide books have listings of what the various schools are well known for. Do you have access to one of these. Many ranking systems are based on graduate schools, which the LAC's obviously don't have.</p>
<p>i say this all the time: there is no such thing has undergraduate department rankings.
its hard to tell how good a department is, but some ways to assess:
-what people do after they graduate: grad school or jobs
-breadth and depth of courses
-the particular research interests of the faculty
-opportunity for undergraduate research (very important for psych)
-access to a museum (very important for art history)
-asking people associated to the school what they view as the 'strongest' departments</p>
<p>anitaw I don't have access to "any of the big guide books" and the fact is that the only resource where i can find information about art history at Grinnell is its official web site and there is not very much info. When i applied i chose colleges that are good colleges in the whole, not because of particular strengths of their art history departments. and now i had to decide between Grinnell and Bates, both of which i find great. So quality of art history programs of these colleges really matter to me now, because it can be decisive in my college choice.</p>
<p>huskem55 thanks anyway</p>
<p>my friend just transferred out of bates...it had alot of new england snobbery</p>
<p>What about philosophy?</p>
<p>I can't speak to the departmental strengths--my son chose Grinnell over 9 other schools for the intellectual curiousity and funny wackiness of the students. So far, he's very happy there. The students also tend to have strong social values. His other schools were Carleton, Goucher, Haverford, Lewis & Clark, Macalester, Oberlin, Pomona, Reed and Vassar. They were all so good, it was a tough choice. Of those, I heard the most about Vassar and Art History. Probably won't be my son's major.</p>
<p>My Dad is a Grinnell graduate who stays pretty closely connected to the college. He says that historically the strong departments have been Biology, History, English, Chemisty, Physics, Anthropology, Classics, Philosophy and Modern Languages (including Russian). He says that the Psychology and Art History programs are good but not a distinctive strength. He also agrees with bishopcrusoe that Grinnell is "a pretty egalitarian, laid back, academically intense, 'quirky', creative kind of place" in a group that also includes places like Carleton and Oberlin. It is certainly different in tone than Williams -- equal in quality, but different in tone.</p>
<p>For what it is worth, Rugg lists these LACs as having strong art history programs: </p>
<p>Barnard
Bowdoin
Bryn Mawr
Connecticut
Mount Holyoke<br>
Oberlin
Skidmore
Smith
Swarthmore
Trinity in Texas
Vassar
Wellesley
Willamette
Williams </p>
<p>If you like the midwestern, egalitarian ethos of Grinnell, you might also like Oberlin.</p>