<p>This may seem like a stupid question, but what exactly is a liberal arts college? Does it mean that is focused on the humanities, rather than science and math generaly? I was just wondering if its a good idea to apply to LACs if a person doesn't know what to major in yet, and could quite possibly want to go into engineering, etc. Any help would be appreciated. Thx!</p>
<p>bump.. cmon ppl</p>
<p>LAC's primarily deal with undergrads, and have very few, if any, grad students. Makes a big difference for space, profs, labs, equipment use for undergrads. Also, some do not have distribution requirements like Amherst, Smith, Williams, etc. Most of these have great lab facilities and outstanding science and engineering programs. Well-rounded educations are what they about, and catering to undergrads. Good luck!</p>
<p>Here's a quote from Tom Wolfe's "Call Me Charlotte Simmons" (my favorite part so far) : "you know what liberal arts means?" ...It's from Latin....in Latin liber means free?" It also means book, but that's just a coincidence, I think. Anyway, the Romans had slaves from all over the world, and some of the slaves were very bright, like the Greeks. The Romans would let the slaves get educated in all sorts of practical subjects like math, like engineering so they could build things, like music so they could be entertainers? But only Roman citizens, the free people?---liber?--could take things like literature and history and theology and philosophy? Because they were the arts of persuasion---and they didn't want the slaves to learn how to present arguments that might inspire them to unite and rise up or something? So the "liberal" arts are the arts of persuasion, and they didn't want anybody but free citizens knowing how to persuade people."</p>
<p>Boy...What a history lesson! I'm glad you were careful about defining the word "free", because at $42,000, free is not the word that comes to my mind LOL!</p>
<p>Yeah! That's a turnaround for sure!</p>
<p>A liberal arts program is an undergrad curriculum that includes broad exposure to all types of fields, including humanities, social sciences, and hard science/math. For example, Harvard's undergrad program is a liberal arts curriculum -- in fact, the undergrad part of Harvard is called Harvard College.</p>
<p>The thing that really differentiates liberal arts colleges from comparable universities is size and focus. A university has many different subsidiaries: a undergrad college, grad school programs, professional schools, research divisions, etc. Thus, teaching undergrads is only a part of the focus of the overall institution.</p>
<p>A liberal arts college is just the undergrad part with no grad schools or professional schools. On top of that, LACs usually have fewer undergrad students (typically under 2500 versus typically 4,000 to 30,000 at universities.</p>
<p>my defintion
relatively small
less than 4,000-
few graduate students- if any</p>
<p>some schools which call themselves universities-actually seem more like LACs- and 10 schools which belong to the Consortium of Liberal arts colleges call themselves universities.
<a href="http://www.liberalarts.org/about/members.php%5B/url%5D">http://www.liberalarts.org/about/members.php</a></p>
<p>( this is not an all inclusive list- left off for some reason although Pomona and Harvey Mudd are included- are Claremont Mckenna, Pizter and Scripps- also doesn't include public liberal arts colleges)</p>
<p>In answer to your second question. . .yes, LACs are generally good choices for students not certain of their major or vocational interests. However, engineering is a major only found at a small number of LACs, and those LACs typically do not offer the range of engineering sub-fields found at larger schools. There are several LACs with solid engineering departments (Harvey Mudd, Swarthmore, Bucknell, Smith. . .), but if technical and/or applied scientific fields like engineering are among your priority options I think I would lean toward a larger university.</p>
<p>Large universities do offer more, and more specialized majors than LACs, offering more choices to someone not sure of a major. This includes humanities, social science and vocational areas (journalism, nursing, education, business etc.) as well as scientific and technical fields. However, switching majors at a university often results in more than eight semesters of undergraduate study, due to prerequisites and difficulty of getting into required courses on an individual student's timeline. </p>
<p>LACs do offer some critical advantages for students unsure of a major. Smaller classes at the introductory level (for the most part) and better access to professors can give students better exposure to individual disciplines and lead to a more informed choice of a major. And switiching majors is usually easy to do, up to a point, as the bureacracy is easier to manage and the faculty is accustomed to responding to individual student needs. Student advising is more of a priority at LACs, and professors typically devote more time to it.</p>
<p>How would you define University of Chicago?</p>
<p>Gobears - thanks for asking your question. it's an interesting topic and some of us newby's have the same types of questions sometimes.</p>
<p>The undergraduate school at U of C offers a liberal arts education but it is part of a university, so it is not a traditional LAC.</p>