I’m an international student and am confused as to what exactly is different in the liberal arts colleges?
As far as I know, in all American Universities, one can choose from courses of all disciplines in their first year, choose whatever major they want and then in the remaining three years take electives from all fields.
What’s different in LACs?
Also, on the basis of what should I decide between liberal arts or a conventional degree? I want to study everything but want to focus on business /finance /economics. Keeping this in mind, what would be better for me?
The modern definition of a Liberal Arts College is that in the purest sense, the school only teaches undergraduate studies.
There is no curriculum limitation but fewer LACs will offer engineering, business and nursing, for example. Many do though. Most of the Ivy League schools do not offer undergraduate business, by the way.
In Asian cultures especially, the word translates into “high school” and in Europe a “college” is often part of a university. Here as well. So this can make it confusing to international students.
However, for your purposes the only distinction you should understand is that American Liberal Arts Colleges just have undergraduate studies or just a few small graduate programs. Classes will be smaller and professors teach.
Many LACs are painfully hard to get into, just like top universities. Americans don’t distinguish prestige based on whether a school is an LAC or University.
If you google LACs vs. Unis, you will get many hits. If you do a search on CC for LACs vs. Unis or liberal arts college vs. universities or similar, you will also get many threads. This topic has been covered exhaustively.
Bottom line, both liberal arts colleges (LACs) and unis are identical in how they handle the 4 years. You take what you want the first two years (unless the school has distribution requirements that you need to fulfill to be eligible to graduate). You are required to declare a major at the end of the second year. Some majors have more requirements than others, so you may need to start some of the coursework for your major before your 3d year if you want to graduate on time and most students do, if only to test their interest in the major before declaring. And yes, you can take electives for the entire 4 years as long as you complete the distribution requirements at the school and the requirements for your major. Again, most people do - an elective is a nice way to lighten your work load or try out something you would not otherwise have had exposure to.
Most LACs do not offer business or finance by the way (although there are exceptions). Those are pre-professional degrees. Universities are more likely to offer them - and other pre-professional degrees. LACs and unis both offer economics. Your degree is equally well respected whether you got it from a LAC or uni - it depends on the reputation of the individual school.
"on the basis of what should I decide on the difference between liberal arts or a conventional degree?
Your language may be limiting your understanding. Degrees from both universities and liberal arts colleges are conventional degrees.
“in all American universities, one can choose from courses of all disciplines”
With respect to this, I think your range may be more open at a liberal arts college. Some universities may restrict your choices based upon the particular undergraduate “school” you have enrolled in.
In terms of economics departments, these analyses attempt to measure the strength of scholarship in each of your categories of interest: “Economics Departments at Liberal Arts Colleges”; “US Economics Departments” (From IDEAS, available online).
During Freshman year my daughter learned that LAC show the interrelationship between all courses. Like life, subject areas are not so clearly divided but overlap in many ways. That’s been her experience at a LAC.
Liberal arts colleges focus on undergraduate education in the liberal arts, not on undergraduate pre-professional training or on graduate education of any kind. If only because they don’t have extensive preprofessional or graduate programs, LACs tend to be small (< 3000 students). Average class sizes at the top ~50 LACs typically are less than 20 students. Relatively few of their classes have as many as 50 or more students. Because they have no (or few) graduate students, virtually all classes are taught by professors (not teaching assistants). Because they are small, and have no (or few) graduate programs, they may offer a more limited number and variety of courses and majors than research universities typically do. LACs also tend to have fewer (or smaller) D1 sports programs. Many of them have understated (or no) Greek life. Many are located in small rural towns or old suburbs. Most are private.
Many of the colleges with the best financial aid for international students are LACs.
http://www.desperateguide.com/us/top-25-financial-aid-colleges-in-us-for-international-students-need-aware
Some, however, have dominant fraternity and sorority scenes (e.g. Washington and Lee, Bucknell).
There are public ones, though they are widely ignored on these forums. See http://www.coplac.org/members/ for some examples. Some have lower list prices, though need-based aid for out-of-state and international students is typically minimal or none.
Not surprising. In addition to the cost issue which you bring up, there’s the size issue – quite a few public LACs are far closer to universities like Brown, Wake, or Rice in size than to Haverford or Amherst. The number of classes offered by the COPLAC colleges rarely matches their greater size, leading to larger classes and markedly more competition for popular classes.
If one wants to look at exceptions, one could also point out that some LACs grant PhDs (Wesleyan and Bryn Mawr), some have law schools (Washington & Lee and Lewis & Clark), and some have other graduate schools like education (Willamette). Moreover, there are LACs with majors in business (Skidmore), engineering (Bucknell), communications (Susquehanna), nursing (Hiram), etc. Such exceptions are, of course, why we use “most” and “many” to qualify generalizations.
It’s been mentioned already, but it bears emphasis–one of the most important differences is that LACs are extremely unlikely to use grad students as teachers, either because they have no grad programs or they’re so teaching-focused that they oppose that approach.
^And the result of that, and of the small classes, is often closer relationships with professors and more personal attention from them. For example, my LAC did not have dedicated academic advising staff. Your professors were your academic advisors. It was part of their job, and that led to a more nuanced understanding of your academic life, which personally came in handy when I needed recommendations for graduate school (my advisor was familiar with a health problem I had that impacted my grades, and was able to write about it in grad school apps).
But you can develop those kinds of relationships at larger universities too - you just need to be more proactive because they don’t happen organically. Also, fewer professors there may be interested in it because of the pressures of their career development. BUT many if not most professors go into the field at least in part because they want to cultivate young scholars, so some of them are going to be interested in advising and mentoring you if you want that.
I think the important thing to recognize is that you can get the most important aspects of what you want at both kinds of schools. Most universities offer what’s called a liberal arts education, which is basically the idea that college graduate should have well-rounded knowledge in a variety of fields. That’s why gen eds exist. A great example is Columbia’s Core Curriculum, which is pretty much the spirit of a liberal arts college at a large university. Even universities without general education requirements (like Brown) usually encourage their students to take classes in a variety of fields. You can get research experience or internships at/from both; you can foster close relationships with professors at both, even though it may be a bit more legwork at a larger university; you can declare your major in your second year and take electives from either kind of school.
One of the biggest differences is size. So consider whether you want to go to a smaller school with fewer students (usually <3,000). That often means tighter bonds and smaller classes, but it can also mean smaller faculty and thus more limited class offerings and majors (although check out course catalogs to make a decision).
Another difference is (sometimes) the kind of work you’ll do. Very large universities tend to have larger classes, at least on the freshman and sophomore level, which means professors often have to modify the kind of assignments they offer (to ones that are easily graded). At LACs, the intro classes are smaller, so seminar-style discussion and longer papers are the norm earlier in your college career than they might be at a large university. (But notice I say “large” - many top universities actually have pretty medium-sized undergraduate student bodies that can range from about 5,000 to 10,000 undergrads. So your lectures may be medium-sized, and in less popular or smaller majors, your intro classes may be pretty small. And even large universities have smaller upper-level courses).
If you want to focus on business, one LAC that you may want to check out is Babson College.
Outside of certain instances (e.g. freshman seminars in English or history, some language classes), it’s atypical for graduate students to be the primary instructors. It’s much more typical for them to be TAs and in charge of the discussion sections for large lecture classes while professors handle lectures. Students in smaller lecture classes and seminars are taught solely by professors.
In any case, I’m not sure there is a significant difference for intro/lower-level courses except in the writing of recommendation letters, where a professor’s opinion holds more weight. TAs are usually well-trained in teaching and their subject matter and often only a year or two from the job market; quite frankly many of them are better teachers than some professors could hope (or bother) to be.
It’s not unusual for LACs to use (undergraduate) teaching assistants to help run labs, review sessions, and the like.
A well-resourced LAC will offer over 700 courses. Some particular majors may not be available – as may be the case at a university – but the range of choices in general at an LAC can be varied, deep and without significant compromise for most students. The choice of an LAC itself can be an obvious one for this and some of the other reasons mentioned on this thread.