<p>What is liberal arts education really. I don't have any idea. And how good are science majors at most LAC? Please clarify.</p>
<p>A liberal arts education tends to privilege traditional academic disciplines (sciences, math, philosophy, languages and literature, history, etc.) over pre-professional studies (nursing, teacher-training, business, etc.).</p>
<p>You could study the liberal arts at a large public university if you chose to, but you usually couldn’t major in something like communications in a small liberal arts college.</p>
<p>You can get a very good undergraduate education in the sciences at many liberal arts colleges. As you might expect, some are stronger in the sciences than others.</p>
<p>Check this out:
[50</a> Schools That Produce the Most Science and Engineering PhD’s | The College Solution](<a href=“http://www.thecollegesolution.com/50-schools-that-produce-the-most-science-and-engineering-phds-2/]50”>50 Schools That Produce the Most Science and Engineering PhD's)</p>
<p>I don’t agree with “The College Solution” blog post above. It is not “nonsense” that attending a large [reputable] public university in CA could increase your chances of admission to grad school compared to an obscure liberal arts college.</p>
<p>e.g. the blog author remarks on the importance of letters of recommendation in the grad school admissions process. That is true, but science grad school admissions committees (who are the professors from the dept) place a greater emphasis on letters from colleagues they know, so a glowing letter from a well-known mathematician at UCLA will go a lot further than a glowing recommendation from a math prof at Beloit, where few of the professors are actually active research mathematicians.</p>
<p>The relevant point, I think, is that one can be well prepared for graduate school in the sciences–or for professional school or for the workplace–at either a liberal arts college or a large research university. Neither setting necessarily limits a student’s options for future education or employment.</p>
<p>Some students are likely to do better in a smaller learning environment where they get close attention from faculty; they should go to small colleges. Some students are likely to do better in a larger learning environment, where their curricular and research options are much broader; they should go to large research universities. Some students can reasonably expect to do well in either kind of setting; they should base their decisions on something else: distance from home, or the weather, or party atmosphere, or whatever.</p>
<p>Sikorsky, as you noted, curricular options tend to be more limited at liberal arts colleges than at large research universities, and I do think this can be problematic. Of course, one need not attend a large research university to be well-prepared for grad school in the sciences: Ed Witten, one of the greatest living physicists, majored in history at Brandeis. That said, few students at top math or physics grad schools are LAC grads.</p>
<p>But at most liberal arts colleges, curricular offerings aren’t so limited that you can’t get a sound undergraduate education in the sciences.</p>
<p>Well, I should add “I don’t think…” I actually attended a large research university. Two of 'em, in fact.</p>
<p>searchingforinfo: unfortunately, that is not true. A very large number of students at top schools actually come from liberal arts colleges*, especially if you compare the ratio of students at LACs v. students at Big Research Universities. The odds are much higher for the top LACs than for the top flagships or research US, save for HYPSM. It depends on the individual situation of course, but the typical situation is that at research universities undergrads have very little opportunity to conduct research unless they’re in the Honors College (grad students are there to do the grunt work for the profs); their classes are very large (unless in the Honors College) and the professor doesn’t know them, and a letter of recommendation is more than a “name” - it needs to detail your accomplishments and make you stand out among all other top applicants. If the recommender is famous, great, but grad schools hate letters where the recommender is famous and has nothing special to say about the applicant (Our reaction "Oh, this kid thought someone else’s name would work better than his own achievements… " It tends to work against the applicant.) Keep in mind that there are people famous in their specialty about everywhere, and top LACs have excellent researchers too. Just because you haven’t heard of them because you’re not into, say, Brazilian Portuguese diphtongation or Accelarated fluids in rotors, doesn’t mean they’re not famous, just that they’re out of your field of expertise. Grad schools profs, however, are likely to know them from professional conferences, papers in journals, lectures they’ve attended, books they’ve used for their classes, etc. Many top school graduates actually choose to work in LACs over big research schools and thus are friends with many grad school former mentors or with current friends who chose big research schools.
Of course, the ideal situation is an applicant who has made significant progress as part of a nationally-famous expert’s research team and published a paper during his/her senior year, and gets a glowing recommendation by the famous expert showing that said expert actually worked closely with him/her.
However this situation isn’t in any way even typical, it can’t even be considered marginal. It’s very exceptional and can only happen at a handful of schools.</p>
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<li>actual research has been done on this. 
You can look it up if you don’t believe me.</li>
</ul>
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<p>I agree that one can get a sound undergraduate education in the sciences at most LACs, but at the same time, their limited curricular offerings (with the notable exception of Harvey Mudd) can be problematic depending on one’s educational goals. The author of that blog post specifically mentioned math at Beloit, so I checked their course offerings:
<a href=“Majors & Minors • Academics • Beloit College”>http://www.beloit.edu/cdmmr/assets/mathematics_crses.pdf</a>
The math curriculum is very limited. Most math students at my alma mater (a large research university) would’ve exhausted these offerings by their sophomore year.</p>
<p>
I said that few students at top math or physics grad schools are LAC grads based on my and my husband’s personal experience at top math and physics grad schools. What research indicates otherwise?</p>
<p>
I said that a glowing letter from a well-known mathematician at UCLA will go a lot further than a glowing recommendation from a math prof at Beloit, so I was not referring to contentless recommendations. When I said “well-known mathematician at UCLA,” I did NOT mean well-known to the general public; I meant well-known to other mathematicians, who are the ones reading the letters. My husband has served on math grad admissions committees at two different top 20 math departments, and he is not familiar with any of the math profs at Beloit. In addition, he rarely encounters profs from LACs at conferences in his field of mathematics.</p>
<p>It’s like Groundhog Day:</p>
<p>“Graduate teaching assistants.”
“Research.”
“Individual attention.”
“Curricular offerings.”</p>
<p>Lather, rinse, repeat…</p>
<p>Searching for info,</p>
<p>I don’t know Benoit. Know nothing about it. While that course selection is not overly extensive, I am a mathematician, and I feel sorry for any math major who has exhausted that course listing by Sophomore year. Clearly not a well rounded student.</p>
<p>Liberal arts education is a euphemism for well-rounded education.</p>
<p>Ideally, you graduate having studied Greek Drama, Organic Chemistry, Macroeconomic Theory, etc.</p>
<p>Science majors at LACs are “good” in the sense that you have more resources at your disposal–you can more easily take advantage of professor and TA office hours, assist professors with research, conduct independent research, etc. A strong support system is important for your long-term career.</p>
<p>Math is somewhat of a special case because many of the top math majors enter college advanced in math, so they are more likely reach graduate level courses as undergraduates (not generally available at liberal arts colleges). They would also likely skip most or all of the frosh/soph level math courses where the small liberal arts colleges are most advantageous in terms of class sizes and interaction (math courses at the junior/senior level tend to be small faculty-led classes even at big research universities).</p>
<p>In general, small liberal arts colleges often have strong and weak departments, since they may be too small to be strong in everything, so a student should consider the offerings in any subject s/he may major in.</p>