What's the difference between a Liberal Arts College and a National University?

College Search & Selection
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<p>I mainly looked at National Universities in US News to find new schools but i saw Liberal arts college ranking on their website just now. What is the difference between them? Which one would be better for a person who is undecided about his major ( but maybe leaning towards something like premed or political science)? How do they compare in terms of ranking? Like which school would be better, a #80 ranked national university or a #30 ranked Liberal arts college? </p>

<p>Thanks for any input. I was planning on sending my application this week but these new colleges are making me think otherwise. ( especially Colgate/Trinity)</p>

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<p>As a general rule, the national universities tend to have graduate programs and the LACs don’t - they concentrate on undergrads only. There are exceptions in the list, but that’s the basic way to differentiate them. LACs also tend to be smaller than national universities, but again, there are always exceptions. Most LACs do not have Div I sports. Most of the Ivies are oversized LACs with grad schools attached and they certainly have more in common with the LACs than the state flagship universities.</p>

<p>Comparing rankings is difficult, but I think you’ll find general agreement that the #30 to #32 LACs (Bryn Mawr, Colorado College, Barnard, Bucknell, Kenyon) are better schools than the #82 National Universities (Stevens Inst Tech., SUNY-Stony Brook, TCU, Vermont), depending on what you want to study.</p>

<p>You find plenty of discussion on CC about doing pre-med/pre-law at a LAC vs. a National University. Both are legitimate ways of doing it, you’ll find advocates for both. It really comes down to personal preference.</p>

<p>At this point in the application game, you’ll need to send in applications to both and then visit those schools you get in if you decide the LAC route may be for you. Some people hate them and find them way too small, others like the intimacy and small class sizes. You really have to see for yourself.</p>

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<p><a href=“lac vs university site:talk.collegeconfidential.com - Google Search”>lac vs university site:talk.collegeconfidential.com - Google Search;
This question is one of the most popular on CC. Keep in mind that many ardent defenders of both LACs and universities are seemingly unaware of the phrase [streetlight</a> effect](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetlight_effect]streetlight”>Streetlight effect - Wikipedia) and cite statistics that are irrelevant for the overwhelming majority of the population.</p>

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<p>Forbes doesn’t use the same criteria as US News, but they do put both types of schools on the same list, so you can see how they compare, at least the Top 100.</p>

<p>[In Photos: America’s Top 100 Colleges: 2013 - Forbes](<a href=“http://www.forbes.com/pictures/fkmm45fhed/stanford-university-4/”>http://www.forbes.com/pictures/fkmm45fhed/stanford-university-4/&lt;/a&gt;)</p>

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<p>Thanks alot. I didn’t see all the other pages on cc about this topic. I guess ill apply to both and then see what happens. Thanks again!</p>

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<p>A #30 LAC would be much, much better than a university ranked #80.</p>

<p>This however could be altered for one specific major (ie., AU and political science, TAMU and engineering).</p>

<p>The main differences:
national universities have big sport teams you can cheer for in huge stadiums that go live on TV, more choices of majors, lots of facilities,more diversity, more niches, less importance of “fit” (excepted UChicago and a couple exceptions at the very top, but not for state flagship), more choices of classes (although even a 1,500 student LAC will have something like 500 classes to choose from, each semester, which I already find dizzying), professors who may be “famous” (although they probably don’t teach freshmen and may not teach undergrads), a name everyone will recognize even if they know nothing about universities, big lecture classes where you can hide and which you may skip. Most instructors you’ll deal with at first will be TA’s (graduate students selected because they’re the best at what they do… but not professors whose #1 focus is research and is grad students), which may make it harder for you to get a personal letter of recommendation, and the grad students will hog all the good research positions. On the other hand, if you manage to get a letter of recommendation, it’s likely to be from someone who’s famous in your field, so with luck it won’t be generic and it’ll help (if it’s generic, then even the big name won’t help much).</p>

<p>At LACs, there will often be fewer students, fewer choices of majors (40 rather than 100), fewer classes to choose from (500-1,000 rather than 3,000), interactive classes that are taught by professors who also have office hours and know who you are and can help you, more support to help you if you struggle with something, highly respected names for grad schools (especially the top 30 and well-known for top 60), more opportunity to get involved, no grad student to teach you or take the research spots so if you’re bright as an undergrad you can get involved in research, professors whose names aren’t as famous (but do teach you), fewer facilities, low odds of super scientific projects with DOD funding, less red tape, more insular/more close-knit/ “fit” is super important otherwise there’s a fishbowl effect,fewer clubs, more opportunities to create your own club, generally low-key sports, enthusiasm for quidditch, broomball, or ultimate, special consortia and exchanges, higher likelihood of studying abroad.</p>

<p>For political science, you want to make sure your chosen universities/LACs have something like Semester in Washington.
For Premed, you want to make sure you’re in the top 25% applicants for stats and that they write committee letters. You also want to know whether said committee letters are written for all premeds or only those of the college’s choosing.</p>

<p>Roughly speaking, I’d say top 32 is top 32 in both national universities and LACs in terms of quality and education - equal. After that number, things are fuzzier - national universities get better name recognition and sports but level of teaching, peer “drive”, and student involvement would go to LACS, and grad school prospects are similar - in my opinion you can make a 32-52 group for national univesities that’s about the same as 32-65 for LACs, and 57-86 for national universities is about like 74-110 in LACs. You can apply to two or three LACs and national universities in each category, and see what happens.</p>

<p>Stony Brook, Colgate, Trinity, etc. are all excellent schools.</p>

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<p>Statistics related to class size often are cited to distinguish LACs from universities. This is an area where LACs usually differ significantly from universities. At some LACs, all classes have less than 50 students; this is not true of any national university ranked by US News. No ranked LAC has as many large classes (percentage >= 50) as a typical state university does. Not everyone will care equally about this issue (but it should be of interest to many college students.) </p>

<p>Most other statistics that feed the major college rankings (admit rates, graduation rates, etc.) don’t seem to differentiate them (numbers are all over the place for both kinds of schools). Posters sometimes cite the percentage of alumni who earn PhDs; LACs tend to do very well by this metric. Since few people earn doctorates, many college applicants won’t care about this. If you believe it’s an indicator of academic quality or of a certain intellectual atmosphere, you might (regardless of whether you plan to pursue a doctorate).</p>

<p>Statistics are more like flashlights than streetlights. They have limited power and scope, but you can point them all over the place.</p>

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<p>@MYOS1634 - your description of national universities (and LACs) is a generalization, and it does not match me experience, especially concerning sports and a lack of interaction with professors and research opportunities. Being at a larger university requires more initiative to find opportunities than in a smaller setting, but there are still plenty of opportunities and I have been able to work very closely in a well-known professor’s field for three years so far. And you can create a small community within the larger one. And I’m not sure what you mean when you say “fit” isn’t very important at national universities.</p>

<p>The rankings are already a mess. Trying to compare rankings does not seem terribly beneficial. It is a matter of what setting is best for YOU as an individual. Which one is “better” is very dependent on the individual. Sure, the #973 national university is probably not going to be as academically challenging as the #17 LAC. But I doubt that is the decision anyone is facing. Ignore the rankings for a minute, visit some schools, and figure out what TYPE of school you would like to attend.</p>

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<p>How about merit scholarship considerations? Is one group better than the other?</p>

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<p>nanotechnology- of course Myos1634’s comments are generalizations, but there’s a lot of truth in what he or she said. Every school is different as is the experience of each student - I don’t think anyone would argue otherwise. Because LAC’s are smaller and graduate a fraction of the number of students as universities, fewer people have first-hand experience with LACs. The LAC experience is comparable to a boutique versus a large department store. Less overall choices are available, but possibly better choices in the things that matter to a particular customer. For students who know what they want and crave a smaller school with a certain type of feel, a small LAC is ideal. That idea translates into fit - so fit is more important for LACs than for large universities where there usually are more choices both social and academic.</p>

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<p>Nanotechnology: I admit those are broad differences with, of course, personal exceptions, and I could add this to my original post: “you can alter this by enrolling in the honors college” - I assume you’re part of the honors college at your university, since what you describe would be quite out of the ordinary otherwise, especially if you attend a university ranked 70-100, but is quite reasonable for a student in the honors program.</p>

<p>Remember also that one person’s experience doesn’t invalidate a general trend.</p>

<p>@Arthur: so, add the fact you can have a smaller setting with access to professors if you enroll in the honors college of your university. Investigate what this entails, since not all universities offer the same programs. The best ones will include a residential option such as the honors dorm or living-learning community, early registration, a complementary program (cultural/field trips/study abroad trips/conferences/meeting with famous people…), a large choice of 1st and 2nd year honors classes to bypass/replace the regular gen-ed classes, with a cap at 15 or 20 students, opportunities for research (including presenting at conferences), the option or requirement of a senior thesis, and special graduate school/fellowship advising.
This is trying to replicate the “typical” LAC experience for the most motivated students.
The upside is that you still benefit from a large university. The downsides are that you still have the downsides of the large university.</p>

<p>The best situation probably would a consortium, such as the 5-college consortium, the Atlanta consortium, the Claremont MCKenna consortium, the Haverford/BMC/Swarthmore/Penn consortium…</p>

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<p>Also, take a look at some of the smaller National Universities, as these often have the best of all worlds :)</p>

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<p>This question is one of the most popular on CC. Keep in mind that many ardent defenders of both LACs and universities are seemingly unaware of the phrase streetlight effect and cite statistics that are irrelevant for the overwhelming majority of the population.</p>

<p>I am curious about which statistics you’re referring to.</p>

<p>The major differences between LACs and national universities is that 1) LACs tend to be quite a bit smaller than national universities and 2) LACs tend not to have graduate programs. Neither of those are universally true, though, as off the top of my head I can think of some small national universities that have around the same number of undergraduates as some of the larger LACs (Rice and Lehigh come to mind), and there are some LACs that have graduate programs (Simmons and Middlebury, for example).</p>

<p>Other than that, more of the differences come down to individual institutions rather than large group differences.</p>

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<p>LACs tend to be (per capita) grad school prep colleges, most not having as many BA/BS employment majors (engineering, business, etc.) as the big schools.</p>

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<p>LAC quality may be more sensitive to major choice than big university quality, since the small size of LACs may result in less popular departments being too small (limited number of upper division courses, which may be offered only once every two years or less often). Note that small universities may be similar to LACs in this respect.</p>

<p>LACs with convenient cross registration agreements with big universities may avoid some of these problems.</p>

<p>Rankings may also be less reliable for LACs (if they can be relied on for anything other than approximating selectivity and prestige), due to the greater importance of fit factors. For example, the USNWR #1 through #20 LACs consist of schools with widely varying fit factors.</p>

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<p>“limited number of upper division courses, which may be offered only once every two years or less often”</p>

<p>But this is not a practical problem, since such courses are offered during your semesters in major. If this were a problem, LACs couldn’t compete, or have their grad school success.</p>

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<p>The PhD-program-bound students are likely to be coming from the school’s more popular majors with stronger departments, not from the small departments where crucial courses may be offered infrequently enough that missing them once means not getting a chance to take them at all.</p>

<p>For example, Oberlin and Reed (where most physics courses are offered at least yearly) are probably more productive at producing physics PhD students than Marietta (where most upper division physics courses are once every two years and some even less often, and there are probably only 3-4 physics majors per year) is.</p>

<p>At the more extreme ends of the spectrum, Harvey Mudd is not likely to be producing many humanities PhD students, while Sarah Lawrence is not likely to be producing many math and science PhD students.</p>

<p>A LAC-bound student should check that his/her academic interests match up to the LAC’s academic strengths. (The same applies to many other schools, particularly smaller ones.)</p>

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<p>@ MYOS1634 - Of course there are exceptions, but the description you gave fit much more with the state flagship schools I visited, as opposed to the private research universities.
And yes, I am part of the Honors program, but that really isn’t what has benefited me. I joined an NSF-funded program aimed at getting college freshmen and sophomores involved in research, which was open to anyone. I specifically looked for a university that would match my science interests, so I guess I did intentionally avoid a lot of the stereotype-inducing large universities.</p>

<p>But I also agree with whoever said that a smaller national university might be a good compromise. That’s how I felt in my choice; even though I chose a university with 12,000-15,000 students, that is significantly less than my other top choice, with 40,000+ students. I felt like they made a point of treating me more as an individual.</p>

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<p>Wake Forest is not a representative counter-example to the class-size generalizations. It’s an outlier. It’s unusually small for a research university (~4800 undergrads). Yes, it has a low percentage of large classes (less than 2% with 50 or more students). Apparently only 1 other research university in the USNWR top 100 (Yeshiva) falls under 5% on this measure. Apparently most LACs do (<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/708190-avg-class-size.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/708190-avg-class-size.html&lt;/a&gt;).</p>

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<p>It also offered 247 classes with 2-9 students. 60-70 Williams tutorial classes per year have exactly 2 students. At many research universities, a higher percentage than that have 50 or more.</p>

<p>If you want to challenge the class size generalizations, try comparing introductory classes in the most popular majors, or pre-med classes. What are the enrollments at the Ivies or other top research universities? What about public honors colleges? The top-ranked flagships? Are the numbers not significantly larger there than they are at some of the top 20 LACs?</p>

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<p>Example class sizes for popular intro-level/pre-med classes (LAC v. University) …</p>

<p>Williams Fall 2012, average enrollments for the past 4 years
[Fall</a> 2012 Class Size Info](<a href=“Williams College”>Williams College)
BIOL 101 (The Cell), 46 students
CHEM 151 (Intro Concepts of Chemistry), 117
CHEM 153 (Concepts Chem: Adv Section), 27
PSCI 120 (America and the World), 30
PSYC 101 (Introductory Psychology), 141</p>

<p>Chicago Fall 2012
[University</a> of Chicago Time Schedules](<a href=“University of Chicago Time Schedules”>University of Chicago Time Schedules)
BIOS / 10130 (Core Biology), 48 students
CHEM / 10100 (Intro General Chem), 34
SOSC / 12100 (Self, Culture, Society), 17
PSYC / 20000 (Fundamentals of Psych), 42</p>

<p>Berkeley, Spring 2013
[Search</a> Spring - Online Schedule Of Classes](<a href=“http://schedule.berkeley.edu/srchsprg.html]Search”>http://schedule.berkeley.edu/srchsprg.html)
BIOLOGY 1A P 001 LEC, 647 students (3 hrs/week)
BIOLOGY 1A S 101 DIS, 28 (1 hr/week)
CHEMISTRY 1A P 001 LEC, 418 (3 hrs/week)
CHEMISTRY 1A S 102 DIS, 25 (1 hr/week)
POLITICAL SCIENCE 1 P 001 LEC, 234 (3 hrs/week)
POLITICAL SCIENCE 1 S 101 DIS, 18 (2 hrs/week)
PSYCHOLOGY 1 P 001 LEC, 464 (2 hrs/week)
PSYCHOLOGY 1 S 101 DIS, 25 (1 hr/week)</p>

<p>In the Berkeley faculty listings, the instructors for the smaller, less-frequent discussion classes probably are grad students. You can assume all the instructors at Williams are faculty.</p>

<p>Chicago has a smaller percentage of classes with 50 or more students than all but a handful of other research universities. I think Berkeley is more representative of what you’re likely to experience in popular intro/intermediate classes at research universities. Some honors colleges, or some of the other top private universities, may be closer to the Chicago pattern.</p>