What is the most rigorous LAC?(in terms of workload, and how hard the work is) I don’t care about rankings.
Thanks!
I think Reed would be up there. Any of the Service Academies.
Holy Cross, well known for its rigourous course-load especially in sciences.
The top ranked New England schools as well but they have a more collaborative culture.
Swarthmore/Davidson
Swarthmore is pretty hard core.
I would think Swarthmore.
Deep Springs is pretty intense across the spectrum of work.
I would agree that Swarthmore has a particularly rigorous vibe to it. There was an intensity to Swarthmore that felt above an beyond the many other LACs we visited.
In terms of a rigorous core curriculum, probably Harvey Mudd and the military service academies.
Davidson is very rigorous and has a reputation for grade deflation.
Reed requires a junior qualifying examination and a senior thesis
(https://www.reed.edu/academic/gbook/acad_pol/qual.html
http://www.reed.edu/apply/academics/thesis.html).
Reed also requires an oral defense of the thesis before an interdisciplinary faculty board
(https://www.reed.edu/academic/gbook/acad_pol/senior.html).
According to Reed’s Wikipedia article, only ten students have graduated from Reed with a perfect 4.0 GPA between1983 and 2012.
Princeton Review’s 2014 edition ranked Reed #1 for “Best Classroom Experience,” #2 for “Professors with the Highest Marks,” and #4 for “Students Who Study the Most".
Reed is consistently among the top colleges for the percentage of alumni who earn doctorates
(http://www.reed.edu/ir/phd.html).
I suspect Pomona ranks fairly high, also. The OP has started other threads inquiring about “preppy,” “posh,” and “conservative” colleges, though, and so some of these suggestions (e.g. service academies and Pomona) probably would not suit him. I hadn’t thought of Deep Springs previously, but I’m not sure that’s what the OP is looking for, either.
- Deep Springs (big gap) 2.Harvey Mudd (bigger gap)
- Reed
- Swarthmore
- Williams
- Pomona
- Amherst
St. John’s?
@marvin100 Your list totally ignores some options. Where are the Service Academies on your list? Every student has to take 30 hours of engineering and hard science as part of the core curriculum and has a team engineering project.
I think the service academies are in their own category, as is Harvey Mudd.
Except they are LACs.
I realize US News classifies them as such, but it’s never made sense to me. LACs are schools like Williams, Middlebury, Kenyon, etc. There is a clear family resemblance among them. There is not such a family resemblence between them on the one hand and the service academies on the other. And Harvey Mudd is its own kettle of fish.
Genuinely curious what the argument for classifying West Point as a LAC is, besides that US News does it.
The military service academies focus on undergraduate education and offer a typical range of liberal arts majors.
They obviously do have a pre-professional emphasis (the profession being officer in the military) along with liberal arts undergraduate education, but other liberal arts colleges also have their own pre-professional emphases (e.g. fast track to Wall Street schools, or the general tendency of liberal arts major programs to emphasize preparation for PhD study for academic professions).
Erin’s Dad:
You’re right I left out the service academies. I don’t really think of them as LACs (they should have their own category, imo), but you’re certainly free to differ, and I know most ranking systems count them among the LACs. I also tend to ignore them because I work with students in Asia, most of whom are non-citizens and few of whom would consider the SA’s anyway.