<p>I'm interested in an a top LAC but don't really want a 2,000 person school in a remote setting. Can someone tell me which of the schools on this list are the largest and which are in decent sized towns or cities? Thanks!</p>
<p>If you consider the Claremont Colleges as a group, then you have a total student population over 5,000. The best of both worlds. LA is less than an hour away. Lots of neighboring towns.</p>
<p>It is difficult to interpret your request. While not quite as essential as coldness is to ice cream, small size is nevertheless very close to the essence of an LAC. You might consider whether it is an LAC (of which intimacy is required) or a liberal arts curriculum (offered by many schools, large and small) that attracts you.</p>
<p>You also do not indicate:</p>
<p>-- gender (so I have included women’s colleges that otherwise fit)
– level of selectivity (so I have assumed fairly competitive admissions – < 60% admission, >= 560 SAT CR and Math scores at the 25th percentile
– special mission (so I have omitted schools with a artistic, technical, military, and business/entrepreneurial missions and strong religious affiliations).</p>
<p>Changing any of these criteria can greatly change the set of choices.</p>
<p>The suggestion of the Claremont Colleges is excellent. Here are some other larger (more than 2000 undergrads) LAC’s located in or near larger population centers.</p>
<p>Barnard (NYC, women only)
Colorado College (Colorado Springs, CO)
Macalester College (St. Paul, MN)
Occidental College (Los Angeles)
Trinity College (Hartford, CT)
Vassar College (NYC suburbs)
Wellesley College (Boston suburbs, women only)</p>
<p>Other LAC’s that are definitely urban but just miss at least one of the filtering criteria:
University of Puget Sound (Tacoma, WA)
Rhodes College (Memphis, TN)
Trinity University (San Antonio, TX)</p>
<p>Some smaller LAC’s in urban/suburban areas which draw students nationwide:
Lake Forest College (Chicago suburbs)
Lawrence University (Appleton, WI)
Lewis & Clark College (Portland, OR)
Reed College (Portland, OR)</p>
<p>And these schools with significant graduate student populations (and thus are not LAC’s) but have LAC-size student populations that meet the indicated criteria:
Brandeis University (Boston suburbs)
Rice University (Houston, TX)
University of Richmond (VA)
University of Tulsa (OK)</p>
<p>Thank you for your help!</p>
<p>Somehow I missed the Tri-Co in the Philadelphia suburbs:
Byrn Mawr College (women only)
Haverford College
Swarthmore College</p>
<p>All of these are “small” (fewer than 1,600 students) but should have been included in the “definitely urban/suburban” list.</p>
<p>I suppose I could have gone the other way, too, and listed larger LAC’s that are not immediately adjacent to population centers. The following schools have around 3,000 or more students, are usually considered LAC’s, and are not too far from but not immediately adjacent to urban centers.
Oberlin College (near Cleveland)
St. Olaf College (near Minneapolis)
Wesleyan University (near Hartford and New Haven, CT)</p>
<p>@Descartesz Can you tell me about Wesleyan? I don’t know anything about it. I’m looking for your opinion on things that wouldn’t be found on their website:</p>
<p>conservative vs. liberal student body
social life
community feel
school spirit and pride
alumni network/after school contacts for jobs
etc.</p>
<p>FWIW, Vassar is about twice as far from NYC as St. Olaf is from Minneapolis. Oberlin is 35 miles from Cleveland. And if you say Hartford counts, Wesleyan is about as close to it as Wellesley is from Boston.</p>
<p>
All granted, which makes this a murky exercise. My take: Poughkeepsie (Vassar) is part of a wider NYC metro–contiguously connected–in a way Northfield (St. Olaf) is not. Northfield is surrounded by farm fields and there is quite a gap to the southern suburbs of the Twin Cities. Same situation with Wellesley (in the suburb of Wellesley) and Wesleyan (in the town of Middletown). Oberlin, OH is very similar to Northfield, the first “small town” in its direction away from a larger metro area. All of these are quite large for LAC’s, which is part of what the OP was seeking, and their (admittedly variable) proximity to larger metro areas made them worthy of mentioning to the OP. The easy availability of regularly scheduled public transit plays some sort of role here, too, as to which list a school should fall into, but I think I have already overanalyzed. The goal was to raise some possibilities to the OP.</p>
<p>Living61: Wesleyan has a reputation for individualistic (some would say “quirky”) students and liberal/left (or maybe “alternative”) politics with challenging and highly regarded academics. I have visited but have no more connection than that. I suggest you check out the Wesleyan forum here on CC for further insights. You might also read the book “The Gatekeepers”, which features Wesleyan admissions processes and culture, although that book is now 14 years old.</p>
<p>FWIW, here, actually in the NY metro, we do not consider Poughkeepsie part of the NY metro.</p>
<p>Point taken, and I admit to being naive about this matter. In my defense–and I did look this up in advance before judging it “in-bounds”–MTA considers Poughkeepsie to be Metro-North. <a href=“http://www.routefriend.com/stations/metronorth/poughkeepsie”>Metro-North Map - Train Station Locations, Schedules and Fares;
<p>MTA also “considers” New Haven, Connecticut “to be metro north”.
<a href=“MNR Stations”>MNR Stations;
In just the same way. Meaning they have trains that stop there. That line is actually called the New Haven Line.</p>
<p>However New Haven is almost 80 miles away from NYC, and it takes an hour and a half to drive there. it’s nice that the train goes to Grand Central from there, but it takes 1-3/4- 2 hours one way. It is outside of comfortable routine commuting distance for most people, and nobody here considers New Haven a suburb of NYC either. </p>
<p>Poughkeepsie’s situation is analogous. It is actually a few miles further from NYC than New Haven is.</p>
<p>Having ready access, however time-consuming, is certainly a plus. But there are possibly public transportation options to get to the city at a number of the other schools, whether by bus, train or both. And even if there aren’t, one can often find an upperclassman with a car.</p>
<p>I don’t want to belabor this. i was just pointing it out, so I’m done here.</p>