Top ranked LACs vs top ranked universities

[Anonymous]

OP, I'm persuaded by your case that top LACs do not match the top let's say 10 universities in quality. No one (well possibly someone, but essentially no one) prefers Williams to Harvard. You make the case that they shouldn't prefer Williams to Duke (USNWR #8) either.

However, let's take the case of a student shut out of the top 10 - no, let's make it top 15. I would say that, despite all that you've written, our shut-out student is better off choosing Williams over WUSTL, Emory or Georgetown (USNWR #19-20). I don't have statistics to back that up, but it's my general sense.

I'm also curious about the diachronic aspect of this. Your Swat source indicates that this is getting worse for LACs over time. I wonder if other indicators trend downward as well.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, I'm persuaded by your case that top LACs do not match the top let's say 10 universities in quality. No one (well possibly someone, but essentially no one) prefers Williams to Harvard. You make the case that they shouldn't prefer Williams to Duke (USNWR #8) either.

However, let's take the case of a student shut out of the top 10 - no, let's make it top 15. I would say that, despite all that you've written, our shut-out student is better off choosing Williams over WUSTL, Emory or Georgetown (USNWR #19-20). I don't have statistics to back that up, but it's my general sense.

I'm also curious about the diachronic aspect of this. Your Swat source indicates that this is getting worse for LACs over time. I wonder if other indicators trend downward as well.

Williams vs. those schools might be a bit unfair to the whole picture as Williams may very well be the most accomplished and prestigious LAC in the country. Their on-campus recruiting results are pretty impressive and not comparable to what most LACs are like. I'd wonder more about Middlebury or Vassar against WUSTL or Rice.

On your second comment- the diachronic aspect- here is an interesting study:

This is a source for the highest SAT averages in 1966: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/355053-college-rankings-from-1966.html ; someone later posted scores of some missing schools (Swarthmore - 1399; Amherst - 1325; Stanford - 1300)
And here's a more current one (2016): http://www.businessinsider.com/the-50-smartest-colleges-in-america-2016-10

In 1966, 5 LACs made the top 10. In 2016, only one LAC makes the top 10- Harvey Mudd. 10 made the top 20 then compared to 3 now. 26 made the top 50 then compared to 16 today. Of particular note is how well the women's colleges did back then, but around 1970 and onward most universities went co-ed and pulled the strongest women to their schools instead. Today, only Wellesley ranks in the top 50 by highest testing average among womens' colleges.

[Anonymous]

OP, did you forget what LAC stands for? Liberal arts college.
A future computer scientist who wants to study neural networks should go to MIT or Stanford or Carnegie Mellon or else a large land grant school.

On the other hand, an undergraduate who wants to be a mathematician or a cosmologist needs personal time with teachers, a library, and a lot of creative ways to think abstractly that is as likely to come from a philosophy class as a particle accelerator. LACS don't offer vocational majors either. The point of an elite college is to develop a strong intellectual foundation.

If you took orgo, you'd know that it is substantively the same everywhere but the learning experience and the opportunity to spark an interest is different in a small class. Personal connection matters to develop a passion for a discipline and the relationship to help get to the next level. As you noted, the big Ivies most advanced courses are pretty small, but the intro labs, computer science and economics classes can be as gigantic as any football powerhouse. None of the required pre-med classes are small at any of the Ivies.

As for recruiting, you don't count on a school's career services to get a job in the arts, publishing, journalism, politics, or with a start-up. The vast majority of hedge funds and PE firms don't do on-campus recruiting either.

[Anonymous]

No sane person thinks too lacs are comparable to top universities. Top lacs are barely making it into top 50.

No one abroad has any idea what Pomona or Williams are. No rankings of any academic kind has them on top. It's really crazy that we are even discussing this.

[Anonymous]

https://www.forbes.com/top-colleges/list/

[Anonymous]

It depends on what you want to do in life. If you want to be a research scientist doctor or computer engineer LAC is not for you. No matter how elite. Not everyone is going into those fields and the Ivies are surprisingly tough to get into. Thus a full ride at Williams vs a rejection at Brown is a no brainer.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No sane person thinks too lacs are comparable to top universities. Top lacs are barely making it into top 50.

No one abroad has any idea what Pomona or Williams are. No rankings of any academic kind has them on top. It's really crazy that we are even discussing this.

Unless you are going abroad to follow be a job it doesn't matter. The people who are hiring you here in the US are well aware of these schools.

[Anonymous]

OP, that letter you linked to about math majors at Swarthmore is from some time before fall 2007, so it's at least 10 years. I don't know if it's still relevant. Also, with explosion in the use of data in various fields (finance, insurance, medicine, etc), math majors with only undergraduate degrees are highly coveted in the job market, so, for that reason alone, the number getting PhDs may less than it used to be.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Lately I've been hearing a lot about how excellent the top liberal art colleges are- worthy schools equivalent to the Ivies and other top universities. I was intrigued by this, so I decided to do some comparative research. My findings have shown me that the top LACs are not as good as the top universities for a number of reasons.

1) National Merit Scholars enrolled in the first year class.

2) Faculty accomplishments.

3) The most competitive PhD programs and fellowships are primarily taking applicants from the Ivies and peer schools.

4) Lack of curriculum.

5) Poor career support and performance.

6) Poor yield compared to the top schools.

7) This is a subjective point, but intellectual and political diversity at the LACs is mediocre.

8) The bubble.
----
I would not encourage parents to even consider sending their child to a liberal arts college at this day and time. They cost just the same, if not more, as the Ivies and other universities, while providing nowhere near the experience or benefits that the latter do. The most well-regarded LACs don't give out any merit aid, so there will never be a scenario in which a student is implored to choose Williams over Harvard because Williams gave out much more financial aid.

1) National Merit--a lot of universities uses these in order to boost rankings, especially the ones that offer merit aid. You're still going to find the top LACs with very high SATs.
2) You are comparing faculty of graduate programs where the emphasis is on research, not teaching, with undergraduate institutions where there is a strong emphasis on teaching. A better comparison would be to compare the publishing records of faculty of universities who teach ONLY undergraduates with the faculty of LACs. As a professor at a Research 1 university, I know that teaching is secondary to research. There is very little to no incentive to be a good teacher at a research university. Tenure and raises are pegged to research, not teaching.
3) https://www.collegetransitions.com/infographics/top-feeders-phd-programs . The colleges that produce the greatest number of PhDs are LACs by percentage. Given that PhD programs are highly field-specific, no university has a monopoly on prestigious PhD programs.
4) More important than curricula, the classroom experience at LACs is much more intensive than at large universities because of numbers. Popular intro classes at SLACs would almost never be larger than 150, where as they number 1500 (!). Small discussion based classes are the norm at LACs beginning in the freshman year. This is not the case for most students at even the top universities. Frankly, with few exceptions, what you major in is not important if you manage to get into AWS or HYP.
5) Alumni networks at AWS are very powerful. There is a tremendous amount of recruiting at these schools by top companies and firms. Not sure where you are getting your data. I suggest you look at career services calendars at AWS and see for yourself.
6) Yields at SLACs are lower than at top universities because you have so many more applicants applying to HYP. Every joe schmoe applies to HYP so you have a much larger denominator.
7) As you stated, utterly subjective.
8) Geographical preference--and what is a bubble anyway? We talk about the DC "bubble," and if you know NYCers, there is definitely a sense of a "bubble" there, as well. You saw the Brooklyn SNL Bubble skit, right? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKOb-kmOgpI

[Anonymous]

Sorry, I'm not convinced. The quality of undergraduate teaching is often better at the LACs. What difference the int'l ranking of a university (which includes the law school, the med school. etc) makes is completely unclear to me. I think it all depends on the specific program you are in.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It depends on what you want to do in life. If you want to be a research scientist doctor or computer engineer LAC is not for you. No matter how elite. Not everyone is going into those fields and the Ivies are surprisingly tough to get into. Thus a full ride at Williams vs a rejection at Brown is a no brainer.

Total crap. I know two physics grads from Amherst who got their PhDs from Harvard. Amherst served them quite well.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The life in a LAC is a comfortable one. There is a time and place for comfort, but LACs might be a bit too comfortable, which is dangerous for preparing graduates for the outside world.

lol @ dangerous. What is this "real world" middle class pikers on college forums harp on about? Rich kids don't EVER enter the real world. Further, there's no evidence anywhere that a "diverse" campus or local community benefits anyone.

[Anonymous]

Selective LACs are self-selecting and 'clubby' ... they're not for hoi polloi desperate to get into the upper middle class. OP's comparison is interesting, but misses the mark because rich offspring aren't grubby strivers using college to rise an income level.

[Anonymous]

I hope my kid goes to a LAC...but only if he doesn't get into an Ivy or equivalent.

I suspect I'm not the only parent who feels this way.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No sane person thinks too lacs are comparable to top universities. Top lacs are barely making it into top 50.

No one abroad has any idea what Pomona or Williams are. No rankings of any academic kind has them on top. It's really crazy that we are even discussing this.

Unless you are going abroad to follow be a job it doesn't matter. The people who are hiring you here in the US are well aware of these schools.

More and more people will be going abroad for jobs. Also more and more companies hiring in the US will be foreign companies.