I go to a top LAC for history and stem. It is overrated.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I call troll. The title says the OP studies history and STEM, but by the first line history is gone and now it's English. A real student wouldn't mix up their own major.

The LAC hater got creative this time - so weird though.

Ditto. I surprised at so many pages of commentary for a troll thread.

This is actually one of the more constructive threads I've read on DCUM -- perhaps because the OP was so obviously a troll. Because that first post was arrant nonsense, people interested in the issues confusedly raised there tried to make sense of them independently.

[Anonymous]

I call troll too — my thinking it’s from a parent who wants their child to go to a larger research-focused school, but their kid wants to go LAC. Kids don’t come on DCUM to bash their own decision/school

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I call troll. The title says the OP studies history and STEM, but by the first line history is gone and now it's English. A real student wouldn't mix up their own major.

The LAC hater got creative this time - so weird though.

Ditto. I surprised at so many pages of commentary for a troll thread.

This is actually one of the more constructive threads I've read on DCUM -- perhaps because the OP was so obviously a troll. Because that first post was arrant nonsense, people interested in the issues confusedly raised there tried to make sense of them independently.

Op is 100% a troll, but they are talking about things that are real issues, which come up for lac grads. Course diversity and access to grad courses is an actual issue for some fields

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I call troll. The title says the OP studies history and STEM, but by the first line history is gone and now it's English. A real student wouldn't mix up their own major.

The LAC hater got creative this time - so weird though.

Ditto. I surprised at so many pages of commentary for a troll thread.

This is actually one of the more constructive threads I've read on DCUM -- perhaps because the OP was so obviously a troll. Because that first post was arrant nonsense, people interested in the issues confusedly raised there tried to make sense of them independently.

Op is 100% a troll, but they are talking about things that are real issues, which come up for lac grads. Course diversity and access to grad courses is an actual issue for some fields

Not really. It can be an issue an engineering if the LAC doesn’t offer, but even there entry into the field is possible if studying the adjacent science. Some of the very top PhD feeders are the smallest LACs with the fewest courses, like Reed or Haverford.

[Anonymous]

From what I can see, it does seem there's an issue for lac grads to get into good grad programs. From Pomona, where 2 recent Apker award winners have come from:

Independent of the job market, if you want to consider graduate school you have to ask yourself three questions:
-Do I have the grades to get into a reasonable graduate school?
-What subfield of physics am I interested in, and what does this tell me about grad schools I should look at?
-Do I have the motivation to go to and stay in graduate school?
We can help you with the first two questions, but the third you have to answer for yourself. Coming from a small college with no Nobel laureates to write you letters of recommendation means that to get into the very top programs you will need both very good grades and a very good score on the GRE subject test. The “very top” programs are places like UC Berkeley, Stanford, CalTech, and Princeton. If your physics GPA isn’t a steady string of A’s and A-‘s, though, that doesn’t mean that you should start thinking about taking the LSAT. Many good graduate programs exist at schools other than the top ten; the “very top” programs have that ranking partly because they have excellent programs in essentially all subfields of physics. Especially if you have a pretty good idea of the subfield you might want to enter, you should look around at less well-known schools for strong programs in your particular area.

If a top LAC is explaining that they're at a disadvantage, no reason to not believe them. It is an issue that your professors aren't well known researchers/advancing the field of physics.
Source: https://www.pomona.edu/academics/departments/physics-and-astronomy/physics-academics/plan-senior-year

[Anonymous]

Here are the Williams physics class of 2024 outcomes (from https://physics.williams.edu/graduates/):

Bless Bah Awazi: Ph.D. in ECE at at Duke
Michael Bedard: Research at Oxford
Katie Brockmeyer: Ph.D. in materials science at University of California, Santa Barbara
Ryan Cass: Working as an actuary
Sonya Dutton: MSc in physics at the University of Heidelberg in Germany
Akira Eisenbeiss:
Jonathan Geller: Ph.D. in physics at MIT
Nathaniel Kirby: Herchel Smith MASt in Theoretical Physics at Cambridge; PhD program in physics at Penn State
Da-Yeon Koh: Ph.D. in physics at Stanford University
Otto Nicholson: Ph.D. in physics at Northwestern University
Alex Rouyer: VC intern at Cornucopian Capital, then Data Scientist at NYISO
Katya Ulyanov: Ph.D. in physics at McGill University
Robin Wang: Ph.D. in quantum science and engineering at Harvard
Charles Yang: Ph.D. in physics at Rice University

Again, doesn't seem to me like they're struggling.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:From what I can see, it does seem there's an issue for lac grads to get into good grad programs. From Pomona, where 2 recent Apker award winners have come from:

Independent of the job market, if you want to consider graduate school you have to ask yourself three questions:
-Do I have the grades to get into a reasonable graduate school?
-What subfield of physics am I interested in, and what does this tell me about grad schools I should look at?
-Do I have the motivation to go to and stay in graduate school?
We can help you with the first two questions, but the third you have to answer for yourself. Coming from a small college with no Nobel laureates to write you letters of recommendation means that to get into the very top programs you will need both very good grades and a very good score on the GRE subject test. The “very top” programs are places like UC Berkeley, Stanford, CalTech, and Princeton. If your physics GPA isn’t a steady string of A’s and A-‘s, though, that doesn’t mean that you should start thinking about taking the LSAT. Many good graduate programs exist at schools other than the top ten; the “very top” programs have that ranking partly because they have excellent programs in essentially all subfields of physics. Especially if you have a pretty good idea of the subfield you might want to enter, you should look around at less well-known schools for strong programs in your particular area.

If a top LAC is explaining that they're at a disadvantage, no reason to not believe them. It is an issue that your professors aren't well known researchers/advancing the field of physics.
Source: https://www.pomona.edu/academics/departments/physics-and-astronomy/physics-academics/plan-senior-year

the only LACs I would consider top for physics are Reed, Harvey Mudd, Williams, Amherst (if you leverage the 5cc to take graduate courses at Amherst)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:From what I can see, it does seem there's an issue for lac grads to get into good grad programs. From Pomona, where 2 recent Apker award winners have come from:

Independent of the job market, if you want to consider graduate school you have to ask yourself three questions:
-Do I have the grades to get into a reasonable graduate school?
-What subfield of physics am I interested in, and what does this tell me about grad schools I should look at?
-Do I have the motivation to go to and stay in graduate school?
We can help you with the first two questions, but the third you have to answer for yourself. Coming from a small college with no Nobel laureates to write you letters of recommendation means that to get into the very top programs you will need both very good grades and a very good score on the GRE subject test. The “very top” programs are places like UC Berkeley, Stanford, CalTech, and Princeton. If your physics GPA isn’t a steady string of A’s and A-‘s, though, that doesn’t mean that you should start thinking about taking the LSAT. Many good graduate programs exist at schools other than the top ten; the “very top” programs have that ranking partly because they have excellent programs in essentially all subfields of physics. Especially if you have a pretty good idea of the subfield you might want to enter, you should look around at less well-known schools for strong programs in your particular area.

If a top LAC is explaining that they're at a disadvantage, no reason to not believe them. It is an issue that your professors aren't well known researchers/advancing the field of physics.
Source: https://www.pomona.edu/academics/departments/physics-and-astronomy/physics-academics/plan-senior-year

the only LACs I would consider top for physics are Reed, Harvey Mudd, Williams, Amherst (if you leverage the 5cc to take graduate courses at Amherst)

Amherst (who has not won an apker award) and Williams are interesting choices. By the way, Mudd and Pomona share a physics department…

[Anonymous]

Sis is STEM PhD successful in field. She went to a crappy SLAC (trashed often here) bc she basically got full-ride merit (turned down Ivy acceptances). From there she got into most T5 in her STEM field (biochem field) and did PhD + post-doc at state flagships. She said for those that want STEM PhD (at least in her field) she would recommend SLAC undegrad bc the opportunities she got were much better undergrad than at the state flagship (cutthroat to get research assistant jobs, classes taught by TA not profs often & all preoccupied with their research over teaching, etc.). Just one observation point - best experience at R1 is probably better undergrad, but she seemed to think such experience was rare.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:From what I can see, it does seem there's an issue for lac grads to get into good grad programs. From Pomona, where 2 recent Apker award winners have come from:

Independent of the job market, if you want to consider graduate school you have to ask yourself three questions:
-Do I have the grades to get into a reasonable graduate school?
-What subfield of physics am I interested in, and what does this tell me about grad schools I should look at?
-Do I have the motivation to go to and stay in graduate school?
We can help you with the first two questions, but the third you have to answer for yourself. Coming from a small college with no Nobel laureates to write you letters of recommendation means that to get into the very top programs you will need both very good grades and a very good score on the GRE subject test. The “very top” programs are places like UC Berkeley, Stanford, CalTech, and Princeton. If your physics GPA isn’t a steady string of A’s and A-‘s, though, that doesn’t mean that you should start thinking about taking the LSAT. Many good graduate programs exist at schools other than the top ten; the “very top” programs have that ranking partly because they have excellent programs in essentially all subfields of physics. Especially if you have a pretty good idea of the subfield you might want to enter, you should look around at less well-known schools for strong programs in your particular area.

If a top LAC is explaining that they're at a disadvantage, no reason to not believe them. It is an issue that your professors aren't well known researchers/advancing the field of physics.
Source: https://www.pomona.edu/academics/departments/physics-and-astronomy/physics-academics/plan-senior-year

the only LACs I would consider top for physics are Reed, Harvey Mudd, Williams, Amherst (if you leverage the 5cc to take graduate courses at Amherst)

Amherst (who has not won an apker award) and Williams are interesting choices. By the way, Mudd and Pomona share a physics department…

Amherst College has produced an Apker recipient, and it is notable for having done so during the time when the Apker did not distinguish between colleges and universities. Only three other liberal arts colleges — Hamilton, Reed and Macalester — produced Apker recipients during this era.

Harvey Mudd and Pomona do not share a physics department.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:From what I can see, it does seem there's an issue for lac grads to get into good grad programs. From Pomona, where 2 recent Apker award winners have come from:

Independent of the job market, if you want to consider graduate school you have to ask yourself three questions:
-Do I have the grades to get into a reasonable graduate school?
-What subfield of physics am I interested in, and what does this tell me about grad schools I should look at?
-Do I have the motivation to go to and stay in graduate school?
We can help you with the first two questions, but the third you have to answer for yourself. Coming from a small college with no Nobel laureates to write you letters of recommendation means that to get into the very top programs you will need both very good grades and a very good score on the GRE subject test. The “very top” programs are places like UC Berkeley, Stanford, CalTech, and Princeton. If your physics GPA isn’t a steady string of A’s and A-‘s, though, that doesn’t mean that you should start thinking about taking the LSAT. Many good graduate programs exist at schools other than the top ten; the “very top” programs have that ranking partly because they have excellent programs in essentially all subfields of physics. Especially if you have a pretty good idea of the subfield you might want to enter, you should look around at less well-known schools for strong programs in your particular area.

If a top LAC is explaining that they're at a disadvantage, no reason to not believe them. It is an issue that your professors aren't well known researchers/advancing the field of physics.
Source: https://www.pomona.edu/academics/departments/physics-and-astronomy/physics-academics/plan-senior-year

the only LACs I would consider top for physics are Reed, Harvey Mudd, Williams, Amherst (if you leverage the 5cc to take graduate courses at Amherst)

Amherst (who has not won an apker award) and Williams are interesting choices. By the way, Mudd and Pomona share a physics department…

Amherst College has produced an Apker recipient, and it is notable for having done so during the time when the Apker did not distinguish between colleges and universities. Only three other liberal arts colleges — Hamilton, Reed and Macalester — produced Apker recipients during this era.

Harvey Mudd and Pomona do not share a physics department.

Harvey Mudd and Pomona factually do. They piggyback off of each others course offerings, and you cannot graduate from the departments without taking courses at the other. I’m tired of people posting lies that continue to be repeated through these communities.

On the apker award bit, Amherst won one last year- no reason to go all the way back 40 years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:From what I can see, it does seem there's an issue for lac grads to get into good grad programs. From Pomona, where 2 recent Apker award winners have come from:

Independent of the job market, if you want to consider graduate school you have to ask yourself three questions:
-Do I have the grades to get into a reasonable graduate school?
-What subfield of physics am I interested in, and what does this tell me about grad schools I should look at?
-Do I have the motivation to go to and stay in graduate school?
We can help you with the first two questions, but the third you have to answer for yourself. Coming from a small college with no Nobel laureates to write you letters of recommendation means that to get into the very top programs you will need both very good grades and a very good score on the GRE subject test. The “very top” programs are places like UC Berkeley, Stanford, CalTech, and Princeton. If your physics GPA isn’t a steady string of A’s and A-‘s, though, that doesn’t mean that you should start thinking about taking the LSAT. Many good graduate programs exist at schools other than the top ten; the “very top” programs have that ranking partly because they have excellent programs in essentially all subfields of physics. Especially if you have a pretty good idea of the subfield you might want to enter, you should look around at less well-known schools for strong programs in your particular area.

If a top LAC is explaining that they're at a disadvantage, no reason to not believe them. It is an issue that your professors aren't well known researchers/advancing the field of physics.
Source: https://www.pomona.edu/academics/departments/physics-and-astronomy/physics-academics/plan-senior-year

A quick read of the entire page shows that it absolutely doesn't say what you are implying.

Might want to quit trolling. The two Apkers say all that needs to be said.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:From what I can see, it does seem there's an issue for lac grads to get into good grad programs. From Pomona, where 2 recent Apker award winners have come from:

Independent of the job market, if you want to consider graduate school you have to ask yourself three questions:
-Do I have the grades to get into a reasonable graduate school?
-What subfield of physics am I interested in, and what does this tell me about grad schools I should look at?
-Do I have the motivation to go to and stay in graduate school?
We can help you with the first two questions, but the third you have to answer for yourself. Coming from a small college with no Nobel laureates to write you letters of recommendation means that to get into the very top programs you will need both very good grades and a very good score on the GRE subject test. The “very top” programs are places like UC Berkeley, Stanford, CalTech, and Princeton. If your physics GPA isn’t a steady string of A’s and A-‘s, though, that doesn’t mean that you should start thinking about taking the LSAT. Many good graduate programs exist at schools other than the top ten; the “very top” programs have that ranking partly because they have excellent programs in essentially all subfields of physics. Especially if you have a pretty good idea of the subfield you might want to enter, you should look around at less well-known schools for strong programs in your particular area.

If a top LAC is explaining that they're at a disadvantage, no reason to not believe them. It is an issue that your professors aren't well known researchers/advancing the field of physics.
Source: https://www.pomona.edu/academics/departments/physics-and-astronomy/physics-academics/plan-senior-year

the only LACs I would consider top for physics are Reed, Harvey Mudd, Williams, Amherst (if you leverage the 5cc to take graduate courses at Amherst)

Wesleyan is likely stronger than every school that you listed for Physics.

[Anonymous]

here's another anecdote from swat:
https://www.swarthmore.edu/sites/default/files/assets/documents/mathematics-statistics/MathGradSchool.pdf

"Does this mean you should give up? Of course not. It does mean you have an uphill fight to get into the best places, and that you will have to apply to a variety of places to
ensure an acceptance with funding."

Note this is Swarthmore, the top 5 SLAC with the highest PhD productivity, telling its math students they basically have to do the reverse of a well-rounded liberal arts curriculum to do well for math graduate school placement.

Yes, by nature of being less specialized and research focused LAC attendees have to come in with a different approach. No, it's not impossible, and if anything, the results from schools like Swat/Pomona/Williams etc. indicates a good number of their students do attend T5 programs even in competitive fields like math. But most of those students will do REUs in research universities during the summers to strengthen their research credentials.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:here's another anecdote from swat:
https://www.swarthmore.edu/sites/default/files/assets/documents/mathematics-statistics/MathGradSchool.pdf

"Does this mean you should give up? Of course not. It does mean you have an uphill fight to get into the best places, and that you will have to apply to a variety of places to
ensure an acceptance with funding."

Note this is Swarthmore, the top 5 SLAC with the highest PhD productivity, telling its math students they basically have to do the reverse of a well-rounded liberal arts curriculum to do well for math graduate school placement.

Yes, by nature of being less specialized and research focused LAC attendees have to come in with a different approach. No, it's not impossible, and if anything, the results from schools like Swat/Pomona/Williams etc. indicates a good number of their students do attend T5 programs even in competitive fields like math. But most of those students will do REUs in research universities during the summers to strengthen their research credentials.

This document was written sometime before 2007, according to its text. Please find something that is younger than 18 years old.