How are SLACs easier to navigate relative to big state schools?
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Anonymous
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Specifically, what does a SLAC offer that a large flagship like Penn State doesn't when it comes to streamlining or making things go smoothly for a student?
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Anonymous
| Fewer moving parts. |
Anonymous
| easier to focus when there are fewer students |
Anonymous
| Slac??? |
Anonymous
| Fewer options can be less confusing to navigate, less competition to access resources. But obviously, if someone is undecided, they might not want fewer options and if the school doesn't have top resources, a student might have to go outside the college for some things. |
Anonymous
| Students often have closer relationships with their professors. |
Anonymous
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Fewer layers of bureaucracy.
An analogy: when dealing with a small business, one might experience more willingness to adapt to customer needs or answer questions meaningfully, because they are more likely interacting with someone actually empowered to make decisions. That said, there are of course trade-offs. |
Anonymous
Right. For example, DD is waitlisted for a class at her SLAC. She’s optimistic she’ll get a spot because she’s a potential major and the professor already knows her. If nothing else, the process seems manageable. She hasn’t had bureaucratic difficulties like I remember from my large public university. Also, housing is guaranteed for four years, also, so no needing to find an apartment and deal with a landlord, something she’s not interested in doing right now. The vast majority of students live on campus, so that’s where the social life is. No need for a car, either. |
Anonymous
+1000 Much easier to build relationships with a professor when there are only 50 kids or less in a class, not 500+. Much easier to do meaningful research as an undergrad at a small school. In my experience, at the smaller schools the profs care more (on average) about the whole student they are teaching and will go above and beyond to help them---at a larger school it requires a lot more effort from the student to get to know a prof and many only care about their grads students and research team. Most SLAC (and under 8K universities) require the students to live on campus at least 2 years, for many it's available for 4 years. This makes housing a bit easier---no searching for sophomore year housing off campus in Sept when you have not yet been on campus for a month. Instead you typically pick your soph year housing sometime in the spring, when you have a group of friends and much better idea who you want to live with next year. Academics: much easier to get help in a class with only 30-50 students, in fact the prof likely teaches the class not a TA and the prof is able to get to know all students. |
Anonymous
| This no longer really applies since it’s now done online but…I remember a friend who went to Wisconsin saying she had to camp out overnight (in winter!) in order to get into the classes that she needed to take. At my SLAC that would never ever have happened, you were pretty much guaranteed to get into any class you wanted. I realize things are different now but it goes to show a big difference between the two. |
Anonymous
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My kid has been over the president’s house more than once for receptions. Knows his dogs, etc.
For the holiday formal, the faculty serve the kids their meal. When a class is full or you may not meet the eligibility criteria, the kid writes to the prof and usually can get in. International students who stay on campus over breaks are invited to faculty homes for the holiday. Etc etc |
Anonymous
| SLACs don't have graduate students, so undergrads have more opportunities to do research with faculty. |
Anonymous
| Better advising and smaller classes. Professors teach courses and aren’t are hyper focused on research and publishing. |
Anonymous
New poster and agree with all the above, plus agree with another post above that talks about how it's much easier to navigate course selections when you personally know the professor. DD is at a SLAC. For instance, for one class this coming fall, there was some kind of hiccup (not on her end) with registering for a course she really feels she needs, but she says that though she's not officially registered by the college yet, she knows she's on a list in the department and has an email that was sent to her by the professor, saying she'd get in, so she has that as a paper trail. A few years ago she was waitlisted for a class but talked to that professor and was assured that almost invariably the waitlisted students got in and he said that if she didn't hear by a certain time, to contact him again. This is the sort of stuff that isn't necessarily going to happen in a large university. Remember too, OP, that a "college" by definition (yes there are exceptions) does not have grad programs, so there are no grad students, so there are no grad students acting as TAs. That removes a layer which, at big universities, is between most undergrads and their professors in many, if not most, courses. For some undergrads, it means that the undergrads get research work and contribute to research papers -- which are work and credits which would likely go to grad students at large universities. Some SLACs have small classes from the very start. DD had a 15-person seminar as a freshman, with the professor teaching it. I think the largest class DD has had in the past three years (she's a rising senior) was about 35-40 students and that was a freshman econ 101 class considered "large" by her college. An econ 101 in a big university surely would have 100 or more students, I figure. Another benefit is just overall it's so much simpler to communicate with the college about everything. Just an example: DD will be back on campus for a summer program in a few weeks. She wanted to get access to a studio that she's used during the school year, but her key card access to any building but the dorm for the summer program would be denied, because it's not the school year. She knew who to contact on the staff that runs that building. He made it happen for her because he knows who she is and that she's had previous access and is trained to use the facility etc. (It's not even for a class-related assignment, she just wants to use the studio for personal stuff, but they're cool with that.) It's much easier to reach out and deal with someone who remembers who you are because you're not one of 1,000 students who used that facility this past year, you're one of maybe 20. What else do you want to know about, OP? Does this kind of anecdotal stuff help you picture what you needed to know? |
Anonymous
Depending on who's talking, Small Liberal Arts College or Selective Liberal Arts College. DCUM posters tend to assume the latter, selective, but I've seen the former, small, used many times and if you look outside DCUM, the S often means small. And just to muddy things on the acronym front, SLAC is also the Selective Liberal Arts Consortium, a organization of seven....SLACs. |