What’s the educational difference between a highly-rated college and a good one?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If you have direct experience (you are/were a student, professor, parent of a student) with a top 25 national university or SLAC liberal arts program, how does the education materially differ from a run-of-the-mill college experience? I’m not talking about the school’s “network,” but the education itself. For example, how will the “product” of an English major educated at Princeton or Williams be different from that of a student at a US News 50-200 school. Put another way, if students at these different programs read the same books, how will their educations be different at the end of four years?

It’s going to be hard for people to answer this because no one, obviously, has had a full undergrad experience at both. That said:

I went to Georgetown SFS (class of 2009). It was a perfect education for what I needed. I wanted to work for the IC and the SFS is essentially a professional program for that. You’re by no means guaranteed a great job after you graduate, but if you do well, the professors will leverage their connection for you. I graduated magna cum laude, and one of my professors flagged my resume at the agency I currently work for. So my experience is very specific, since it’s a pre-professional program in a way (not a liberal arts education).

[Anonymous]

From my experience at a large, decent state school for STEM....the first couple of years were mostly large, lecture style classes with some great profs, and some not so great. There was large mix of all kinds of students, some highly motivated, others not. I would say that my first two years of college were significantly less challenging than Jr Sr year of HS.

It's when you get into the 300-500 level classes in your major (and outside, too) that you start getting really great in-depth class conversations, long form essay tests, and more one-on-one interactions with professors. One of these small, high level classes led to my first job in a lab and an eventual PhD and great career.

Maybe at very selective schools, students get this experience from the freshman year, instead of having to make it to upper level courses.

If you have a highly motivated student, then it may not matter as much.....

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:From my experience at a large, decent state school for STEM....the first couple of years were mostly large, lecture style classes with some great profs, and some not so great. There was large mix of all kinds of students, some highly motivated, others not. I would say that my first two years of college were significantly less challenging than Jr Sr year of HS.

It's when you get into the 300-500 level classes in your major (and outside, too) that you start getting really great in-depth class conversations, long form essay tests, and more one-on-one interactions with professors. One of these small, high level classes led to my first job in a lab and an eventual PhD and great career.

Maybe at very selective schools, students get this experience from the freshman year, instead of having to make it to upper level courses.

If you have a highly motivated student, then it may not matter as much.....

I’m the PP who posted about Georgetown SFS. For me, all of college was easier than high school. I didn’t feel academically challenged again until grad school, with the exception of a Dostoevsky class I took in which our sadistic professor had us read Brothers Karamazov over Thanksgiving break and expected us to have absorbed the entire thing in detail.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Profs don’t always favor SLACs, but when their kids aren’t interested in or aren’t competitive for top R1s they have enough info to steer them to (and distinguish among) a variety of good schools that aren’t as universally well known as Ivies or state flagships. Hence the relative popularity of SLACs among academics.

I really don’t believe SLACs provide a better education (or have faculty who are better teachers) than R1s. R1s have many more resources and a much broader range of course offerings (more majors and more courses within each major as well as multiple profs in the same subfield) than SLACs. They also have more people doing cutting-edge work.

Whether and how that matters to your DC is a real question, but for me as an undergrad it did. My kid was the same. And both of us (at different R1s and in very different fields) had close relationships with faculty members (and also appreciated the presence of grad students).

Faculty as teachers? Get serious. It’s the TA’s who are doing the teaching. I hear two of my kids who go to Big Ten schools talking about their TA’s relative suckitude and it’s depressing. My two SLAC kids look at them like they’re aliens.

Literally no Big Ten has TA's teach/lecture courses. They have TA's that lead discussion or lab sections - the same as any private school.

Some parents are so uneducated about basics in college education that they simply repeat what they've incorrectly heard ad nauseum, until it becomes true. Again, R1's don't have TA's teaching courses - they have PhD's. Even GMU, which some here thumb their nose at, has PhD's teaching courses, not TA's.

And ironically, at your SLAC you might not even have PhD's teaching courses - they may simply be "instructional staff" with a Masters. Nothing wrong with it, of course, but their academic background is essentially the same as a TA's.

So many errors in this post it’s hard to respond, but most clueless is “same as at any private school”. Many SLACs have no TA’s. You really don’t have a clue, which is hilarious given that you accuse others of same. Looking forward to you not admitting your mistake.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

So many errors in this post it’s hard to respond, but most clueless is “same as at any private school”. Many SLACs have no TA’s. You really don’t have a clue, which is hilarious given that you accuse others of same. Looking forward to you not admitting your mistake.

I find it kind of funny. I went to a SLAC and was never taught by anyone other than a PhD. I also got small class sizes and had the expectation that I could reach out to my professors and expect a response. I jumped into calc 2 as a freshman and was struggling so my professor spent hours working with me 1 on 1- it wasn't unique

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:That is STEM only. For PhDs in all fields I generally cite this:
https://www.swarthmore.edu/institutional-research/doctorates-awarded

There is a government website that has all of this data since 1957. https://ncsesdata.nsf.gov/ids/sed

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Taught at William and Mary and faculty there get a lot more training in teaching, how to give good feedback on essays,how to help students improve their writing, etc. This is something that you don't see at a Research University.

My kids are all at SLACS and they have opportunities like the chance to attend a job talk and give input into department hiring decisions. At a research university, these activities are for grad students, not undergrad students.
THere are more undergraduate research opportunities, and funding for undergrad research usually. MacAlester has some huge percent of students getting NSF grants for grad school because so many of them co-author with faculty. Very unusual for undergraduates. We toured one college where they had a boat that natural resource majors used to gather samples, etc. Not sure you would see this for undergrads elsewhere.
In my opinion, you get better letters of recommendation from faculty at SLACS because they know your student more.
I go to academic conferences in my field and uniformly if a faculty member brings a student along and has them present their senior thesis, etc. this is someone who teaches at a SLAC, not an R1.

OK, I'll bite. What is the "huge" percentage of MacAlester students getting NSF grants for grad school? Less than 1%?

The vast majority of the NSF grad fellowships are awarded to R1 students (86%) . My DC just graduated from Stanford and 20% of the seniors in DC's major received NSF grad research fellowships.

https://www.sciencemag.org/careers/2019/08/nsf-graduate-fellowships-disproportionately-go-students-few-top-schools

NP: Yes but SLACs have so few numbers enrolled, and relatively few STEM majors so they aren't going to show up in that kind of measure. If you go to a SLAC with a good STEM program and are a STEM major you have a strong chance of getting STEM phd and of getting a fellowship if you want to take that path. There may be less than 10 students at your school who want to. Sure, Stanford or other tippy top schools are going to have more, but given all the STEM majors at less stellar R1s, SLACs are a more viable route for many students.

You would need to divide number of graduate fellowships by number of undergraduates to get a common denominator.

I looked at the data behind the graduate fellowships and note that for 2020 among the R1 institutions in Virginia (where I live) UVA has 12, VT has 4, VCU has 3, and GMU has 0. William and Mary, which is not an R1 and has more limited research programs and a much smaller enrollment has 11. Swarthmore, which is considerably smaller than even William and Mary and has little funded research, has 9.

On a per undergraduate basis, if you take VCU as the base, VT has slightly more (1.1X) fellowship winners on a per capita basis, UVA has 6X as many, William and Mary has 14X as many, and Swarthmore has 45X as many. For the heck of it, I also looked up Stanford and it has over 37X as many, so not as many as Swarthmore on a per capita basis. Research intensity doesn't explain the numbers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Profs don’t always favor SLACs, but when their kids aren’t interested in or aren’t competitive for top R1s they have enough info to steer them to (and distinguish among) a variety of good schools that aren’t as universally well known as Ivies or state flagships. Hence the relative popularity of SLACs among academics.

I really don’t believe SLACs provide a better education (or have faculty who are better teachers) than R1s. R1s have many more resources and a much broader range of course offerings (more majors and more courses within each major as well as multiple profs in the same subfield) than SLACs. They also have more people doing cutting-edge work.

Whether and how that matters to your DC is a real question, but for me as an undergrad it did. My kid was the same. And both of us (at different R1s and in very different fields) had close relationships with faculty members (and also appreciated the presence of grad students).

Faculty as teachers? Get serious. It’s the TA’s who are doing the teaching. I hear two of my kids who go to Big Ten schools talking about their TA’s relative suckitude and it’s depressing. My two SLAC kids look at them like they’re aliens.

Literally no Big Ten has TA's teach/lecture courses. They have TA's that lead discussion or lab sections - the same as any private school.

Some parents are so uneducated about basics in college education that they simply repeat what they've incorrectly heard ad nauseum, until it becomes true. Again, R1's don't have TA's teaching courses - they have PhD's. Even GMU, which some here thumb their nose at, has PhD's teaching courses, not TA's.

And ironically, at your SLAC you might not even have PhD's teaching courses - they may simply be "instructional staff" with a Masters. Nothing wrong with it, of course, but their academic background is essentially the same as a TA's.

USNWR disagrees. https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/the-short-list-college/articles/2017-02-21/10-universities-where-tas-teach-the-most-classes

PERCENTAGE OF GRADUATE TAS LISTED AS A PRIMARY INSTRUCTOR (FALL 2015)

Top 10

1) Purdue University—West Lafayette (IN) 26%
2) University of South Florida 25%
3) University of Georgia 24%
4) University of Iowa 20%
5) University of North Carolina—Chapel Hill 20%
6) University of Hawaii—Manoa 19%
7) University of Illinois—Urbana-Champaign 19%
8) Florida State University 18%
9) University of Arkansas 18%
10) University of Kansas 18%

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Taught at William and Mary and faculty there get a lot more training in teaching, how to give good feedback on essays,how to help students improve their writing, etc. This is something that you don't see at a Research University.

My kids are all at SLACS and they have opportunities like the chance to attend a job talk and give input into department hiring decisions. At a research university, these activities are for grad students, not undergrad students.
THere are more undergraduate research opportunities, and funding for undergrad research usually. MacAlester has some huge percent of students getting NSF grants for grad school because so many of them co-author with faculty. Very unusual for undergraduates. We toured one college where they had a boat that natural resource majors used to gather samples, etc. Not sure you would see this for undergrads elsewhere.
In my opinion, you get better letters of recommendation from faculty at SLACS because they know your student more.
I go to academic conferences in my field and uniformly if a faculty member brings a student along and has them present their senior thesis, etc. this is someone who teaches at a SLAC, not an R1.

OK, I'll bite. What is the "huge" percentage of MacAlester students getting NSF grants for grad school? Less than 1%?

The vast majority of the NSF grad fellowships are awarded to R1 students (86%) . My DC just graduated from Stanford and 20% of the seniors in DC's major received NSF grad research fellowships.

https://www.sciencemag.org/careers/2019/08/nsf-graduate-fellowships-disproportionately-go-students-few-top-schools

NP: Yes but SLACs have so few numbers enrolled, and relatively few STEM majors so they aren't going to show up in that kind of measure. If you go to a SLAC with a good STEM program and are a STEM major you have a strong chance of getting STEM phd and of getting a fellowship if you want to take that path. There may be less than 10 students at your school who want to. Sure, Stanford or other tippy top schools are going to have more, but given all the STEM majors at less stellar R1s, SLACs are a more viable route for many students.

You would need to divide number of graduate fellowships by number of undergraduates to get a common denominator.

I looked at the data behind the graduate fellowships and note that for 2020 among the R1 institutions in Virginia (where I live) UVA has 12, VT has 4, VCU has 3, and GMU has 0. William and Mary, which is not an R1 and has more limited research programs and a much smaller enrollment has 11. Swarthmore, which is considerably smaller than even William and Mary and has little funded research, has 9.

On a per undergraduate basis, if you take VCU as the base, VT has slightly more (1.1X) fellowship winners on a per capita basis, UVA has 6X as many, William and Mary has 14X as many, and Swarthmore has 45X as many. For the heck of it, I also looked up Stanford and it has over 37X as many, so not as many as Swarthmore on a per capita basis. Research intensity doesn't explain the numbers.

How many Swarthmore undergrads received an NSF grad research fellowship this year?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Profs don’t always favor SLACs, but when their kids aren’t interested in or aren’t competitive for top R1s they have enough info to steer them to (and distinguish among) a variety of good schools that aren’t as universally well known as Ivies or state flagships. Hence the relative popularity of SLACs among academics.

I really don’t believe SLACs provide a better education (or have faculty who are better teachers) than R1s. R1s have many more resources and a much broader range of course offerings (more majors and more courses within each major as well as multiple profs in the same subfield) than SLACs. They also have more people doing cutting-edge work.

Whether and how that matters to your DC is a real question, but for me as an undergrad it did. My kid was the same. And both of us (at different R1s and in very different fields) had close relationships with faculty members (and also appreciated the presence of grad students).

Faculty as teachers? Get serious. It’s the TA’s who are doing the teaching. I hear two of my kids who go to Big Ten schools talking about their TA’s relative suckitude and it’s depressing. My two SLAC kids look at them like they’re aliens.

Literally no Big Ten has TA's teach/lecture courses. They have TA's that lead discussion or lab sections - the same as any private school.

Some parents are so uneducated about basics in college education that they simply repeat what they've incorrectly heard ad nauseum, until it becomes true. Again, R1's don't have TA's teaching courses - they have PhD's. Even GMU, which some here thumb their nose at, has PhD's teaching courses, not TA's.

And ironically, at your SLAC you might not even have PhD's teaching courses - they may simply be "instructional staff" with a Masters. Nothing wrong with it, of course, but their academic background is essentially the same as a TA's.

USNWR disagrees. https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/the-short-list-college/articles/2017-02-21/10-universities-where-tas-teach-the-most-classes

PERCENTAGE OF GRADUATE TAS LISTED AS A PRIMARY INSTRUCTOR (FALL 2015)

Top 10

1) Purdue University—West Lafayette (IN) 26%
2) University of South Florida 25%
3) University of Georgia 24%
4) University of Iowa 20%
5) University of North Carolina—Chapel Hill 20%
6) University of Hawaii—Manoa 19%
7) University of Illinois—Urbana-Champaign 19%
8) Florida State University 18%
9) University of Arkansas 18%
10) University of Kansas 18%

wow-that is shocking to me.

They don't even go through the motions of pretending students will be taught by prof's!!!

--SLAC fan

[Anonymous]

I'm a first generation immigrant with English as a third language; however, I'm a much better writer than my American-born (scientist) coworkers. I was able to be promoted faster because of my persuasive writing and communication style. I'm a scientist, but my Ivy had a rigorous and mandatory language arts requirement, so I had to read and write a lot. It was incredibly hard. I remember crying reading this book because it seemed impossible to decipher and analyze.
IMO, it's not about $. The best ROI is to pull a Jocelyn Wildenstein, not attend a top school.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0674012429/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_8HVsFb0WTX99A

[Anonymous]

Fewer stupid kids. More rich kids. The bottom 25-50% of the average flagship public university are painfully unimpressive, lazy and immature.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Taught at William and Mary and faculty there get a lot more training in teaching, how to give good feedback on essays,how to help students improve their writing, etc. This is something that you don't see at a Research University.

My kids are all at SLACS and they have opportunities like the chance to attend a job talk and give input into department hiring decisions. At a research university, these activities are for grad students, not undergrad students.
THere are more undergraduate research opportunities, and funding for undergrad research usually. MacAlester has some huge percent of students getting NSF grants for grad school because so many of them co-author with faculty. Very unusual for undergraduates. We toured one college where they had a boat that natural resource majors used to gather samples, etc. Not sure you would see this for undergrads elsewhere.
In my opinion, you get better letters of recommendation from faculty at SLACS because they know your student more.
I go to academic conferences in my field and uniformly if a faculty member brings a student along and has them present their senior thesis, etc. this is someone who teaches at a SLAC, not an R1.

OK, I'll bite. What is the "huge" percentage of MacAlester students getting NSF grants for grad school? Less than 1%?

The vast majority of the NSF grad fellowships are awarded to R1 students (86%) . My DC just graduated from Stanford and 20% of the seniors in DC's major received NSF grad research fellowships.

https://www.sciencemag.org/careers/2019/08/nsf-graduate-fellowships-disproportionately-go-students-few-top-schools

NP: Yes but SLACs have so few numbers enrolled, and relatively few STEM majors so they aren't going to show up in that kind of measure. If you go to a SLAC with a good STEM program and are a STEM major you have a strong chance of getting STEM phd and of getting a fellowship if you want to take that path. There may be less than 10 students at your school who want to. Sure, Stanford or other tippy top schools are going to have more, but given all the STEM majors at less stellar R1s, SLACs are a more viable route for many students.

You would need to divide number of graduate fellowships by number of undergraduates to get a common denominator.

I looked at the data behind the graduate fellowships and note that for 2020 among the R1 institutions in Virginia (where I live) UVA has 12, VT has 4, VCU has 3, and GMU has 0. William and Mary, which is not an R1 and has more limited research programs and a much smaller enrollment has 11. Swarthmore, which is considerably smaller than even William and Mary and has little funded research, has 9.

On a per undergraduate basis, if you take VCU as the base, VT has slightly more (1.1X) fellowship winners on a per capita basis, UVA has 6X as many, William and Mary has 14X as many, and Swarthmore has 45X as many. For the heck of it, I also looked up Stanford and it has over 37X as many, so not as many as Swarthmore on a per capita basis. Research intensity doesn't explain the numbers.

How many Swarthmore undergrads received an NSF grad research fellowship this year?

9 for 2020. https://www.research.gov/grfp/AwardeeList.do?method=loadAwardeeList

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Taught at William and Mary and faculty there get a lot more training in teaching, how to give good feedback on essays,how to help students improve their writing, etc. This is something that you don't see at a Research University.

My kids are all at SLACS and they have opportunities like the chance to attend a job talk and give input into department hiring decisions. At a research university, these activities are for grad students, not undergrad students.
THere are more undergraduate research opportunities, and funding for undergrad research usually. MacAlester has some huge percent of students getting NSF grants for grad school because so many of them co-author with faculty. Very unusual for undergraduates. We toured one college where they had a boat that natural resource majors used to gather samples, etc. Not sure you would see this for undergrads elsewhere.
In my opinion, you get better letters of recommendation from faculty at SLACS because they know your student more.
I go to academic conferences in my field and uniformly if a faculty member brings a student along and has them present their senior thesis, etc. this is someone who teaches at a SLAC, not an R1.

OK, I'll bite. What is the "huge" percentage of MacAlester students getting NSF grants for grad school? Less than 1%?

The vast majority of the NSF grad fellowships are awarded to R1 students (86%) . My DC just graduated from Stanford and 20% of the seniors in DC's major received NSF grad research fellowships.

https://www.sciencemag.org/careers/2019/08/nsf-graduate-fellowships-disproportionately-go-students-few-top-schools

NP: Yes but SLACs have so few numbers enrolled, and relatively few STEM majors so they aren't going to show up in that kind of measure. If you go to a SLAC with a good STEM program and are a STEM major you have a strong chance of getting STEM phd and of getting a fellowship if you want to take that path. There may be less than 10 students at your school who want to. Sure, Stanford or other tippy top schools are going to have more, but given all the STEM majors at less stellar R1s, SLACs are a more viable route for many students.

You would need to divide number of graduate fellowships by number of undergraduates to get a common denominator.

I looked at the data behind the graduate fellowships and note that for 2020 among the R1 institutions in Virginia (where I live) UVA has 12, VT has 4, VCU has 3, and GMU has 0. William and Mary, which is not an R1 and has more limited research programs and a much smaller enrollment has 11. Swarthmore, which is considerably smaller than even William and Mary and has little funded research, has 9.

On a per undergraduate basis, if you take VCU as the base, VT has slightly more (1.1X) fellowship winners on a per capita basis, UVA has 6X as many, William and Mary has 14X as many, and Swarthmore has 45X as many. For the heck of it, I also looked up Stanford and it has over 37X as many, so not as many as Swarthmore on a per capita basis. Research intensity doesn't explain the numbers.

And here my VT friends try to assert that VT is THE STEM school in Virginia. I'll grant them strength in engineering, but am less convinced outside of that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

So many errors in this post it’s hard to respond, but most clueless is “same as at any private school”. Many SLACs have no TA’s. You really don’t have a clue, which is hilarious given that you accuse others of same. Looking forward to you not admitting your mistake.

I find it kind of funny. I went to a SLAC and was never taught by anyone other than a PhD. I also got small class sizes and had the expectation that I could reach out to my professors and expect a response. I jumped into calc 2 as a freshman and was struggling so my professor spent hours working with me 1 on 1- it wasn't unique

My kid’s LAC has soph-senior TAs for his small freshman classes. But otherwise I agree.