Big state schools - lot of fun, great networks, but do you really learn there?
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Anonymous
| Kids who go to SLACs are babied and have their hands held for everything in college. They end up unable to be good advocates for themselves. |
Anonymous
This is probably true. And probably the same can be said of kids in large public schools vs small privates. You know which kids are the least babied? The ones who don't go to college and have to work to survive. |
Anonymous
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Um, no.
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Anonymous
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My DH went to Sarah Lawrence. I went to UF.
He had small classes, but ran into several bad teachers and had very few classes to choose from so he ended up feeling cornered into taking classes he had no interest in just to stay on the graduation track. He liked many of his classmates but overall it was a miserable experience. Meanwhile I had endless opportunities at UF. The work in my major was challenging and engaging. And the social opportunities were amazing. It was the best 4 years of my life. There was no hand holding though; you better have great executive function skills to manage a big university education. And when we graduated? I walked right out and got a degree in the field we both majored in, while he struggled for several years before he got hired at the company I was working at. |
Anonymous
And this is a reasonable, but not necessarily accurate, perspective. Truthfully, I find SLAC / LAC folks to be unaware of the current reality of higher education outside of the LAC bubble echo chamber. It would be interesting for LAC students to do a junior year at a National University--public or private--instead of the more traditional year abroad. What I find amusing is how LAC people claim that LACs offer the best teaching and the best research opportunities, then criticize National Universities for engaging in too much research. |
Anonymous
Um, yes. I taught at a SLAC for one semester. I was under huge pressure to give everyone at least a C because “they are all such sweet kids and they try really hard” even when they skipped classes and didn’t hand in work. I bolted for a state university and never looked back. |
Anonymous
| As some say, you get out of it what you put into it. Then again, some schools ask more of students. It’s easier to exit a big state school without getting an excellent liberal education. However, nowadays, many people don’t care about that. It’s STEM, STEM, STEM, and money, money, money. Big state schools have minimal broad-based humanities requirements, and, if they do, lots of goof-off courses to fulfill them. In essence, yes, it is easy to graduate from State U with a practical degree that might make a lot of money, but little development of the person based on a rigorous humanities and writing curriculum. In contrast, yes, attending a small, well-regarded, private, liberal arts college might get one all of that - a STEM student with a perspective in the humanities that can write well. To be well-educated means the latter, but most in our society don’t really care. |
Anonymous
That's a bit unfair. Sarah Lawrence is a crapola LAC. UF is one of the best state u's. It's like comparing Amherst to Utah State. I think a fair comparison would be a LAC vs a state U with comparable average SAT scores (just as a way to approximate the caliber of the student body) |
Anonymous
| I went to a big state school (Texas) and, no, didn’t learn a heck of a lot there. I learned a lot more at my small, private high school. I did have a great time though! |
Anonymous
I wouldn't call Sarah Lawrence crapola- but I agree that these two schools are not equivalent. I actually went to Amherst and never had a bad professor. I never felt limited in class selection. I published research as a first author in a high impact factor journal as an undergrad.
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Anonymous
THIS. Emory is a good school. There is no question in my mind that Williams is the better choice though.
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Anonymous
I just think we can all agree, Sarah Lawrence is not the ideal institution for a student concerned about gainful employment. |
Anonymous
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In this thread, there is a focus on Williams College versus the average big public university.
As one who prefers larger schools, I feel confident that everyone holds ultra-selective LACs such as Williams College, Amherst, Carleton, Swarthmore, Wellesley, Pomona, and a handful of other LACs in high regard. But it is a different story when comparing lower ranked LACs to big state universities. Studying at an LAC is a very different experience than earning an education at a "big state school". But the graduates of the big state schools build the bridges, airplanes, rockets, and most of the other infrastructure upon which we rely. LAC grads continue on to higher education because, i large part, they have to in order to enter a profession. Not universally true, but true from a percentage standpoint. Again, I encourage readers to use the WSJ/THE rankings as a starting point if beginning the college search. Different strokes for different folks, but most students overwhelmingly choose to attend a large university. |
Anonymous
I seriously doubt this was a top quality SLAC. At the top SLAC, all faculty are pretty much tenure track so no one teaches for one semester. I never had an adjunct professor.
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Anonymous
OP seemed unconcerned about employment. It was all about small class sizes and feedback on papers. |