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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Many may question how is it possible to have a pair that are so different.  We actually met a few families with similar options on our admitted students days. So they attract kids in different ways.

SLACs take care of the kids very well.  Small classes, close relationships with the professors, flexible curriculum.  Cornell obviously has much larger class sizes, particularly for intro courses.  Kids probably don’t have as much interactions with the professors.

The drawback of SLACs is that they are very small.  Kids may outgrow it in two years.  There are research opportunities but not comparable to R1 research universities.

Has anyone faced a similar situation before?  How did your DC make the decision?  The question is not directly related to specific major or career paths but I guess it could be.  My understanding is both schools have outstanding outcomes.  
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Actually, no. I really, really don't understand the univ./LAC dichotomy that exists on this site. The undergraduate A & S program at Cornell is a liberal arts program, just as it is at the other Ivies, Chicago, Stanford, Duke and LACs. My classmates and I were interested in gaining admission to the most rigorous schools that would accept us, and frankly it was more difficult to gain admission to Williams, Amherst and Swarthmore than it was to our feeder Ivy (or to any of the rest of them, with one possible exception). Plenty of my classmates who earned SCEA acceptance to our local Ivy then applied to only one or two more schools they were seriously considering (no one was an a****** who wanted to run the table for bragging rights), and in many cases, those other schools were LACs. I myself attended an LAC with classmates who chose it over the Ivies, Stanford, Duke and Chicago.

I am not sure what there is to "outgrow." Wellesley offers more courses than any one student can possibly take, and as someone who teaches at a very competitive R1 institution, I can tell you that students' skill sets over the past 20+ years have really deteriorated. As for research, most opportunities at R1 schools go to grad students and post-docs (and right now, given Trump's targeting of certain universities, I think the research opportunity landscape for undergrads at R1 univ. is really uncertain). By contrast, all of the research opportunities at LACs go to undergrads, and it is worth noting that on a per capita basis, many LACs are amongst the top producers of S & E Ph.Ds (see https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsf22321). But in any case, Wellesley students can take classes at MIT and Olin: see the description of opportunities here: https://www1.wellesley.edu/ engineering/opportunities.

As for how to make a decision, if it's affordable for your daughter to attend both schools' open campus days, she should . . .and then, assuming finances aren't a major factor (because you're full pay at both or fin. aid packages make both schools comparable in cost), she should choose based upon fit. 
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