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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I'm someone who's been to both types of schools for undergrad. Started out at a well-respected LAC for a year and transferred to a middle of the pack Ivy.

Is there a difference? Yes there is. I'll break it down as much as I can.

The LAC had excellent teaching. While the Ivy was good and I had wonderful classes and professors, on the whole I have to give the edge to the LAC. The faculty seemed more committed to being excellent teachers and less dedicated to research. My LAC had bright students so the conversations and debates were never dull. The Ivy had more dull students than you might expect, they were doubtlessly good students on paper with high scores but were content to take notes and ace the exams and not really prod the great questions of life. However, the Ivy also had truly brilliant students who were stimulating. I found the LAC faculty to challenge the students more and for the top 10-20% of LAC students who responded to the challenge, it could be a very rewarding academic experience, whereas at the Ivy the faculty accepted we were all bright and didn't challenge us so much. So while I give my old LAC the edge for teaching, I give the Ivy the edge in the overall quality of students.

The LAC was more limited in offerings. The range of courses on offer at the Ivy was amazing compared to the LAC. Same with resources. The variety of campus clubs and organizations outstripped the LAC. The campus paper was published daily, not weekly, the quality of the writing was much better, the student body was more "engaged," whatever that may mean. The social scene was more diverse because the student body was more diverse. The roster of campus speakers was impressive. The LAC felt much more provincial, parochial, an extension of boarding school in many ways. I noticed that at the LAC a greater percentage of students took semesters abroad whereas at the Ivy far fewer did and that's because we knew the campus experience was too special to sacrifice any time elsewhere so I did my "semester abroad" after I graduated and worked overseas for a year.

In short, the LAC wins in teaching, but the Ivy wins on everything else.

As for the post-collegiate benefits, it's a much more of a mixed bag. The Ivy had its strengths in certain key industries such as banking and consulting and it manifested itself through major campus recruiting drives and close connections with the banks/consulting firms through alums and prior recruitment history. The LAC was practically ignored as most LACs are, at least for the prestige groups. But beyond that I don't know how much of a benefit there really is to having an Ivy diploma other than perhaps acceptance at the same professional schools on campus. A bright graduate from a LAC will probably have to work slightly harder to get noticed but will be just as rewarded by graduate schools and post-college opportunities (other than the banking/consulting firms I referred to, they are noticeably snobby). Actually, if you were an Ivy student and weren't interested in going into i-banking or law school or consulting, I found the campus career center to be useless for the most part. They could help you only if you were very clear on what you wanted to do and where you went and had already taken the initiative to find jobs or internships, but they weren't "connecting" you to the right people or magically had a list of employers eager to hire the graduates.

As it is, I'm glad to have my Ivy degree because of my time as a student on the campus. As the years have gone by my post-collegiate career has become much more relevant than the degree but it's still a nice thing to have. Every now and then someone hears where I went to college and and they're impressed, which is a nice feeling to have. But truth be told, I'm confident I would have still ended up in the same place had I remained at my LAC. [/quote]

This sounds about right. I went to a SLAC and totally agree with this about the teaching, it was great. But it was a small school in a remote location so that had some limitations on guest speakers and recruiting.

I should note that many people from my school (now in the top 5 LACs) went to ivied for grad school. Two guys from my class went on to clerk in the Supreme Court, not too bad for a class of 400!

About 10-15 years ago someone looked at recruiting at Yale. Something like 70 percent of the seniors one interviewed for investment banks. I find that pretty depressing. I'm more impressed by people who use their intelligence to change the world, create something or do something to help their fellow man.[/quote]

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