Reply to What is the appeal of SLACs for non-1%ers?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]SLACs have very low ROI compared to state schools:

https://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/info-Salaries_for_Colleges_by_Type-sort.html

They seem like a total scam except for the 1%. Much better for your future to go to UMD or Ohio State or Indians or Purdue or VA Tech to [b]study engineering or business while enjoying college sports[/b].

SLACs seem like a waste for all but the wealthy 1%era who don’t have to worry about finding a job after graduation. Many of them don’t have [b]big college sports [/b]or [b]Greek Life[/b] to generate alumni loyalty. What’s the point of them? 
[/quote]

Greek Life . . . College Sports . . . Engineering/business/hard sciences . . . all things that would completely turn my kid off of a college.  [/quote]

The notion that SLACs don’t have alumni loyalty because of a lack of Greek life or big sports is stupid. Many SLACs have a very avid alumni base. My SLAC has a great one and I have leaned on the network many times for jobs. Reunions are also a good indicator of alumni loyalty. I have gone to every one. At my 25th reunion, 70% of my class came, that’s huge compared with most schools, esp. big state schools.[/quote]

Maybe that’s your case. I went to a SLAC ranked currently in the high 20s, and the alumni network has been useless and most don’t come to reunions or city-based alumni meetups.

I will definitely be encouraging my kids to attend a flagship state school with big time college sports. College sports are a good way to connect students with alumni. No such thing exists at SLACs except for being a varsity athlete yourself. [/quote]

I have several colleagues who went to LACs and even ‘lesser’ Ivy League schools and they are not pleased with their alumni experiences & outcomes at all. Some of them even mentioned that they should have gone to big state schools instead. They don’t feel any connections to their respective alma maters. That’s why bigtime college athletics is so important to many people.

I think prospective students should not solely select schools based on education and expected on-campus experiences but also consider what these schools could do for them in the future (and networking is just one factor here).[/quote]

I went to a huge stage flagship and felt like just a number. Many of my professors were more concerned with their next book or research and the TA’s carried most of the load. I feel zero connection to it and don’t donate a penny. However, I donate to the SLACs our kids attended and loved. In hindsight I wish I had gone to one.

The point is there is no one size fits all when it comes to college. No matter how much people keep trying to say there is. [/quote]
+1000

Find the best fit for you and go to that school.  It's quite simple.

However, I would argue that the "large school experience" is much harder to get the same learning experiences as at a smaller school. [b] To do so you must be a go getter, highly motivated and willing to persevere to get research opps in undergrad, to talk to professors (when teaching a class of 500+ kids, they don't really get to know you even if you come to office hours---they don't care and there are simply too many students for them to care about an undergrad who isn't in their research lab).[/b]  From an academic perspective, you cannot convince me that a student will learn just as much in a 400+ person class as one with 20-25 students---learning should include discussions/interactions with others and that simply cannot happen at same level in the larger class.  Yes kids learn at large schools, but they could be learning more/learning easier if they had smaller class sizes.  
I know because I attended a T10 with mostly smaller classes.  Even for one major, where there were 120 freshman and we took one "history" class all together, we could still have discussions in that 120 class because we were a cohort and took 2 years of the class all together.  But my chemistry with 300+ (1 lecture for Chem 101), there were not the same discussions because that cannot happen in a large lecture hall.  But that was literally the only course that had more than 100 students (chemistry the first year was that large), physics series had at most 75 and that did allow discussions, and most everything else was under 40.  It was amazing because you did not have to wait for office hours to ask questions---it happens during class and everyone learns from most of the questions.

[/quote]

+1 I have one at a huge public university and one at a SLAC. By the end of sophomore year my kid at the big school had no professor he felt he could ask for a recommendation when he needed one for an internship application. That was absolutely on him and I'd been nudging him to take the initiative to get to know his professors. He does technically have an 'advisor' but that's someone he talks to for about 15 min twice a year for setting up class schedule. After that sophomore year realization he was able to find an undergrad research program to participate in and was in a better place for recommendations in junior year. In contrast, DD at the SLAC has two advisors she meets with regularly and already by the end of freshman year had a close relationship with another professor in one of her major classes who was forwarding internship opportunities to her. If she needs a recommendation the only dilemma is which of multiple people to ask.

At the same time, DS loves his big school and would hate a small one. DD would hate a big school. They are both getting what they need/want but DS has to take more initiative to get that.[/quote]

Would help if you named the "huge public university".[/quote]

Why do people keep saying to name the schools? People are sharing their experiences and if they name the schools, there will be other people saying they went to that exact same school and had the opposite experience. People are simply sharing their anecdotal experiences. People can and do have different experiences at the same schools.  [/quote]

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