Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you want to do research, go to where the research actually happens. LACs are great for certain subjects where they aren't expected grad coursework or sophisticated research. Mathematics grad school will expect graduate-level courses completed before you finish undergrad

And this is relevant to OP's complaints about physics and...history? English? OP can't really remember...at a supposed real-world LAC that is definitely not a figment of his imagination.

When you start a new thread about math students who dream of doing a Ph.D. at Princeton, then perhaps we can advise on where they should go for undergrad.

Physics is very similar-not in terms of graduate study, but you need very strong research and access to a few grad level math courses if you want to get into a top program, especially for theoretical. This is easier to achieve a top research university.

You will not run out of advanced math or physics courses at any top LAC. The notion you have to take grad classes to get into a top grad school is laughably misguided.

I know from personal experience of someone doing a PhD in theoretical physics at a top uni who had some catching up to do in order to get on to the level of his peers despite taking grad courses in undergrad. His research mentors assumed he had a background even more extensive than the one he had, which itself included plenty of material that's graduate level at most schools.

Anonymous wrote: Quote didn’t work. Which LACs are overrated by DCUM?

All of them?

Anonymous wrote:"a complete lack of translation coursework"

why would an english department have "translation coursework"?

This is not a serious post.

Because English as a field has moved beyond literal English-only texts for decades now? Because liberal arts colleges typically don’t have comparative literature departments and hire inside the English department for that role? This is a silly response.

I trust this Nobel prize winner more than anonymous trolls:
https://www.thecollegesolution.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/cech_article2.pdf

Anonymous wrote:To add: a lot of physics research is either theoretical, which requires an extremely advanced mathematical and physics background (i.e. lots of grad courses in undergrad) or experimental, requiring some extremely expensive equipment that only a large university's department can afford. It's hard to build the requisite background for either as a LAC student.

Also, even Williams' tutorials are on predefined undergrad topics, rather than being up to the student and professor like an independent study, so it still has the same ceiling issue.

Nope. You can do advanced research in math and even physics without equipment beyond the budget of an LAC, the best of which have similar endowments per student as the best universities, except it is all directed towards students undergrads at the LACs.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ignoring whether OP is a troll, the question raised can be easily settled. My kid is now choosing among a few LACs and a few research universities for physics, with an aim at PhD placement. As far as we can tell, LACs can be just as good as the best research schools. See here: https://www.collegetransitions.com/dataverse/top-feeders-phd-programs?utm_source=pocket_shared#physics
Mudd (one of his options) comes in second, per capita, right after CalTech and above MIT, with many other LACs also near the top. It's possible these aren't good PhD placements, for Mudd and the others -- is that the worry? I don't have any but anecdata on that, but it seems implausible.

As for humanities fields, I work in one (not English), and many of our best PhD applicants have LAC degrees. So here too, the general worry is unfounded.

That said, I can think of some LACs beloved by DCUM that are quite weak in my field, with little hope of placing their students in a good PhD program, so maybe OP has a legitimate local gripe. But I don't think it generalizes to LACs as a whole.

This doesn't control for the quality of the PhD program. Mudd, Reed, Williams, Amherst if you take grad courses at UMass might be exceptions, but it's not at all implausible for the rest. Why would a top grad school accept a 4.0 lac grad with no grad coursework and a bit of undergrad-friendly research over a 4.0 r1 grad with two years of graduate classes and published research of the type they intend to do in their PhD?

Why? Many reasons.

1. The advanced university students don’t do 2 years of grad work as undergrads. You lose all credibility saying that.

2. Advanced undergrad classes often cover the same material as intro grad classes.

3. An LAC prof is far more likely to actually know well the student they write a recommendation for, making for a more credible and meaningful letter.

4. Undergrad research led by undergrads with LAC faculty mentors is more compelling in displaying research skill than university research led by a prof mentoring a grad student who can use undergrads if needed but is not in any way evaluated for doing so.

5. Cheating is more rampant in universities because there’s less contact and fewer assessments.

But all that is academic, as it were. If universities were truly better for preparing students for research you wouldn’t have higher grad school placement rates from LACs than universities, or studies like this showing students from LACs take less time to finish their PhD.

From p18:

“Graduates who completed undergraduate study at selective American liberal arts
colleges, or whose undergraduate training was in Britain, Canada, Ireland, Australia, or New
Zealand, earned a Ph.D. in economics sufficiently faster than the large group of undergraduates
from American Ph.D. granting universities so as to save almost a full academic year. The
savings from an academic year could be viewed as a full year's opportunity cost to graduates,
and/or a year of financial aid from the Ph.D. department. Applicants from Swarthmore,
Williams, or Carleton, therefore, might be viewed appropriately as likely "less expensive" Ph.D.
students than those with a bachelor's degree from Harvard, Berkeley, or Stanford. Accordingly,
Ph.D. program admissions committees might reasonably dip further into the credentials pool for
those with an undergraduate degree from a selective liberal arts college. On the other hand,
expanding the pool of selective liberal arts college graduates attracted into Ph.D. study, which
such a policy could induce, may add prospects whose expected time-to-degree differs from the
expected length of Ph.D. study of existing matriculants.”

https://ir.vanderbilt.edu/bitstream/handle/1803/15800/vu06-w11.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

"a complete lack of translation coursework"

why would an english department have "translation coursework"?

This is not a serious post.

To add: a lot of physics research is either theoretical, which requires an extremely advanced mathematical and physics background (i.e. lots of grad courses in undergrad) or experimental, requiring some extremely expensive equipment that only a large university's department can afford. It's hard to build the requisite background for either as a LAC student.

Also, even Williams' tutorials are on predefined undergrad topics, rather than being up to the student and professor like an independent study, so it still has the same ceiling issue.

Anonymous wrote:Ignoring whether OP is a troll, the question raised can be easily settled. My kid is now choosing among a few LACs and a few research universities for physics, with an aim at PhD placement. As far as we can tell, LACs can be just as good as the best research schools. See here: https://www.collegetransitions.com/dataverse/top-feeders-phd-programs?utm_source=pocket_shared#physics
Mudd (one of his options) comes in second, per capita, right after CalTech and above MIT, with many other LACs also near the top. It's possible these aren't good PhD placements, for Mudd and the others -- is that the worry? I don't have any but anecdata on that, but it seems implausible.

As for humanities fields, I work in one (not English), and many of our best PhD applicants have LAC degrees. So here too, the general worry is unfounded.

That said, I can think of some LACs beloved by DCUM that are quite weak in my field, with little hope of placing their students in a good PhD program, so maybe OP has a legitimate local gripe. But I don't think it generalizes to LACs as a whole.

This doesn't control for the quality of the PhD program. Mudd, Reed, Williams, Amherst if you take grad courses at UMass might be exceptions, but it's not at all implausible for the rest. Why would a top grad school accept a 4.0 lac grad with no grad coursework and a bit of undergrad-friendly research over a 4.0 r1 grad with two years of graduate classes and published research of the type they intend to do in their PhD?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They’re either a troll or misinformed. LACs send many students to top STEM programs, and many profs at those PhD programs prefer LACs for their own kids. Having a meaningful or lead role in a research project is often better than tidying up for the grad students.

You're much more likely to get into a top stem research program from a research university than a lac. A lot of the top LACs have grads going to decent grad schools, but not the best. It is rare to see a lac grad going to Princeton for a math phd, for example.

Actually, the opposite is true.

Really? Go take a look at the Princeton math grad student page. It’s going to be very difficult for you to find an LAC grad. This is common knowledge in physics/math. You aren’t going to a top program from a lac unless you’re truly exceptional amongst the truly exceptional.

Math is fairly unique in that practically all students who get into top PhD programs have been taking graduate courses since their freshman year. Most other fields are not like this. LAC students still go to top math PhD programs, but not the tippy top.

Physics is increasingly following in its footsteps, especially any non-experimental field.

Anonymous wrote:A family member works in a top 5 worldwide school for STEM in a position where the topic of undergrad study of prof children comes up often. The topic 3 destinations amongst that group’s children are LACs.

is the stem field math or physics?

I feel like English college courses are the kind of thing every thinks they will love, but ends up hating. I loved reading and writing and hated my English classes. Because it turns out that you can’t get tenure by essentially teaching a book club. So all the professors need some “fresh take” on the books everyone has read forever. So, yeah, you’re gong y dole a Marxist critical race theory exegesis of Jane Austen, because that’s how people get published. (Actually the only article I remember really liking were the ones that talked about legal stuff that affected the Austen books, like inheritance law — those books made so much more sense when you inderstood all that!). I just wanted to read the books — I didn’t want to dissect and do a post mortem on them.

Of course this is a troll thread. Almost every PhD program is hyper selective with admit rates under 10%. Just look at PhD placement data and stop listening to clowns trying to confuse you about “top” programs. The best data available is from the NSF, summarized nicely by Swarthmore, showing that LACs, despite their small numbers, are disproportionately represented two to one in the top 20. If you trust random Internet trolls more, I have a bridge to sell you!

https://www.swarthmore.edu/sites/default/files/assets/documents/institutional-effectiveness-research-assessment/Doct%20Rates%20Top%20100%20Tot%20Sci%20Rankings%20-Summary%20to%202022.pdf

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A family member works in a top 5 worldwide school for STEM in a position where the topic of undergrad study of prof children comes up often. The topic 3 destinations amongst that group’s children are LACs.

Np, my spouse is a Hopkins professor. He definitely strongly feels R1 schools are better than lacs for stem majors.

He is wrong.