Anonymous wrote:Being satisfied with your academic experience and knowing a professor well is no guarantee that you've learned to write well or think critically.

I guess in my experience (and family and friends' experiences) it's so much easier to attain all four of those things in a liberal arts environment.

The point of that article is that that's often not the case...many TAs teach classes at these institutions and students fall through the cracks. At a place like Williams, it's pretty hard to graduate without getting to know 2-3 professors well.

It's also highly likely that a kid who goes to a college like Harvard or Chicago or Hopkins hoping to learn to write well and think critically will get to know at least a few professors well. Most professors are eager to share their intellectual passion with students who are interested in learning.

Anonymous wrote:Being satisfied with your academic experience and knowing a professor well is no guarantee that you've learned to write well or think critically.

It's not a guarantee, but it's likely that a student who gets to know a professor well will benefit from the opportunity to delve deeper into the material. That was certainly my experience at Middlebury, and like other posters, when I went on to graduate school (Stanford Law), I was grateful to my undergrad profs who were so generous in sharing their intellectual passion.

Being satisfied with your academic experience and knowing a professor well is no guarantee that you've learned to write well or think critically.

“It’s well known that there are many other colleges where students are much more satisfied with their academic experience,” said Paul Buttenwieser, a psychiatrist and author who is a member of the Harvard Board of Overseers, and who favors the report. “Amherst is always pointed to. Harvard should be as great at teaching as Amherst.”

As Professor Skocpol put it, “People at Harvard are concerned when they hear that some of our undergraduates can go through four years here and not know a faculty member well enough to get a letter of recommendation.”

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2007/05/10/education/10harvard.html

Anonymous wrote:Going to Wharton for an MBA made me forever grateful and infinitely appreciative of my undergrad experience at Amherst (which is incredibly generous with financial aid). I can write well and think critically; many of my peers cannot.

The undergrads at Penn were competitive, stressed robots. No comparison. I will 100% encourage my kids to go to LACs. People who get it, get it.

I'm the PP. Just saw this and it matches my experience at a graduate program at a top public school after a LAC. And my original college wasn't even in the top 25.

Most end up going to grad school so it ends up working out. I recently read that the biggest feeder to Tuck is Middlebury, which doesn't surprise me. I'm a LAC grad and I'm going to encourage my kids to go to a LAC if they can get merit aid.They can save the ivy league experience for graduate school.

Anonymous wrote:Going to Wharton for an MBA made me forever grateful and infinitely appreciative of my undergrad experience at Amherst (which is incredibly generous with financial aid). I can write well and think critically; many of my peers cannot.

The undergrads at Penn were competitive, stressed robots. No comparison. I will 100% encourage my kids to go to LACs. People who get it, get it.

I'm not so sure you learned to think critically if this is the conclusion you drew from your experience. Penn isn't Harvard or Chicago. And not all of your Amherst peers learned to write well or think critically.

Going to Wharton for an MBA made me forever grateful and infinitely appreciative of my undergrad experience at Amherst (which is incredibly generous with financial aid). I can write well and think critically; many of my peers cannot.

The undergrads at Penn were competitive, stressed robots. No comparison. I will 100% encourage my kids to go to LACs. People who get it, get it.

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Anonymous wrote:Who is this repeat poster who keeps talking about AWS? It's Amherst and Williams. That's it. Swarthmore doesn't get nearly the same level of recruiting. Heck, the Claremont Colleges and Bowdoin/Middlebury do better.

Are you confusing Swarthmore with Skidmore? Because only someone with very little knowledge of LACs would exclude Swarthmore from the top 3.

I never denied that. But Swarthmore gets nowhere near the recruiting Amherst or Williams do. First off, it's small for a LAC. Secondly, most of their grads aren't pre-professional. Swarthmore is not recruited by the top consulting firms like Amherst, Williams, and Pomona are.

If you want to make an example about the best LACs for career prospects, it would not be AWS. It would be AW, maybe Bowdoin and Middlebury, and the Claremonts for West Coast recruiting.

Anonymous wrote:Who is this repeat poster who keeps talking about AWS? It's Amherst and Williams. That's it. Swarthmore doesn't get nearly the same level of recruiting. Heck, the Claremont Colleges and Bowdoin/Middlebury do better.

Are you confusing Swarthmore with Skidmore? Because only someone with very little knowledge of LACs would exclude Swarthmore from the top 3.

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Anonymous wrote:No sane person thinks too lacs are comparable to top universities. Top lacs are barely making it into top 50.

No one abroad has any idea what Pomona or Williams are. No rankings of any academic kind has them on top. It's really crazy that we are even discussing this.

Unless you are going abroad to follow be a job it doesn't matter. The people who are hiring you here in the US are well aware of these schools.

More and more people will be going abroad for jobs. Also more and more companies hiring in the US will be foreign companies.

Really? Evidence? Or are you sprouting off?

Evidence is called globalization. Somehow provincial Americans think they are above it.

No, Americans, especially college-educated Americans, know that they aren't where global corporations look for cheap labor.

College educated huh? That's quite an accomplishment. Everyone is every impressed.

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Anonymous wrote:Rich kids that go to elite LAS don't care about on-campus recruiting. They're connected. And like 75% of these classes enter law or medical school or PhD program. The other 25% probably pick up MBA or masters a couple years down the line.

Fake news.

Yeah, kinda hard to believe that graduating at the very bottom of your elite LAC pretty much guarantees you admission to graduate or professional school (and that every kid attending such a LAC needs/wants a graduate degree).

Anonymous wrote:Rich kids that go to elite LAS don't care about on-campus recruiting. They're connected. And like 75% of these classes enter law or medical school or PhD program. The other 25% probably pick up MBA or masters a couple years down the line.

Fake news.