LAC Grads: Do you ever regret attending an LAC?

[sevmom]

shennie, Many state school grads also feel a deep connection to their school. You will find alumni from many of the bigger schools in all parts of the country- they network, get together to watch televised football games, go back to their schools for games, etc. Deep connections to a school are not unique to LAC's so that is curious that you are getting puzzled looks about going to a reunion.

[cobrat]

Originally Posted by SteveMA

I think in the 'real" world, a "business" degree is kind of looked down upon vs a degree in Econ or Accounting or Computer Science. It's seen, around here anyway, as a pretty soft major no matter where you go.

This certainly applied at one company I worked for where they'd only hire undergrad business majors if they graduated from top-tier programs like Wharton, UVA-McIntire, Berkeley Haas, NYU-Stern, etc. Heard from the managers and others that it was because it was the only way to ensure the new hire has enough command of basic quantitative(read basic arithmetic and algebra) and writing skills to not embarrass the company/supervisors when working with clients or dealing with more senior managers....especially considering they were severely burned in this area by graduates from local lower-tiered universities.....whether public or private.

On the other hand, they didn't have as much of an issue hiring "humanites/social science" grads from the same lower-tiered universities to do business or even highly technical computer programming/IT work.

Originally Posted by shawbridge

I suspect that LACs are not as good a choice if you a) want a career as an academic -- at least relative to attending a top notch research university like JHS was describing; or b) if you want to go really deeply into any subject. They won't have the faculty depth for the latter nor the uber-famous scholars who can serve as advisors and recommenders (if they deign to talk to undergraduates, which they don't necessarily do at research universities) for the latter.

I didn't find that to be true in the experiences of my college classmates considering they've had no problems earning places at top-10 PhD programs nor later landing tenure-track jobs......including those in STEM fields.

One good friend who was a Violin/Bio double-major is now at an HYPSMC for his PhD and from what I heard from several PhD student friends at Harvard/MIT....their departments love graduates from LACs like the one I attended and were highly impressed with fellow PhD students who came from my LAC....even the STEM ones.

Your statement is also ironic considering I personally know of several college classmates who transferred from universities....including those in the top 20 because my LAC had far greater strengths in a given field than the universities had at the time I attended. Heck, one of them said compared to our LAC, his previous university's program was "a complete joke" in terms of devoted resources/coverage.....and it is a highly respected top-30 university.

[SteveMA]

I have to agree with Cobrat--perhaps shawbridge might want to investigate where these academics did their undergrad. The results may surprise you. I know several classmates from my LAC that are PhD's at the CC favorites schools....

[cobrat]

Originally Posted by mini

I have lived on the east coast, the midwest, California, and the Pacific Northwest. I have been employed in publishing, human rights/human relations, community college teaching, public health, and social services. I have never, even once, had an employer (or an interviewer) who knew what Willliams was. Not even once. I did have one who thought he knew, and talked about the nice vacation he took with his wife to Williamsburg. I didn't disabuse him of the idea.

I never had this problem whether it was working in the Northeast or chatting with relatives/friends' neighbors on the West Coast and even parts of the South(Metro DC and Florida). Heck, it seems my LAC is well-known even in the major urban areas in China among the highly educated Chinese and those who spent some time in the US of A.

However, this is a double-edged sword as I found in one job interview when the interview went south within the first five minutes once an interviewer for a small financial company saw "Oberlin" and started giving me the "third degree" because he assumed I was some sort of "Pinko commie hippie subversive type"*.

Right then, I realized this interview was a loss and the interviewer a prejudiced idiot.....and shed no tears when I heard from a colleague that this interviewer's company went bust a few years later.

* Heard a story from a college classmate about how one of his older classmates who was interviewed for the Rhodes Scholarship knew he was sunk the moment he was interviewed by a retired Army officer whose first words to him were "So, you went to a school for [homophobic slur]."

[shawbridge]

cobrat and SteveMA, I got BA, MA, and PhD from three of HYPMS and taught at one and have a pretty good sense that people come from all over -- the grad students and professors were my peers and colleagues. One of the brightest kids I knew in grad school went to Hampshire and is now a professor at an Ivy. There was also a mediocre kid from Pomona -- not sure where he ended up. But those are anecdotal blips. Slightly less anecdotally, I've been involved in the selection process at both grad school and assistant professor levels -- never on committees but was consulted and we would talk about candidates at lunch, etc. -- so I have a little bit more experience than just have gone to these schools.

What I was describing is not a black and white rule, but rather that the kids from the top research institutions having a higher probability of getting a spot at a highly competitive program. There was a heavier weighting than one might expect of Harvard/Princeton folks, for example, as the folks selecting grad school applicants knew the undergrad recommenders.

I'm kind of missing the irony. I think I've described how impressed I am at the attention my son gets from his LAC, which wouldn't easily be available at any of the schools with which I've been associated.

But, he can't work with the best people in the world (and I was able to) and he can't take second or third year grad school courses because an LAC doesn't offer them. I actually worked on research projects side-by-side with much better trained grad students and post-docs (IIRC, undergrads at Harvard and Dartmouth) when I was a freshman and sophomore, which was also helpful. All the opportunities I had that one can't easily match at an LAC did I think increase the probability of my acceptance at the top grad programs. It doesn't mean kids from an LAC won't get be admitted in most fields (although see in an earlier post the experience of the woman in math at a top 10 LAC) but based upon the mechanisms I see at work, I think that the probabilities are lower.

There may be some exceptions to this -- a friend's kid transferred from Penn to Wesleyan and finds the research better and more exciting than at Penn. There always are. That may well be recognized by folks in the field. But, if you want to go to grad school in physics or genomics at a top place, your odds are better if you've been working as a research assistant for someone at Yale or at the Broad Institute than if you've been at Bowdoin or Coe College. The kid working at the Broad will not only be distinguished by working on the top problems but will get the recommendations of the top people. When he/she wants to go to Stanford or Caltech, they know what it means when the recommender says the kid is really smart.

Are you guys questioning the validity of the general claim I'm making that the probabilities of admission at top grad schools are better for students coming from top research universities than from LACs?

Again, recognizing that there will be some exceptions (otherwise I'd be talking about something deterministic and not probabilistic), the only systematic thing I can see running counter to my claim is that at a lot of the research universities, the kids need to be more persistent and assertive to get onto the research projects. Some proactivity is required at the LACs, if my son's experience is indicative, but my experience at the other schools is that you need to be more assertive at the research-oriented schools. So, the research oriented schools might screen out bright but non-assertive kids who might have gotten onto a research track more easily at an LAC.

[dietz199]

Great info from everyone.

DD's HS had 800 students, all female. DS's HS has 1600 students, all male.

DD wanted a much larger environment for college. And, in an ironic twist I never would have anticipated, her having to fight for some classes, elbow her way to the professor to make herself known, deal with variable housing, scrounge for an on-campus job etc. has been such a benefit. She's had to develop interpersonal skills, an ability to stand up for herself, a louder voice etc. I don't think this would have happened had she been in a more 'nurturing' smaller LAC environment.

DS is currently a HS Junior - with a interest in physics or possibly engineering. On our first round of college visits he like the LAC which we toured. From a personality perspective, I'd have no issues with his attending a smaller school. This kid knows how to network, he knows how to find and corner (if necessary) teachers, he's not afraid to ask questions...and more importantly...he's not the least concerned about being the one and only in a situation who voices a counter POV. He would be bring the skills to college that DD still needed to develop.

He's been in contact with students who have access to one of the 3/2 programs. His small sample population of 2 has given him the same feedback...be careful, you will want to spend your 4th year 'here'. Of students which attended the LAC with full intention of pursuing a 3/2...it appears a very very small portion actually did. One other issue that arose is the 'professor on sabbatical' problem. In this specific instance, the LAC had installed a rather sophisticated piece of theater equipment but no one was able to use it for the next 6 months since the only prof qualified to do so was on sabbatical.

It also seems that if you are able to become part of the honors program in a larger research university you'd have the best of both worlds...access to all the whiz bang stuff, and a small group of benefited and somewhat sheltered classmates.

[scout59]

I did not attend a LAC - it was more like a small research university (4400 undergrads) - but in many ways it was LAC-ish: small classes, great student-teacher relationships, etc. All of my classroom experiences were wonderful, but outside of class I was pretty miserable. It was a terrible fit for me socially. To this day, I still wish I had gone somewhere else.

We looked at LACs with D four years ago. She was pretty dissatisified with every LAC we toured (and we toured a lot of them.) Again, her unhappiness stemmed from the social fit: she was/is a quirky kind of kid, and despite our best efforts she couldn't find a LAC campus with just her type of quirky. (Not granola-quirky; not save-the-whales-quirky; not intellectual-quirky. There are a lot of sub-types of quirky out there, and sometimes a LAC isn't large enough to find just your cohort of quirky.)

She found her "people" at an urban school where she has had to fight for some classes, speak up for herself, and maneuver through some red tape, much like Dietz's daughter. It has been an amazing growth experience for her - and yes, she also has had small classes in her major and some great student-teacher friendships. I wish my undergrad has been more like hers.

[mini]

Are you guys questioning the validity of the general claim I'm making that the probabilities of admission at top grad schools are better for students coming from top research universities than from LACs?"

Yes, I am questioning the validity of the general claim. It doesn't fit with my experience. It doesn't fit with my LAC's having the highest percentage of working astrophysicists and astronomers among its physics/astrophysics graduates of any college in the country. It doesn't fit with my d's experience of a top-3 Ivy program that has NO Ivy graduates in it, not even from the same school. It doesn't fit my social science Ph.D. program at Chicago that was full of LAC graduates, plus one Yalie and one from Michigan State. It just doesn't jive with my general experience: in the sciences, in the humanities, or in the social sciences.

And one of the reasons (which you allude to obliquely) is lack of research experience. At Chicago, when I was there, NO undergraduates got significant research experience in the social sciences other than, perhaps their theses. That's what they paid ME for. Certainly none in the first two years. At my d's Ivy, none get any research experience in the humanities - that's what they pay her for - and even after four years, some hardly knew their professors (this is supposed the most undergraduate-friendly Ivy).

My d's LAC is a national center for cancer research. Undergraduates regularly publish papers in peer-reviewed journals, attend national conferences, network - from the time of their first year. I've never seen anything like it at a national research university, Could happen, of course, but I've never seen it.

Having said that, being the top science student at a second-tier university will often open up amazing doors - with research opportunities, mentoring, internships, and support - far beyond what one might get at a LAC or a "top" research university (which has topflight graduate students doing the work).

[siemom]

My uncle spent many years on the admission committee at an Ivy medical school (he was a physician himself) and frequently told me that the kids from LACs impressed him most b/c of their wide range of interests, their writing abilities, and the amount of time spent in non-pre-med related studies. There was a richness to their experience that impressed him consistently.
Disclosure: DS is at a LAC which he chose over engineering-related programs to which he was admitted because he has many interests which he wants to explore. As parents we decided to allow him his dream even though it might not make the most financial sense as he will likely go to grad school, but that will be his to cover.

[momofthreeboys]

^^ I always thought that was a truth -- that good LACs sent a high percentage of kids onto grad schools. I thought at one time there were a bunch of charts in one of the Loren Pope books that showed the strength of Beloit and Kalamazoos etc.

[Snowdog]

Did not regret it for one second (Bryn Mawr College), and I graduated when there were supposedly "no jobs" for people like me.

After college I worked in Philadelphia (closest major city to the college), and where I got my degree alone gained me interviews (I know because potential employers told me that).

[starbright]

The hesitation comes from the fact that S has expressed in interest in some aspect of business. He's not sure though. I know one can major in accounting, computer science and econ at an LAC. But are these LAC majors discounted by an employer in comparison to a full-blown business degree from a nationally well-regarded public university?

Haven't read the whole thread but my two cents as a business school professor. As background, so you know my biases, I love LACs for their educational aspect (which is what I think undergrad should be about), love admitting LAC educated students into our PhD program, and I'm also pretty negative on undergrad business degrees (for a lot of reasons that belong in a different thread).

But I think doing a business degree at a LAC won't be the best of both worlds but maybe the worst? I'm sure there are exceptions, and would be helpful if college names were provided (maybe if I read the thread I'd see them), but if I may generalize for a moment: I think the disadvantage of a LAC undergrad is that one will miss out on all the very valuable bells and whistles that typically come with a business school in a larger environment. Most well known business schools have very large career centers, resume and practical assistance (that goes on long after you graduate), large alumni base networking opportunities, endless industry visits and professional visits, case competitions, lots of meet and greets with folks in the industry,....all kinds of 'professional' stuff literally on a daily basis that is hard to duplicate in a small school (and especially if that school is located in a small town or rural environment).

[starbright]

I want to add that if my student was keen on business and really fit with a LAC, I'd strongly strongly suggest go to the LAC, major in anything that excites you, work a few years and go get your MBA. Seriously, THAT would be the best of both worlds.

[dadx3]

I went to a top LAC (as have/are all 3 kids). I don't regret it for a minute, and I don't think they do, either. ~40 years ago I went to a top 5 graduate school in my field, and found I was better prepared than most of my graduate school classmates, who included those from Harvard, Stanford, UC Berkeley. Interestingly, one of my classmates who has done very well professionally graduated from Wabash.

The earlier point about math may be accurate, though. It seems the top pure math PhD programs really want to see a year or more of graduate level classes. It is hard or impossible for most LACs to provide this, no matter what they call their courses. By my observation it seems to me that math is probably an exception, however. The grads of top LACs in other disciplines seem to get in to great grad programs.

I am also not a big fan of the undergraduate business degree. We'd rather see someone with an econ major and a minor in math or computer science.

[bclintonk]

^ I agree with mini (post #53); in my experience, graduates of top LACs are heavily overrepresented in tenured and tenure-track academic positions, relative to the comparatively small numbers of students who attend and graduate from those schools. I just did a quick count of faculty on the corridor where my office is located: as undergrads, 7 attended top LACs, 7 attended Ivies, 5 attended public flagships, and 1 attended a non-Ivy top private university. All attended top graduate programs.

I would also say that a disproportionately large percentage of the university faculty I know send their own kids to LACs, which I take as a pretty strong vote of confidence from insiders in the higher education industry.