About top 50 lac colleges in the usa

Applying to College
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so except resources or facilities top 50 lac colleges have nearly the same teaching quality ?

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@ucbalumnus – I agree, that was what my research showed, that contrary to my spouse’s view that there was significant differences in quality of the expertise of faculty outside the top LACs, the training of the tenure track faculty at T50s, and even T70s, was similar enough not to be a distinguishing factor. My kid said the Knox College Poli Sci class on civil rights he visited was the most amazing class visit he had, breaking a lot of preconceptions

And to @internationalss and others – “teaching quality” means more than just “faculty PH.D. training.” The classroom experience will be affected by faculty training as a teacher as opposed to a researcher – so whether the college invests in development of faculty as teachers – plus other factors like student engagement, and random things like whether the professor’s kid was up all night with a fever so the professor is dragging through the day. For our family, we could put aside worries that our kid wouldn’t have access to a strong education if he went to something “lower ranked.”

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43

@Publisher I find this response more helpful than some of the absolutes stated in your previous posts. I respectfully point out that you do not know the OP (or other readers) and how they may view your input and take it as gospel. Anecdotes are great for emphasis so long as it is clear that is what it is
 a personal opinion based on personal experience.

I only have my own experience as a student and now as a parent with my first and only. With that in mind, I agree with @ucbalumnus that “it depends.”

  • What are your academic goals and what colleges/unis offer that curriculum?
  • Placement success (career or post-grad)?
  • Access to professors
  • Campus location, size, etc.?
  • Interested in sports, Greek life, social scene, etc.?
  • Collaborative vs competitive?
  • Conservative vs liberal
  • Cost

These are just examples and by no means all inclusive.

For our experience, my D felt most comfortable on our visits to LACs in urban or suburban areas. She is interested in pre-health so access to research facilities, hospitals and service opportunities is important and limited the LACs she would consider. She also looked closely at all the majors offered in case she changed her mind.

ETA: Hopefully this does not stray too far from the question about rankings and LAC vs uni.

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44

Whoa. That is just false.

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45

Please feel free to express your opinion, defend once if necessary, but then rest. College Confidential is not a debating society and nobody’s mind will be changed.

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46

In many areas, the junior and senior level classes at selective LACs are equivalent to grad courses - check out catalogs. That’s why these students have no trouble getting into Grad Schools and figure high on the list of where PHDs got their start.
The exception is math, if the student is taking Diff Equations in HS rather than AP calculus for instance, and some foreign languages. However foreign language courses can be more advanced, it really depends on the college. (For a practical experiment, compare the courses offered this semester in French at Brandeis, Northeastern, and Denison. Add Bryn Mawr, Middlebury, BU and Lehigh or University or Miami. Then choose a less commonly taught language of your choice.)
Generally speaking, national universities will offer more languages at the beginning level, from Polish to Swahili to Korean. However there may not be a major in each. If you’re unusually advanced in a sequential subject you encounter specific challenges in finding an appropriate college.
What subjects are you interested in @waittheday?
For other subjects, since you can only take 4 or 5 courses per semester, you wouldn’t lack choices. Even a small LAC will offer close to 800- 1,000 classes and 5 or 6 advanced classes in your subject each semester, ie., more than you can take. However you do have more choice among these courses at the upper level at a national university, especially if you already know you want to specialize, say, in military history or biological anthropology. Just as with students who are unusually advanced in math and foreign language, this doesn’t matter to most students.
Where are you attending school right now and why are you asking? Are you interested in applying even though LACs aren’t well known in your country, are you just wondering what in the world these colleges are, 
?

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Some colleges appear to be especially appreciated for their classroom experience:

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interesting read on Northeastern How Northeastern University Gamed the College Rankings

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50

@MYOS1634 i am the clone of @waittheday because i have the limit of new user :)) i come from vietnam and people told me that if i am not specialized in something that not required too much facilities such as engineer so i will received equall knowledge and teaching qualities \ i want to learn com sci and data scie and i though that it’s not a big deal about which school it is , thus there are so many lac college that have even better data science degree than nationa uni

51

“I believe the poster was referring to the 2015 Forbes ranking that was tucked inside the article toward the bottom.”

I think the OP was referring to companies that have a significant percentage of employees from top-10 schools and there being 4 LACs in the top-10. Google e.g. has 30% of top-10, but that’s pretty much because of Stanford and MIT, not the other schools on the list. The bigger blocks on the chart are orange (Berkeley, Cal Tech) and green (Michigan, UCLA), and silicon valley companies with many employees from schools ranked below 100 is because of Purdue, UCs and San Jose State.

52

Spouse and I have two T20 LACs and two T20 universities (PhDs) between us. We absolutely loved our experiences at the time and for the particular degrees. I do think it depends on your personality and your course of study. My wish for my own children is that they want to go to a LAC for undergrad.

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53

bruh this post is about top 50 of both ranking ?? not 20

54

that is because national universities have much more students than lac college ?

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overall do you guy think that ,except learning subjects that require much sophisticated machine , i can receive a good education qualities as national univer when learning in LACs ?

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This ranking is a bit older (and based on a previous version of the SAT), but you will note that the standardized scoring profiles of some LACs in the 26–50 range (by U.S. News rankings) placed them above even some highly ranked NUs such as UCLA. If students of this high degree of preparation choose LACs, why would you think the academics at these same LACs might be lower than that of NUs in their statistical vicinity?

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tks u alot

58

"For example, if money was no object, I would pay full price for a college like Bowdoin, but I’m not sure I’d pay full price for a college like Union, even though it’s a wonderful school. "

And I would pay FP for Union. There is a lot to recommend it that is different from Bowdoin. (In addition to engineering.) But in reality, a student who was accepted to Bowdoin will probably be offered merit at Union.

Having looked at LACs at both ends of the top 50 list, I think that if the fit is right, a student can have an excellent experience regardless. And I can think of one student who went to a LAC that was well out of the top 50 (by choice), got tons of personal attention, thrived, and is now in a highly selective PhD program in a competitive field.

There’s a lot about the LAC experience that is great. It’s really about what you want those 4 years to be, both in and out of the classroom.

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[quote=“internationalss, post:50, topic:2809160”]
am the clone of @waittheday because i have the limit of new user :)[/quote]

Sock puppets limit the usefulness of the thread. Closing

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