<p>I was involved in a conversation about college admissions at a party last night. One woman said her DD, a h.s. junior, is looking at LACs, but wants to make sure whatever school she seriously considers is academically challenging. She named about 10 highly-ranked LACs and asked opinions of those of us who were standing around. Middlebury, Vassar, Holy Cross, Dickinson, Bucknell, Kenyon, Colgate and Colorado College were on her list, among others. I remarked that each of them was well-respected and academically-challenging, explaining that my experience with most of these schools is purely anecdotal. I’m wondering what you think ‘academically challenging’ means and if you agree with my assessment.</p>
<p>By challenging, does she mean academic pressure? Because I don’t think very many colleges are challenging in themselves. You can be challenged at a lower-tier school, or breeze through a top-ranked school, depending on what you study and what standards of performance you hold yourself to.</p>
<p>I certainly agree with the assessment. To me, academically challenging in this case means engaging to the student and providing courses that challenge the students ability to think and support positions on topics. This is where LACs excel.</p>
<p>Princeton Review provides an “Academic Rating”. Academic ratings are based on student surveys about such issues as professors’ accessibility and class sizes, as well as institutional reports about student-faculty ratios and percent of classes taught by teaching assistants. </p>
<p>College/Academic Rating
Middlebury 98
Vassar 96
Holy Cross 98
Dickinson 89
Bucknell 89
Kenyon 96
Colgate 96
Colorado College 95</p>
<p>These are all available for free on-line at: [Test</a> Prep: GMAT, GRE, LSAT, MCAT, SAT, ACT, and More](<a href=“http://www.princetonreview.com/]Test”>http://www.princetonreview.com/)</p>
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<p>As far as I am concerned, there is absolutely no overlap between the things discussed in the quote above and what goes into “academically challenging”.</p>
<p>That said, however, the list the OP had is certainly a list of colleges that are pretty academically challenging, although those are hardly the only ones or the most challenging ones. (The list excludes most of the LACs with reputations for being the most academically challenging.) And there is probably a fair spread within the list itself. I don’t think Dickinson is on a par with some of the others, for example. But I really don’t know enough specifics to back that up.</p>
<p>Since I am familiar w/ several of these schools (because my kids attend) and I and my husband are college professors (actually he is a Dean and I am an adjunct, sometimes fulltime, for 20 years) NOT at these schools, I believe I can speak w/ some knowledge.</p>
<p>There is no doubt that some of the schools listed by the op, the ones I am familiar with, academically challenge their students bus loads more than we do at our state school.</p>
<p>The students at the higher ranked schools are expected to do more. My S, a student at one of named schools, attended a semester at our local state college on a medical leave . He said the workload difference was a joke. He did not take freshman courses at the state, but actually some of the most rigorous courses (high level physics, computer science programming, intermediate economics.) He was always the top student in his class w/o much work. Her said he had no where near the same amount of work and expectations as he did at his LAC. </p>
<p>The state school he attended, we work at, is a top ranked USNews, tier 1, northeast school.</p>
<p>Some schools are more academically challenging, for sure. But not every student is up to that. So there are schools that are more appropriate for the student not as academically gifted.</p>
<p>I’ve heard that Franklin & Marshall is supposed to be particularly academically challenging. It is a another LAC in PA, like Dickinson and Bucknell, which were on the original list.</p>
<p>Swarthmore comes to my mind.</p>
<p>Princeton Review’s Academic Rating for Swarthmore is 99 and for Franklin & Marshall College 93.</p>
<p>Along with Swarthmore, Reed College is among the most academically challenging LACs.</p>
<p>Princeton Review’s Academic Rating for Reed is 99, identical to Swarthmore.</p>
<p>S is at Rollins, a tier 2 liberal arts school, and as a freshman psych major had at least one assignment that rivaled what I did as a first year doctoral psychology student at GWU. Other assignments rivaled what I had to do as an undergrad at Harvard. S had top 2% scores in high school, but underperformed. Now, he’s being academically challenged and is rising to the challenge with enthusiasm.</p>
<p>I think LACs in general may be more academically rigorous than many other colleges because of the small classes and the fact that professors, not TAs, do the teaching and are very accessible.</p>
<p>H went to a tier 2 LAC – Calvin – and also had a rigorous academic experience.</p>
<p>I’m not sure who teaches a course determines if it’s challenging or not. No doubt an experienced professor, especially at a LAC, should offer a better educational experience ,on average, than a TA. But whether its more or less challenging I’m not sure (it dpeneds perhaps on what is meant by challenging). Educational? Yes. Demanding? Not necessarily. TAs often have little say in the syllabus, grading criteria etc., and if they have discretion could be as easily be less challenging, or more challenging (given they may not teach well yet but have extremely unrealistic standards of what undergrads are capable of). </p>
<p>There can be giant differences in challenge and standards across schools, but mild differences in some official rank is unlikely to matter (e.g. real difference between “90” and “99” I doubt). And some state schools are easily as challenging as ‘prestigous’ schools. </p>
<p>Though not all state schools are similar at all either! I was recently privvy to a very impressive 4.0 transcript of a student from a state school that offered 3 credit courses in topics like “beginner bowling”, “business math”, and “powerpoint presentations”. The idea that they are a whole course in a four course semester and weighted equally in the GPA calculation blows my mind.</p>
<p>Northstarmom, Calvin?! That is one school we never hear about on CC … yet it’s such a good school. Along with Hillsdale & Hope, it’s one of Michigan’s unknown gems.</p>
<p>From experience I can say that there can be huge differences between schools of similar selectivity, but I am not sure those differences are reflected in any official ranking.</p>
<p>For example, in my experience many upper-level math and computer science classes at the University of Pennsylvania are notably more challenging than upper-level classes at Haverford which are again notably more challenging than even the hardest upper-level classes taught at Bryn Mawr. Where with “challenging” I mean the pace/depth of the class and how involved the homework assignments are. I remember comparing my Real Analysis notes from Haverford to the notes from a student who took the course at Bryn Mawr, and I noticed that Bryn Mawr spread the material we covered in one semester out over two semesters (while skipping some of the harder proofs that we did not get to skip). I also saw homework assignments from the same course at Penn and they were definitely a step up from Haverford and two steps up from Bryn Mawr!</p>
<p>And of course it varies by department. I have friends who report taking classes at Penn because they are easier than the classes at Bryn Mawr in their departments of interest.</p>
<p>The only way to make any sort of fair assessment is to take classes in each department. I thought I had done quite a bit of research on Bryn Mawr before I came, but I did not know that their math and computer science departments are striving to make their majors accessible to students who may not consider majoring in a science elsewhere. Other departments are trying to be rather exclusive. Unfortunately few departments broadcast their teaching philosophy to prospective students, at Bryn Mawr or elsewhere.</p>
<p>This has to be a very difficult question to answer unless you have been at the schools mentioned.</p>
<p>My sons are juniors in electrical/computer engineering and two of their friends who went to smaller LACS and are in engineering report their classes are not that tough. They shake their heads at the workloads of my sons at a large private and a state public university known for engineering.</p>
<p>I can’t imagine engineering not having a heavy workload, wherever you are. Problem sets, no way around it!</p>
<p>starbright: “Beginner bowling” & “Powerpoint Presentations” are the kinds of classes that should be 1 credit hour. At my 3rd-tier-except-in-a-couple-of-fields university, they would have been!</p>