The advantage of smaller class size isn’t about STEM vs other academic disciplines. STEM at the elementary levels (e.g. freshman STEM courses) are well established, so classes are mostly one-way lectures. Larger classes aren’t impediment to learning for many students. A few, at both ends of the talent distribution, may benefit from more interactivity, but the majority are generally content. However, that’s increasingly not the case as classes becomes more advanced, more project-based, more seminar-like, and two-way. The advantage of smaller classes is obvious in such classes. Smaller classes are also able to better target their intended students. A wide distribution of talents for difficult materials in the same class is a nightmare for the teacher and his/her students.
Regardless of academic disciplines, if your student is super talented or needs lots of hand-holding, s/he is more likely to benefit from colleges that offer smaller classes with easier interactivity with professors. How much is that worth depends the individual and the family’s financial situation.
“While that may be true in some lower level courses, that is not true in many other situations.”
Agree, but the topic was more on freshman and sophomore courses since that were the larger class sizes are. Even in stem at large public universities, junior and senior level classes are smaller.
“if your student is super talented or needs lots of hand-holding,”
It would depend on your definition of super talented and smaller class sizes but in general most super talented students, regardless of major, do not go small colleges. A LAC has less than 2,000 students, but the places where STEM students go are bigger, 6-8K, if not larger (Berkeley, UM). Outside of Harvey Mudd, the only two small schools are MIT and Cal Tech, and nobody is confusing them with LACs.
One of the first questions you’re asked is the importance of size of college and the question is - do you need a smaller class size to do well or can you do well in either small or large classes. Wouldn’t the super-talented be able to do well in either? They’ll be able to do well in Calculus or Literature at Amherst, or Columbia or Berkeley.
Actually for my child, who has a lot of interests and doesn’t exactly know what she wants to do. Maybe something in molecular biology and genetics. But maybe not. I see the advantage of a smaller LAC type school to be the flexibility as much as the personal attention and small class sizes.
As I understand it, and I have only been a grad student, not an undergrad at UW, is that selection into individual majors itself is a competitive process in the sciences and one pretty much needs to track fairly quickly into one’s desired major. Outside the ultra high demand programs like Engineering and Business I don’t know how much of a problem that actually is in practice. But a smaller LAC where she can bounce around and explore a bit more before diving into a specific profession might be good for her. She will be fine if she has 200 kids in her Bio 101 or Chem 101 class. But she will probably want to explore her options before settling on a major and future profession. Is that sort of flexibility worth double the cost? I doubt it. But I see it as an advantage.
Everyone probably would have somewhat different threshold for the definition of super-talented. My prior post is about larger colleges vs smaller ones, not limited to only LACs. Super-talented would certainly do well in both, but they’ll likely flourish more in a setting with more interactions with their professors and fellow super-talented students. Caltech/MIT surely come to mind in STEM. Among LACs besides Mudd, there’re schools like Swarthmore, which has produced its share of Nobel laureates.
Not necessarily that small for majors that are large enough to graduate hundreds of students per year. Common examples are CS and biology, as well as popular non-STEM majors like business.
MIT is not that small. But you are forgetting about small (LAC-size) engineering-focused schools like South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, Milwaukee School of Engineering, Webb Institute, Maine Maritime Academy, Massachusetts Maritime Academy.
If you go to MIT size, there are several more engineering-focused schools of that size, such as Colorado School of Mines, United States Naval Academy, Stevens Institute of Technology, Missouri University of Science and Technology, Illinois Institute of Technology, Florida Institute of Technology.
My friend wanted a smaller school for her daughter, a daughter who needed a lot of hand holding. When she asked at schools like Amherst, she was told there were very few special services and daughter would be expected to search out accommodations she needed. Daughter did go to a smaller (~8000?) student school and it was not pretty. She transferred to a large (25000) school and worked with the disabilities office and it was fine. At the big school most of her classes were small because there just weren’t that many students in her major.
My daughter went to a 10,000 undergrad school and while she did have 3 large lectures, by far the majority of her courses had a limited class size of 24. She knew her professors and other students.
Youngest was an exchange student at Pomona College. Had access to classes at Claremont McKenna and Harvey Mudd. That experience was superior to family’s experiences at Johns Hopkins, Swarthmore and Georgetown. Don’t know much about Reed. If we had to do all over again it would be Pomona for all the kids. Just wish they had a D3 mens lacrosse team. Don’t know much about Reed. Be careful with the small colleges – Swarthmore was a stifling social and political environment.
I think there are also economies of scale that apply to some fields more than others.
If you are teaching English Lit or Philosophy or Art History you basically just need some seminar rooms and office space for professors and probably a good library (although not so much anymore). If you have 10 students in the major or 100 it doesn’t really matter.
Oh the other hand, if you are teaching something like aerospace engineering or other equipment-intensive engineering fields then can’t build out 100 million dollar engineering labs with state-of-the-art CAD/CAM machines and all the other high-tech equipment for designing and testing prototypes just for a couple dozen students. It just doesn’t pencil out. That’s why the big expensive STEM programs are at larger schools not small LAC places. You need a certain size student body to make it pencil out. And, you probably also need a fairly large collection of professors in a lot of different specialties to provide a well-rounded education.
I think, as many people have said, the answer is “It depends.” I encouraged ShawSon to go to a small, prestigious East Coast LAC over a number of schools including Ivies and the flagship state university and schools that gave some merit aid.
As people have said, it depends a lot on the parents’ finances, the kid’s need and likely other factors. My son is brilliant and severely dyslexic. I thought he would be better off at a very high-end LAC with few or no distribution requirements. I thought the professors would quickly grasp in small classes how bright he was and be relatively flexible with him when disabilities needs arose (he would get very fatigued from excess reading and writing). He was noticed and in most classes, professors gave him flexibility or set up independent study courses for him. He was assigned to a freshman seminar and fell in love with the subject, which he turned into an independent major in Behavioral Econ. He was also a Math and straight Econ major. The professor in the seminar met with him separately for an hour a week outside of class because my son had something scheduled during office hours (something that would never happen at a bigger school), became his advisor and supervised a number of independent studies and hired him as a research assistant.
The flexibility to organize his schedule in a way that matched both his interests and his disabilities was worth a lot. He had a great college experience, graduated summa cum laude and Phi Bet Kappa and won a number of awards for academic excellence. He later got into the best grad school in the world for what he wanted to study.
The Dean of Disabilities Services was very helpful to him and the Dean of Freshman said, “I’ll be your advisor and tell you which courses not to take.” When ShawSon showed up with his proposed first semester, freshman year schedule, the Dean said, “That’s too hard. I want you to learn what it is like to succeed here. Come back with an easier schedule.” My son did and earned three As and an A+ in his first semester. It was helpful learning.
From my perspective, that close hands-on relationship, the helpfulness of the Disabilities Services Office and the Dean of Freshman, and the willingness of a professor to really spend time with my son made the expenditure of the funds worthwhile. His learning disabilities were easier to handle in this context. Moreover, I was never going to qualify for financial aid (not rich enough to be rich but too much income to qualify for fin aid) and had saved for both of my kids’ college so the financial tradeoffs were really with the flagship state university and some schools that gave merit aid. So, the “It depends” worked for our situation. Our situation does not apply to everyone.
I am admittedly biased towards LACs. However, I’m well aware that not all LACs are alike. I’ve also seen how it can be a really big issue when a student does not fit, does not like an LAC, whereas you can find a lot of other venues at big schools
My quirky kid felt like he was in heaven on earth at his LAC. Things just fell together perfectly, and I was more than happy to pay the difference in cost because he had had rough high school years and this was just everything I wanted for him. But my two who went to large State schools loved their experiences and one got small school attention he needed from a small department, concerned faculty in that department within a large school. I do not believe he would have graduated in 4 years from most schools including the LAC that was in the running among the final choices.
OP, You are fortunate to have a DD who sounds like she’ll flourish wherever and that she could soar at a large research university with no ceilings in advance academics. I’ve made kids that have made me pause about going to a large state school ( including my own kids) but yours sounds like she’d flourish.
I would submit that most super-talented STEM is better off (would flourish) in a mid-sized or larger Uni where s/he can easily take grad seminars in the major, which for the most part, don’t exists at LACs.
Your daughter fits into an interesting demographic, especially from the perspective of northeast LACs. As a solid upper middle class family, you can expect that she might benefit from discounting. This is a phenomenon where colleges will throw money at students who they are hoping to entice, and discount the sticker price.
There are plenty of east coast LACs who would love to have more representation from the northwest US. Consider throwing in some apps to LACs where she might get some good aid offers: Middlebury, Smith, Haverford, Bates, Bowdoin, etc.
OP said their EFC is probably around $90K…that means no fin aid will be forthcoming from need-based only schools like Middlebury, Bates, Bowdoin, Haverford. Not sure if Smith gives merit or not.
I don’t disagree with that, if the comparison is with a generic LAC. Again, my posts about advantages of smaller college classes aren’t limited to LACs. Also, college size isn’t a determinant for grad-level offerings. Caltech is even smaller than almost any top LAC but offers a wide range of grad-level courses and research seminars.
A small specialized college may actually enroll more students in the specialty area than a large general college. For example, South Dakota School of Mines and Technology enrolls more undergraduate engineering students than the much larger South Dakota State University.
On the other hand, a small general college may be spread thin across many of its subject areas, unless it is very well endowed and funded.
@1NJParent very well said.
My junior son’s classes are two way and he just told me that one of his professors kids lives by us in Chicago. Can’t find that out if he didn’t talk to the professor. Also his project based activity just had 2 others student’s on his project. Can’t get much smaller then that. They had to work with each other and present weekly to the professor. Pretty impressive work actually and the professor is “the” authority in this part of optimization that they were doing so even though the guy is super nice they had to present something that had true merit to it to the person who is like the world authority on it… Lol…
Even with the freshman classes professors doors at least at Michigan are “wide” open. Their cell phone and office phones still ring and they all know how to use email and now… What for it… Video chatting so there is no excuse you can talk to, get coffee with, go for a walk with any professor that is willing at large uni. This illusion is just not correct and I have a child at a very small Lac also for my comparison. Both know many of their professors well and more importantly the professors know them by first name.
"This illusion is just not correct and I have a child at a very small Lac also for my comparison. "
This exact illusion is what’s being propagated by posts suggesting that highly talented kids should pick smaller schools, especially LACs as that’s where other high end talented kids and professors hang out. Which is very far from the truth so I objected. I’ve worked with engineers and CS majors from UM, Purdue, Berkeley and they’re top notch, better than any LAC, outside of Harvey Mudd. Note I didn’t go to any of those college undergrad.
Rose Hulman is not that known outside of the midwest, it gets half the applications as Cal Tech for double the class size.
There’s no reason to limit that statement to STEM. It applies to many arts students, especially those with relatively specialist interests. For example expertise (and therefore availability of courses) in applied subjects like public affairs or urban planning is much more common at state flagships than at LACs.