What is a “general interest college”?
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It has always made sense to me. With business being one of the most popular majors, interested students compare Babson to business schools at “general interest colleges” all day and everyday.
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By this distinction, do you mean something like “colleges with a limited selection of majors” vs. “colleges with a broad selection of majors”?
It seems to me that the biggest consequence of attending a college with a limited selection of majors (such as Olin, or Cooper, or Babson) would be that a student might decide they want to study something else that isn’t offered there at all?
So for an undecided student, or one who might change their mind about what they want to study, it might be useful to make a distinction between “colleges with limited majors” and “colleges where you can study pretty much anything you like, without having to transfer to another college.”
But from the perspective of someone who thinks they might want to study engineering or business, this would seem to put lots and lots of colleges in the “limited selection of majors” category… since lots of colleges don’t offer engineering or business majors.
(So for example, my D does not have any LACs on her list, except maybe Harvey Mudd. She’s not opposed to considering such schools, but from her perspective, most of them are “specialty colleges” since they wouldn’t offer her the option to study engineering.)
Not to mention Nursing Schools, Schools of Education, Art & Design Schools, Schools of Music & Performing Arts, Schools of Architecture, Maritime Academies, etc.
But some colleges don’t even have an undergrad business program.
If this sort of comparison is your interest, you can use lists like this:
Yes, pretty much, and for the reasons you gave. Some undergrad programs by design are exploratory, where you can go, try out different things, then decide on your major. And it might be any of a long list of diverse things the college offers.
Others are more designed for people who already know what they want to do in at least a narrower range, and from the start the experience is really organized around that.
One of the confusing things, though, is one institution can have different undergrad subdivisions that function in different ways. So, it might have some specialty schools and then something like an Arts & Sciences subdivision. And then sometimes there isn’t much barrier to moving between schools, but sometimes there is, and sometimes it depends which school you are talking about.
And conversely, I agree even if you want an exploratory model, it needs to have anything you might want to explore. So, in your D’s case it makes perfect sense to eliminate exploratory colleges without engineering (although I would note Mudd is not the only LAC with engineering).
Of course as usual, this is pointing to all generic rankings not really making sense. There is just far too much variety in focus, curriculum structure, internal transfer policies, and so on. So you need to figure out which colleges would work for you, and then you can compare among them. And in many cases, there will be no published list that looks like that, and that’s fine.
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Yes, and as frequently comes up here, kids with such interests have a lot of choices to make. Like, in Arts you can do minors, combined or designated secondary majors, BA-type degrees, or BFA-type degrees. There is a big step up in four-year commitment with the BFA, and often special admissions, but colleges can sometimes also have special admissions for BAs in Arts, sometimes even minors and combined/secondary majors in Arts. And sometimes not, or even some of both.
You can then potentially do what you want in a formal art school of some kind, which can be an entire institutional focus, or a specialty school within a broader institution. But you might also be able to do what you want where Art is organized as one or more departments within a broader school.
So if you are interested in Arts, there isn’t really one approach where all colleges can be compared neatly. And depending on what you want, a variety of colleges good for other things might not be suitable for your particular needs.
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