<p>There are fundamental differences between liberal arts colleges and universities.</p>
<p>Generally liberal arts colleges offer a more intimate environment and smaller classes.
Generally universities offer a larger, potentially more diverse student body (for better or worse, as you individually perceive it), and a wider course selection.</p>
<p>I think your safest guess is to assume that each of these schools will be relatively representative of their respective type.</p>
<p>Oberlin is large for a liberal arts college, but it is still a liberal arts college.</p>
<p>Whatever you see on the Registrar’s list of courses for the last few semesters is what
they actually offered. There is no secret other list that they give to actually matriculated students that has double this number of courses. These were the courses offered.</p>
<p>And you can look at Northwestern’s list of courses, on their website.</p>
<p>If it looks like there are fewer classes to choose from, one should most appropriately assume that this is not an optical illusion. That is part of the generic tradeoff, for these institution types.</p>
<p>At a liberal arts college you will more frequently run into the situation where a course you want is only given every other semester, or every other year. Or there is only one section of it offered, which could potentially conflict with something else you want to take. Or that some subspecialty of your area that you get interested in is not highly represented on staff. The tradeoff is, when you do take these classes, they will more likely be small classes taught by a Professor with no TAs, and no grad students competing (and generally winning) for Prof’s attention. </p>
<p>And of course, there will still be more you want to take each semester than what you can fit in. But maybe your schedule would look a bit different if certain courses were available when you needed them to be available. and maybe you’d have fewer of such compromises at a large university. Though in a very different environment.</p>
<p>That should be part of the LAC vs. university analysis, always.</p>
<p>Specifically regarding cognitive sciences, though, maybe you should try to talk with someone in the department, or the head of the “concentration” thingy, about courses.</p>
<p>But I suggest don’t rely just on the course catalogs. Often they include courses that aren’t always offered. Look at the Registrar’s websites for the courses offered in the past couple semesters. They are on-line, I believe.</p>