The lack of “hand-holding” at large public universities (and German universities too) has been cited on this forum as a disadvantage and possibly a significant issue for certain students, while the alleged existence of “hand-holding” at LAC’s has been touted as a benefit of a smaller school experience. Until recently, that distinction made sense to me and I saw it as an important consideration for my youngest child who is less mature than her siblings were.
However, as I began to think about what this concept means in terms of specifics, I was at a loss to think of any help I personally received at my own LAC that could be so classified, and nor can I think of any such benefit DS experienced at his small, undergraduate-focused elite college that would fall under the label of hand-holding. I never felt watched over nor sensed there was some safety net to catch me were I to have floundered. In fact, when I did start to struggle a bit with some issues, the college counseling center was not especially helpful. Certainly no one called me to see how I was if I ever skipped class, and the career center was not particularly invested in my job search as a senior. As I’ve been researching schools for D, it seems that the larger schools now offer the same tutoring and other student assistance services as the LAC’s.
So, what nurturing experiences that you would call “hand-holding” have your children had at an LAC that you are sure would not have been available at a larger university?
At my LAC there was an office of student life, concerned with everyone’s experience. I was assigned an advisor who helped me with many things. There were trained RAs on each floor of the dorm to keep track of the students. There were adult house advisors in each dorm for more of the same. The school did not want anyone to drop out, flunk, or be having a terrible time. At the European U that I attended for 2 years, there was none of this. No one kept track of you, no one advised you, no one cared if you succeeded or failed. The dorm was a place you lived with no student activities or supervision. There was no advisor system; you had to make an appointment and wait for a long time in a an office if you had questions about anything. It offered a fine education but no frills and sink or swim.
Not exactly the same as “hand holding”, but at the local Mega U there are numerous ginormous courses with TA’s for recitations where it is entirely possible that no one will ever put your face and name together over the course of the semester. At the Lesser U where I teach, at least I know everyone’s name and can identify those who manage to come to class by the third week or so.
I don’t think this is a university vs. LAC kind of issue. Particularly vis-a-vis career services and career development. Your kid can be at a college with the best career services department in the country, with counselors specializing in overseas fellowships, professional school admissions, Peace Corps/TFA type careers, and an entire team of professionals who know the difference between getting a job at DE Shaw vs. Bloomberg vs. Morgan Stanley, or why P&G vs. Pfizer, or the best way to get an internship in film production. And if your kid waits until March of Senior year to stroll on in… even the best professional will have limited tools at his or her disposal.
Same with disability services,mental health, nutritional counseling, academic advising. A kid who won’t avail him/herself of the services isn’t going to benefit.
I am trying to help a kid now who (three weeks after graduating) is wondering how to get an informational interview at a bank. I’m trying to explain the timing- early junior year you get interviewed for summer jobs; you get an offer in August before Senior year. He is clueless when I explain that he is now competing with the class of 2016 AND 2017 for entry level roles…
I don’t think it’s hand-holding for a college to invest in professionals who know what it takes to win a Rhodes/Marshall/Fulbright, or how to get from college to professional life. Can you get into med school from a college which doesn’t have med school advising? Of course. Can you get a job at Credit Suisse from a college without a career services team? of course.
Will your college kid be able to figure this stuff out on his/her own? Perhaps. In which case, you don’t need to worry about it. But those of us with kids who needed help (a road map/timetable; interview coaching and training; professors who would sit down with their Rolodex and make phone calls when a kid needed a summer job) it REALLY makes the difference in the launching!
My kid goes to NYU (a school with 40,000 plus kids) and had 2 RAs on her floor (who knew all kids in hall) an adult advisor who lived in dorm, and met 2x a semester with academic advisor (they scheduled her classes together.) Big doesn’t have to mean cold…
Agree with blossom and others. “Hand-holding” if that’s what you call it, is available, offered, encouraged at the top LACs - but not forced on students. They are paying for it, whether they actually use it or not. If they are good ‘do it yourself-ers,’ or have savvy connected parents who can do it for them, or are totally uninterested in using the ‘hand-holding,’ then they lose nothing by going to a school (usually a mega-school) that doesn’t offer any of this (or charge for it either).
S attended a LAC where, with little effort on his part, he had close personal relationships with faculty that turned into rec letters, calls/emails about internships or awards that he might be interested in applying for, interview and resume prep services, professional writers (not just fellow students) at the writing center to review his papers before submission, access to personalized counseling (not just a 15 min meeting to sign off on his schedule) about his academic scheduling options, etc…D, at mega university, got all the same things - but she had to reach out to get them, go looking for what she wanted, ask for the advice and plan well in advance for any ‘customization’ or exceptions to the rules that she needed. She learned by watching her brother (and talking to us) that these things were available if you knew to ask. Less savvy students at mega U didn’t know to ask and didn’t get what she did. This is another way in which the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’ are divided.
I disagree with that characterization. Most of the students where I teach are from the “have not” side of the tracks. I am regularly surprised by how many of them have asked me for recommendation letters for various things - med school, dental school, scholarships, transfers, etc.
At Mega U, their Intro Physics professors most likely don’t know one from another and would have little to say by way of a recommendation letter regardless of whether the student is a “have” or a “have not”. In fact, while I was a TA there, I had a student request one from ME. (I did the best I could, but how much authority does a TA have?)
@N’s Mom I could not agree more. Especially your last sentence. My kids hate to ask for exceptions but they are learning that sometimes they make sense and people who ask for them with good reasons often get something that someone who did not ask but has an equally good reason does not get.
Mine were at an LAC and a research university and I didn’t really see any greater hand-holding at the LAC. Indeed, the u had a greater breadth of services.
Of course, if we go back a generation ago, there was less “hand holding” in general.
For example, a big state university that now guarantees dorm space for frosh (or frosh + soph) may have not had enough dorm space to house all frosh who wanted dorm rooms a generation ago. I.e. many non-commuter frosh had to look for off-campus housing in the summer between high school and college back then.
How silly. How is anyone supposed to know those kids need or want something if they don’t ask? Even babies know to cry when they are hungry, wet, or being poked by a diaper pin. How coddled are our kids that people have to follow them around trying to anticipate their needs?
Catholic schools all have what is called a Campus Ministry. Beyond the obvious, they function to support students in a time of loss, stress, substance abuse, etc.
Having gone to a Catholic school, the people staffing the ministry are priests or nuns with unique qualifications. A family member is a Friar with a PhD in Psychology that was in charge of a Campus Ministry for years at a college.
No matter what religion you are turnning to someone in the clergy can be quite relieving. Often they are open 24/7.
Personally, I wouldn’t use the term “hand-holding,” and I don’t think it’s an LAC vs. research university thing. Some colleges and universities (particularly well-resourced ones) simply offer more student support than others.
For me the example was the difference between my good LAC and the undergrad experience at the Ivy I attended for graduate school. At my undergrad LAC, classes were small (generally < 30 students) and personal relationships were pretty easy to develop with professors. Still, your academic advisors were your busy professors; while they could help you approve your schedules, you generally put them together yourself, and most navigation of college systems (financial aid, career services, etc.) needed to be done yourself. Our career services were mediocre at best.
At the Ivy - a research university, like all Ivies - there’s an entire center for student advising; the students are all assigned an advising dean whose full time job it is to help them with matters related to academics and navigating the sytem of the university. Advising deans have done everything from send professors emails when students were sick from class to calling in emergency calls in the residential life system of a student posted something worrying on Facebook. Career services there were just phenomenal, and most of the other student support services were too.
Hmm, well, my eldest has always been one to seek meaningful connection with teachers and adults and that didn’t change when she started college. It’s pretty easy to get to know your professors when your largest class had 12 students. However, I know full well that D would have managed the same relationships had her classes had 600 students because she seeks them out. Has their been some nurturing involved? Sure. She has sought guidance in situations both in and out of the classroom. However, I’m not sure I’d call it “hand-holding” as D’s been able to work and have adult responsibilities since she was quite young. I would say that in her case, when she feels she needs help and advice, the LAC has been there.
I do know that when her roommate started skipping classes on a regular basis and she was at risk of failure, the professors and administration DID reach out to her. She was a first generation student coming from an impoverished background, difficult home life and not enough built-up trust and faith in adults to seek help. I’m not sure she would be returning next year had members at the LAC not taken notice. I’m not sure she’d have gotten that needed attention had she gone to a big flagship.
Doesn’t matter if they advertise “hand-holding” (aka nurturing) or not. The student always has to either seek out the handholding, or be on the verge of catastrophe.
As for Catholic schools, my friend had to take her kids out of their Catholic school because her special needs (ADHD mostly) child was picked on by teachers. The worst offender was the religion teacher
Anyway, I don’t care WHERE your kid goes, they need to seek out each professor and try to start a dialogue with them. There will be some who don’t want to deal with students outside of class, but many like myself actually want to help people.
Kid #1’s LAC has lots of what some people term hand holding. As blossom said, the key is that the student takes advantage of all the services and opportunities that are available. Sure and kid could coast through and not use them (although it would be harder) but they are readily available and easy to access. I love it because it gets me off the hook of worrying about the kid navigating successfully through to the next step with internships, resumes, research positions, summer grants, etc. etc. I view these 4 years as a process of learning not only your field but how to do all those kinds of things so that the kid, by the end of Jr. year, really know what steps to take and when and how to hit the ground running. They have a rock wall too.
