I had two kids who went to medium sized research universities. They were very, very different - and not just because one majored in International Relations and the other in Comp Sci. There were things related to how the departments were set up, how many people go abroad, gen ed requirements, the kind of students attracted to each place. They both offered what my kids thought they were looking for, though I think the IR kid might go elsewhere if he had to do it again. (Not that he hated his school by any means.)
“Elite colleges provide lots of luxury goodies. Some of them may be things like fancy dorms or amenities, but more important (to me, anyway) are things like lots of famous people coming to campus to give speeches…”
In D1’s freshman year at Harvard she lived in the dorm that also houses the University President’s office on the ground floor of the same building. And pretty much all of the famous people who come to campus (and they are legion) first call on the president to be formally welcomed to the campus. So kids in D’s dorm would sometimes watch out the windows to see the famous person in question being escorted to the building and then rush down the stairs and outside in time to “bump into” and greet the celebrity out on the sidewalk, maybe get to shake his/her hand. They could get to meet everyone from Paris Hilton to former US presidents that way.
But I never saw very much of what be called luxury goodies or fancy dorms. The dorms there were much more old and traditional than fancy or luxurious.
I think Hunt was including things like famous speakers or $ for extracurricular pursuits in his definition of luxury goodies.
PG, was the larger university an elite private or an underfunded public?
An elite private. Comparable schools academically. I just didn’t a lot of difference between being in an LAC and being in a liberal arts college embedded within a larger university. The courses were similar. The class sizes were similar. The interaction with profs was similar. You’d learn exactly the same things being an Econ major at the LAC as you would being an Econ major at the research u. The division seems a little arbitrary to me and indeed my kids had both LACs and research u’s on their lists.
PG, that sounds like it would be true between, for example, if an applicant was choosing between Williams or Duke. Our current college search is quite less selective, like UNC compared to Reed (reaches), or Lewis and Clark to NCSU (matches), or Lake Forest to Appalachian State (safeties). We only have the experience of the big public university so far, but are continuing to lean toward the LACs for smaller classes, more interaction with profs, etc. But again, my older D at NCSU loves it, so it always comes to fit.
I think D limited her search unnecessarily on two fronts—first, she wanted a research university rather than an LAC, and second, she wanted a school with a med school/hospital close to the main campus. In retrospect, I don’t think those criteria were as important as she thought they were.
I also think she underestimated the resources available to students at relatively small schools. She went to a relatively big high school (3,000) and couldn’t imagine that a college the same size would have been “enough.” So, she focused on mid-sized colleges, 7,000-12,000. She got it. But I think she might have eliminated schools she would have liked by putting those limits on.
How does North Carolina’s public LAC, UNC Asheville, fit into your search?
@Dustyfeathers I don’t think it’s embarrassment on the part of any of those graduates. I think it is a form of Ivy etiquette, and they are just trying to be polite and not appear to be too eager to brag. For Princeton, the usual response to “where did you go to college?” is, “in New Jersey”. Then if the other person says “Oh, Rutgers”, they will say “No, Princeton”, but if the other person doesn’t say anything they will leave it at New Jersey. At least that’s how I have seen it happen.
I disagree.
My daughter was an economics major at a large research university. Her experience differed from that of economics majors at liberal arts colleges in two important ways:
(1) Many of her classes were quite large, mostly because students from other colleges were in those classes with her. For example, she sometimes shared classes with students from the undergraduate business program.
(2) She had the opportunity to take courses in subjects outside the liberal arts college. By the time she graduated, she had completed two finance courses, two accounting courses, and an entrepreneurship course, all from non-liberal arts divisions of the university. These courses were very relevant to her career plans, and she was glad of the opportunity to take them.
In her opinion, the advantage of being able to take courses outside the liberal arts division of the university outweighed the disadvantage of the larger classes. Others might disagree.
But in any case, the experience was different from that of a student at an LAC.
@ucbalumnus Regarding UNC-Asheville, my D is also considering it. But some stats regarding students concern us. Freshman retention rate of 80%, 4 year grad rate of 38%, students over the age of 25 is 17%, part-time students is 16%, and to some extent it is a commuter campus. Also, compared to private LACs, it is underfunded.
What D likes is that it is more left-leaning than any other NC public and is in a lovely city. And it is equal to App State in SAT/ACT ranges, and nearly as high as NCSU. We live in central NC and have never known anyone who went to UNC-A. UNC Wilmington and App State and ECU and NCSU, that’s where most students go. A few to UNC, and virtually nobody gets into Duke. (Though Duke decals and bumper stickers and flags are common in our rural county, as its basketball team is much more popular than our Charlotte NBA team).
But my D really wants to go out of state, which relates to this thread you began. Is an elite (relative term, related to student) college worth the extra expense, when state-supported colleges are much less expensive? We think it really comes down to the experience the student can get from a small college where most students live on campus and students come from all over the USA, the world.
The advice in this thread reminds me of advice I got during my early days living in Manhattan:
“Don’t date models”
(i.e. great advice that I would immediately ignore if I had the opportunity!)
One thing I missed seeing mentioned is that elite colleges have a safety net to make sure a student graduates in 4 years, and even for the safety itself.
@Marian: the tradeoff between liberal arts education and access to professional schools’ course offerings is indeed an important decision a student needs to make. Some like apples, whereas some likes oranges.
This tradeoff reminds me an endless (probably unnecessary) argument about the relative merits between Wharton finance and HYP economics on Wall Street.
Looks like the graduation rates of 38/61/64% slightly underperform the expected ones of 43/62/66% from calculations at http://www.heri.ucla.edu/GradRateCalculator.php . http://www.collegedata.com/cs/data/college/college_pg05_tmpl.jhtml?schoolId=1599 does indicate that 96% of frosh live in the dorms, though only 41% overall (perhaps reflecting the typical trend of non-frosh resident students living nearby off-campus).
@prof2dad, another factor that might be relevant for some students (though not my kid) is the opportunity for qualified upperclass undergraduates at research universities to take graduate courses – something that doesn’t happen at LACs (unless they’re part of some sort of consortium that includes a university) because LACs don’t have graduate programs.