I’m planning to apply to a couple (non-Ivy) liberal arts schools, such as Amherst, Notre Dame, Wesleyan, etc, and major in either physics or biology.
If I were to attend them, would this hurt me later on when I’m applying to graduate schools in either of those fields?
No. A lot of people would say that it actually improves your application. Look at the number of PhDs that come from places like Reed and Swarthmore.
What @Eeyore123 said,
My D is bio/math major at Davidson and is having fantastic experience and opportunities. She’s planning PhD after and is getting a lot of mentoring, research opps.
Definitely not, and I would say it helps you. You will have a chance to meet professors early on, who can give you good recommendations because they will get to know you. It can be easy to get research opportunities because you aren’t competing against grad students. Your classes will be smaller from the outset, so you can get in-depth more quickly. Many LACs have very high acceptance rates to grad schools.
Agreeing with all of the above- and it doesn’t even have to be a fancy LAC, or an LAC with a rep for the subject.
A big part of your PhD app will be your research experience (assuming the post-covid world is something like the pre-covid world, ofc), and you can do (paid) research during term & over the summer at most LACs, and you can do REUs (paid summer research) all over the US.
Collegekid2 did REUs at 2 national labs and a top national uni, plus her not-famous-for-STEM LAC. Accepted at all 5 of the top-10 PhD programs she applied to.
Not at all. My D went to a LAC and I think her grad school application was helped by the fact that she: 1) did a great deal of research with professors and was the second author on a paper published in a peer-reviewed journal and 2) had close relationships with professors who had her as a student in small classes (some as small as 6 - 12 ) – they knew her well and likely wrote excellent, personalized LORs for grad school (she didn’t see the LORs but got into 6/7 grad schools including her top choice program at an Ivy).
As a side note, Notre Dame is a university not a LAC.
As long as the college has sufficient offerings in your major(s) to prepare you for PhD study (assuming that is your goal), it should be sufficient.
Be aware that biology is a very broad field, so that smaller departments may not have full coverage of all areas at the upper levels; check faculty and course listings to see what is available in each department. Physics has a reasonably well defined core set of upper level courses*, so check that they are offered at reasonable frequency.
OP asked about liberal arts schools, however, not liberal arts colleges – a key distinction. All LACs are liberal arts schools, but not all liberal arts schools are LACs.
Notre Dame is a liberal arts university and refers to itself as such. For example, the Art History website reads as follows:
Liberal Arts include all of the natural sciences and mathematics. So science and math, the S and the M of STEM are not only taught in Liberal Arts schools, but these schools excel in these topics.
Few of these schools are great for engineering, but some are.If you look at the top 20, top 50, and top 100 colleges for the proportion of students who went on to do a PhD in STEM, you will find that 2/3 are Liberal Arts colleges, and 90% are “liberal arts schools”.
The only ones in the top 100 that are not in that general category are Caltech, MIT, Cornell, New Mexico Institute of Mining and Tech, Rose Hulman, CMU, Johns Hopkins, Col. School of Mines, WPI, IIT, and Florida Tech.
re #9: the denominator for these calculations are all students graduating from the institution, regardless of major.
NOT the number of STEM majors the institution graduates. Much less those STEM majors who have similar capabilities upon entrance.
Many universities have basically all the liberal arts subjects, but also offer a number of additional majors for which a STEM PhD is not a likely outcome.
Moreover many universities, particularly the public ones, have a mission (and funding) that requires them to enroll a class with a wider range of incoming capabilities and interests. That does not necessarily mean that their students with high capabilities and interests in advanced degrees cannot achieve their objectives at such institutions.
Indeed, if one looks at the list of top 100 STEM producers, NOT on a per capita basis, None of the top 50 are LACs.
https://www.nsf.gov/statistics/infbrief/nsf13323/nsf13323.pdf
To avoid physics departments that appear to exist mainly to provide service courses for students pursuing other disciplines, consider seeking colleges with departments that graduate more physics majors (per type of institution) than listed below:
Average Annual Physics Bachelor’s Degrees Awarded, by Type of Institution
Liberal Arts Colleges: 6.1
Regional Universities: 8.0
National Universities: 19.5
IPEDS can help you research this, as in https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?q=Notre+Dame&s=all&id=152080#programs, for example.
Schools that have produced Apker Award (the highest recognition for undergraduate research in pyhsics) recipients/finalists may be additionally appealing for the study of physics.
(Source for data: American Institute of Physics)
I missed the reference to physics before.
AIP data and publications pertain to physics departments specifically.
For example:
rosters:
https://www.aip.org/sites/default/files/statistics/rosters/physrost16.4.pdf
“Physics bachelor’s receiving their degrees from departments that
grant graduate-level physics degrees are more likely to pursue
graduate study in physics.”
http://www.aip.org/statistics/trends/reports/bach2010.pdf
“•Physics bachelors from large departments are more likely to attend graduate or professional school with the intention of earning a degree in any field than physics bachelors from smaller departments (Figure 1).
•Graduates of large departments rate their physics and math preparation for a career more highly than graduates of smaller departments”
“http://www.aip.org/statistics/trends/highlite/bachplus5c/bachplus5c.htm”
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@merc81 I would relax this criterion for some Liberal Arts Colleges, since some will maintain a physics department as an active department, even if there are very few graduates, because physics is one of the Liberal Arts.
Of course, you are correct in that attending a college which has faculty with awards in physics is a good criterion.
The number of faculty in the physics department relative to the numbers in other departments is also a good criterion.
Going to a very good program at a LAC will be a good experience. As it will at a “national university”.
Going to a poorly supported program at a LAC has a grater chance of a poor outcome. As it will at a “national university”.
The label on the overarching institution has little impact, IMHO. Businesses hiring graduates in a specific field, or graduate schools evaluating applicants, know the quality of the individual programs.
If there are very few graduating majors, there will be very few upper level courses, offered in very few sections (only one, actually) and likely given only every other year in many cases.
That can make scheduling a nightmare. I remember D1 had a situation where she wanted one course to complete her major and it was offered exactly at the same time as the one course she wanted to complete a language sequence. Such conflicts can occur at any school, but where courses are given only every other year, in a single section, it can become more of an issue.
To expand on what @RichInPitt wrote - if you are looking to go to work right out of school, check out the opportunities that the school provides for internships. Weirdly, some programs at the most “elite” national universities are really poor at providing industry internships for their students, mostly because the department is living in the 1970s and thinks that All The Best Students Go To Do PhDs, and they really only care about The very Best. So they will have internships and jobs in academic labs and some national labs, but the department will not have strong industry connections.
This seems specific to some “elite” private national universities, while public universities and most LACs are pretty good at setting up students with industry internships.
Internships are the No. 1 reason that students get jobs right out of college. Having work experience trumps name recognition of the college any day, and companies looking to recruit college graduates will very often hire the students who were interns at the company.
Won’t hurt at all. In fact might help a lot if you end up working closely with faculty or writing papers as an undergrad. Like any college/university you should check the syllabus carefully, the internships or other related programs and read about how many pursue Phd’s. This data is important. You might also be able to find information regarding the department head if the school is very small. This can also help you ascertain the direction of the department ( check hiring and in which field). Make sure the school is large enough that if one or two top professors leave the program can continue at the same level.
One disadvantage for LACs may be weaker access to on-campus recruiting and a large established alumni base at tech firms. Also, some STEM programs at LACs may not be accredited by professional groups (ABET accreditation for engineering as an example).
Many LACs do not offer engineering at all, except as 3+2 programs (that are rarely completed by transfer to the “2” school that does have engineering). So ABET accreditation is not really relevant for them. A few which do have engineering (e.g. Harvey Mudd, Swarthmore) often do have ABET accreditation.