The beauty of a small school is if you can’t find an organization or group that already does what you’re interested in, you can often start one. It’s often easy to get faculty support to do this. One of my kids started a breakdancing club at his small college. He had never done it before in his life, but thought it might be something fun to do at a nerdy school and it was a big hit.
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Certain schools get recommended based on budget/price.
Some like the idea of saving hundreds of thousands for what is essentially an unknown. College is, in my ways, a blind purchase. You can do your best to figure out in advance if it’s what you want - but when you step foot on campus, it could be very wrong.
On the other hand, some don’t have an extensive budget, if any at all - and for some, that drives the decision.
And with the new parent plus limits of $65K (with an annual $20K limit), we will see more of this - and parents/students will realize later, the feds did us a favor on this one.
Just because one is a big time sports, rah rah school with heavy greek life doesn’t mean they don’t have dungeons and dragons players there.
I think there is more in common with a Bama, UF, and Michigan than there isn’t…in the day to day.
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So back to talking about small schools, the beauty, IMO, is the opportunity for personalized attention, forging relationships with faculty, etc. We were talking yesterday about how we could pretty much talk our way into any class we wanted to take simply by talking to the professor teaching the class.
I can’t say even with small numbers there was ever a sense of not finding like minded people even in some area of small interest.
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I’m confused. I thought the original point was that it may be tough to find like minds if your interests are different from the prevailing. Being the artsy kid at a sporty school may be a lonely existence and vice versa. My example wasn’t trying to represent Emerson as a sporty school. It was saying that you can go to a place that isn’t a sporty school and still find like minds that share your interests and maybe even find academic outlets therefore. If they wanted a sporty school, they wouldn’t apply, much less go to Bard. I thought it was about interests not school t-shirts, which they wouldn’t have for Bridge or Morris Dancing (I don’t know what that is. Is there intercollegiate Morris Dancing?).
But with respect to tailgates, Again, that implies a type of social scene which isn’t necessarily aligned with a love of sports. I’ve played and watched sports my whole life and have never been to a tailgate.
But walk down Brookline Ave or Landsdowne in the fall and you’ll see tons of Emerson t-shirts and sweattops.
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I mean, the topic of this post uses the word “ranking” and links to a ranked list…discussion of methodology is really the only thing worth discussing? If CC wants to start a generic discussion of various types of schools, then CC shouldn’t start with a ranking comparing them!
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I’d argue that the colleges are more worthy of discussing, but I understand your point.
It’s always interesting when people post rankings lists. There are so many. Some rankings value certain factors more than others. For example, Niche’s rankings list is completely different, though many of the same schools are on each list. https://www.niche.com/about/methodology/best-small-colleges/
As ever, I prefer whichever rankings list places my kids’ colleges highest 
. So I like the Niche list better because it places Bates higher.
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Ranking lists love to reduce everything to numbers. That makes their task very easy.
College like any other level of education is about teaching and learning, regardless of the ability level of the students, so it would be nice to gain insights about colleges where some amazing teaching is going on, where there is innovative curriculum, and where students are curious, motivated, and engaged. We get none of that from these lists.
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I get that too, but once again “ranking” in the title invites discussion rank? and a ranked list? If you don’t want discussion of that just plop down a bunch of schools!
Anyway, I think BOTH topics are worthy of discussion. Rankings, for better or worse, matter in our society to many people. In order to break that, we need to actually be discussing methodology MORE I think. That would show why they are dumb, or at least show why/why not they align with ones own values.
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@L_NewEngland, I don’t want this thread to be derailed again about how flawed the methodology is. It’s the same discussion on every rankings thread and I don’t think it really add anything new to our contributors. Plus, folks have already touched upon it already.
If you want to discuss methodology (and methodology in general) I created this thread here: Interesting article from Inside HigherEd about College Rankings, Methodology, Scandals
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I’ve always grouped Harvey Mudd with Rose Hulman and Olin - small engineering schools that do not offer PhDs.
I get it, I would HIGHLY suggest you don’t prime the audience next time by highlighting “rankings” in the title if you want to achieve your goal. I am truly just trying to point out why this isn’t working and you have to moderate. (note, I think this moderation is over the top, FWIW, but not my site. )
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The Forbes list has other schools that are small and offer engineering (e.g. Swarthmore, Trinity U and Trinity C, and others probably). Even though they are not “engineering schools” per se, if someone is looking for small schools with an engineering degree, these schools should be included.
Also, Harvey Mudd is not solely an engineering school. Olin offers degrees in engineering, mech e, and computer engineering only. Rose-Hulman graduated about 75% of its students in engineering (not specified in 2024 CDS, but R-H has several different engineering majors) and 16% in computer science.
Harvey Mudd graduated 21% in engineering and 20% in computer science in 2024. The remainder were in physics, chemistry, biology, and math. These are all liberal arts subjects which is why HMC wants to be considered as an LAC.
Maybe it’s just me, but it bothers me to see Brandeis left off the list and the Claremont Colleges included.
Please explain. The reason it bothers you is not self-evident.
Brandeis has around 5500 undergrads. The criteria for this list is 4K or less.
Nope. Brandeis has only 3600 undergrads. (I checked their common data set.) It’s their 1700 grad students which bring them over 5000.
All of the colleges on that list are under 4000, which is where Brandeis is if we only count undergrads. Their student:faculty ratio is 9:1, which puts them in the same neighborhood as the LACs on the list.
The Claremont Colleges are legally and technically separate. Yet, for all practical purposes they are one entity, just as any university with a collection of separate undergraduate colleges is. They even call themselves a university on the graduate level - “Claremont Graduate University”.
The reality is that Claremont is just one big campus with 5400 undergrads and 2500 graduate students for a total of almost 8000 students. That’s substantially bigger than Brandeis.
Don’t get me wrong. I love the Claremont colleges and I love the ideal that they were created to fulfill. But they really are not any longer the small college that hey started out as 100 years ago any more than Tufts is the small LAC that it was 50 years ago.
For that matter, I’m not crazy about calling Barnard a small LAC either when it’s really part of Columbia University. Barnard students can take courses at Columbia, they can use facilities at Columbia, they can join clubs at Columbia, and they can even take a major at Columbia. In fact, they graduate with a degree from Columbia University, signed by the president of Columbia, jointly issued by Barnard and signed by the Barnard president as well. How are they a separate stand-alone college while Douglass Women’s College is part of Rutgers University.
It seems to me that schools like the Claremont Colleges and Barnard want to have it both ways - call themselves an LAC while offering their students all of the advantages of a mid sized university.
Not really anything to get worked up about. Just a pet peeve of mine, agitated when I see the Claremont Colleges taking up 5 spots on the list.
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Apologies I must’ve read the total enrollment number. But regardless, since many of these lists are of limited utility, it really doesn’t matter what schools are on the latest list.
And while they were only talking about protection from federal funding concerns, as much as I love Brandeis, it has had some financial challenges recently. Perhaps that is a contributing factor.
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Thanks for clarifying. Without that explanation I had no idea what your issue with Claremonts vs Brandeis was. Agree, nothing to get worked up about, but now understand what your concern was.
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@Bill_Marsh Wait a minute!!! Brandeis is listed- #33!!
But if we are going to talk about pet peeves, the term “little ivy” is like nails on a blackboard! Ack!!
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