<p>I’ll be the contrarian. While I deeply value what good LACs offer, these days I wonder about their affordability. Are they luxuries many can’t afford?</p>
<p>Let’s take the kid interested in business. If he’s a top student and goes to a top undergrad business school, good chance he’ll never need a graduate degree. If he was headed for a good MBA that’s a savings of $200K plus missed earnings for 2 years.</p>
<p>Right now I’m seeing the 3-2 engineering programs becoming more popular. Why? The economy. Many parents see their kids are headed towards engineering which will cost them 2 years of school post undergrad to get no better job had they just gotten a 4 year degree.</p>
<p>For this who will seek a PhD, medical (though you could argue fewer research opportunities here) or Law degree, LACs still work financially, but they’ve become a luxury for many who will require further education they probably wouldn’t have had they studied their trade during undergrad.</p>
<p>A few years ago I didn’t think that way, but the out of control costs and the student loan tragedy changed that. I’m seeing so many kids graduating from good LACs with few decent job prospects right now, with no option except to wait tables or tuck into grad school taking huge loans.</p>
<p>Waverly–don’t discount the merit aid available at many LAC, especially for kids in the top 25% of their class. That can reduce the costs significantly. They also have more latitude to work with kids on aid packages than state schools do. My LAC was about $20,000 (4 years) less expensive than any state school and considering at the time that school COA was about $15,000, that is a big difference.</p>
<p>I am a LAC grad from decades ago, who then went on to law school. I stand behind the general endorsement you’ve gotten here of the LAC UG experience. I personally would go to a different LAC if I had it to do over. I was at a women’s LAC that became a suitcase school by junior year; that was socially boring. That does not apply to most LACs.</p>
<p>I wrote constantly (although I never took an English course), and our writing was generously red-penciled by full professors that had come out of Ivies. We spoke in class and made presentations. We had a lot of essay exams, not the T-F and multiple guess that my friends at bigger schools were taking. Professors were accessible, and would invite us to their homes for the occasional seminar or end-of-semester social. I ran into the president of the college minutes after receiving word that my grandmother had died, and he said “I’ll notify your professors. Just go.” With the exception of freshman bio and chem, the sections were small enough that you could dialogue, and interrupt with a question at any time. When I changed my major after the 3d semester, they made sure I got the classes I needed to graduate on time.</p>
<p>My school did not seem to command the respect it deserved on the job market. This may have something to do with it being a women’s school. I took an upper level course at a nearby major, selective private research university, through a consortium arrangement, and found it no harder than what I was doing at my home school.</p>
<p>Disappointments or things to watch out for – they did not offer majors in every department that the catalogue would have led one to believe they did. I had hoped to double-major in Philosophy. The department really only expected to teach a few distribution courses to non-majors, and was not willing or able to offer the full sequence of courses required to major. I still remember the head of the department staring at me as we spoke on the driveway one day and saying “I don’t want a major!” I also think that if you’re not going straight to professional school, you have to be very mindful of internships, summer work, and the development of some practical skills set that will open doors to employment.</p>
<p>I think LACs, done on a high academic level, are terrific for undergrads. At the low end of the academic rigor spectrum, I am not so sure about LACs, and think the curriculum should perhaps be more oriented toward immediate employability, especially if it will cost $200,000 and the family is not wealthy. It could be instructive to dig into the details at the placement office, finding out which employers are showing up for on-campus recruiting, and how many offers that process produces.</p>
<p>Tell your son that two of the founders of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts graduated from ClaremontMcKenna and hire a lot of graduates from the Claremont schools. Having a LAC education certainly did not hurt them.</p>
<p>A kid I know well is currently a CS major at a great (but not top-5) LAC. She turned down one of the top university CS programs in the world to go there, as well as a full tuition scholarship at a public university engineering school, and an acceptance at a top-10 rated private research university – any of which would have produced howls of indignation on CC if she had raised the possibility here. There is no question, none whatsoever, that her LAC has fewer CS resources than any other choice she took seriously.</p>
<p>She is totally happy with her choice. Loves her school, loves her CS program, and loves the opportunities she is getting. The summer after her sophomore year, she got to pick among funded research jobs in various parts of the country, and wound up working with people who were doing cutting edge research in precisely the area that interested her most (and she continues to work with them on a remote basis). This summer, she has a super-cool, high-paying, high-prestige internship lined up, for which she competed with many people who went to the universities she turned down. (I will add that she is not particularly self-confident or aggressive, and she got turned down at the most selective colleges to which she applied. This isn’t a case of a super-student who would be a winner no matter where she went, or someone who could get rich selling snow to the Inuit.)</p>
<p>I’m still not willing to say she made the right choice. (I don’t think she did.) She might well have even more, better opportunities had she gone elsewhere. But she can only take advantage of one opportunity at a time, and so getting to do EXACTLY what she dreamed of doing two years in a row makes it awfully hard to argue that there’s anything wrong with the path she’s on. (And the path she’s on will make her recruitable by anyone in the world.)</p>
<p>This doesn’t mean everyone should go to LACs; I don’t think that at all. I think it does mean that for kids who want that sort of environment, what they give up to get it isn’t anywhere near what most people here think they give up.</p>
<p>jHS-maybe I missed something but she is doing exactly what she wants, getting paid well to do that, has opportunities in exactly what she wants to do and is being recruited by people all over the world…how exactly did she make the wrong choice?</p>
<p>Yeah – business-wise, I have a friend who ran the McKinsey offices in Taiwan and then Hong Kong. He went to Wesleyan. My dad (who also went to Wesleyan) had a fraternity brother who started a discount airline . . . Southwest Airlines. Brian Roberts, of Comcast, and his father both went to Wharton, but their two top officers went to Colgate and Swarthmore. There is absolutely nothing wrong with a LAC degree for business, especially if you get a professional degree on top of it.</p>
<p>SteveMA: Obviously, I am arguing against myself. Had I been in her shoes, I would have chosen either the university with the best CS department or the university with the strongest overall portfolio of departments. I would have had the most resources available to me, the greatest depth of courses, the most people to hang out with, etc. I think that’s the best way to learn, and I think if you learn the most you achieve the most. That’s the advice I gave her, and the advice I would give her today. But the fact that she’s as happy as can be and getting her dream jobs exposes the hollowness of my sincere, sensible advice. There is more than one way to skin a cat.</p>
<p>cbug - I’d put what i learned in my business major (with a concentration in IS) at a LAC up against any other schools business major. It was very ‘hands on’. Lots of group work, critical thinking and analysis, very writing intensive (mostly essay exams, not much of the multiple guess or t/f stuff that my friends at penn state were taking), working as a team… not just being lectured out of a book. We worked with local businesses and shadowed their executives. Biggest class i ever had was maybe about 25 and that was my freshman year. By senior year the classes were much smaller, all of the profs knew you very well to get recommendations from as well. My one prof got me a job my senior year. I also knew everyone in all of my classes by the time I graduated and we formed many study groups along the way. It’s definitely a different environment but should in no way be discounted against a public university where the prof may or may not know your name, that is if he or she even does the ‘teaching’ in the class. </p>
<p>It all depends what the student thinks is better individually.</p>
<p>NJSue, I’m not arguing at all against an LAC. I think I made the comment that you can’t always get the uber-professor, but I do think on average, if you are a strong student from a top department with a well-known advisor, you are more likely to get into a top graduate program than if you were a strong student from an LAC with an advisor who doesn’t have the same research reputation.</p>
<p>I know a young woman at a top 10 LAC (I’d guess, good name) who is studying math. The mere fact that she’s at an LAC means she has almost no chance to get into a top 10 math graduate school (she’s already been told this). She wants to get a PhD in math (theoretical and not applied). Well, it probably will be harder to get a great teaching job from a lower tier school. It may be different for grad schools in English or the humanities, I don’t know.</p>
<p>My own experience in a related field was to push to get a uber-famous advisor – he didn’t really take undergraduates advisees or teach undergraduates (he wasn’t a terrific teacher either) but I had been working indirectly for him since I was in high school. I worked as an RA for him summer after sophomore year, junior year, summer after junior year, senior year, and summer after senior year. I started on one project as my senior thesis but I didn’t see anything interesting and then suggested that I take over another project that a team had started but left unfinished. I worked incredibly hard on that project and apparently got better results than they thought were possible. I was admitted with a full ride (no teaching or research assistantsips unless I wanted to) at the five best grad schools in the country on the basis of his recommendation (which I later saw and it said something like “He has some talent” which apparently to the cogniscenti was a rave review), the thesis was published in the best journal in the field, and my advisor at one of the top departments in the country told me that my senior thesis would have been the best PhD thesis in their department for the last 10 years. I’d like to think it was me (and I may have had some effect) but I got to pick up a project that my uber-advisor thought was important, that others had started, and figure out how to finish it. “Standing on the shoulders of giants” was I. That kind of opportunity is less likely to happen at an LAC. The giants aren’t there. </p>
<p>For many kids, I think the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. In fact, I recommended to my son that he apply to and then attend a top LAC rather than my beloved Ivy alma mater.</p>
<p>There is a good question that someone raised. There may be a significant dropoff in benefit (on the job front) from lesser known LACs than from the top few. People will not have heard of them. The alumni may or may not be well-placed. This may be less true of state universities. I’m not sure, but am speculating.</p>
<p>I agree. Several prestigious LACs are stronger in the humanities than a lot of research-oriented unit (Art History at Williams, for example). Again, it depends what you are studying.</p>
<p>I know a daughter of a friend who attended a LAC, and while she liked the atmosphere, hated the fact she could never get into the courses she wanted to attend, especially in the first couple of years.</p>
<p>That could be a prerequisite problem rather than a lack of options. Most first and second year students have to take prereqs before being allowed into upper level courses in their area of interest. This is true of all colleges/universities.</p>
<p>"@mini why would you choose a different LAC?"</p>
<p>Long topic, and it’s off-topic here. Enough to say that it wasn’t really a good fit (though I did get a great education, for which I am always grateful.)</p>
<p>I don’t know about math. My d. is at a top-3 program (Ivy) in musicology. they have many students from LACs (good ones, and some top ones), but not a single student from an Ivy in five years. Dozens of applicants, not one accepted. It certainly isn’t for lack of famous professors at the Ivies. (But it IS at least partially due to lack of research opportunities, or even a good opportunity to know those famous profs well - I’ve got stories to tell.)</p>
<p>I think if you plan on staying in the region there isn’t much difference in brand awareness between the regional publics and the LACs, most business people know alittle about all of them. It’s when you leave the region that name knowledge falls off from the general knowledge base. People would clearly be more "aware " of what University of XYZ or XYZ State or Northern XYZ means than an LAC. Most people in the midwest wouldn’t know Williams from Coe.</p>
<p>momofthreeboys-I think that is true to a point for general programs but if a regional LAC has an exceptional program that might vary. What employers do have is access to the various college websites and if where a student went to UG really makes THAT big of a difference for them, they can look up the entrance requirements and get a pretty good idea of what kind of a school it is. I have yet to meet anyone that wasn’t hired for a job because of where they went to UG–maybe on the coasts that is different though?</p>
<p>^^ You might be correct with say a music major, art major, theater major…where the ultimate career trajectory is a very small circle, but in general someone hiring a entry level finance person, entry level technical writer, entry level chemist or something like that probably isn’t’ going to know Coe from Williams. When I graduated people in my region were impressed by my undergraduate LAC but when I went to Boston not so much “knowledge” unless someone worked at the company and either knew the college or went there. Academia is a whole 'nother ball game. In academia they KNOW the schools. I bumped the admissions dean by accident at one of the Maine colleges and he KNEW my undergraduate very, very well. Finally recruiters recruit where they know what to expect. If they’ve gotten great engineers from Lafayette they will recruit them side by side with Georgia or Michigan but they might not even stop at Bucknell or travel all the way to New Mexico or Colorado. It’s all about the about past performance of the recruits and how much money is in the recruiting travel budget for that year.</p>
<p>“Most people in the midwest wouldn’t know Williams from Coe.”</p>
<p>I have lived on the east coast, the midwest, California, and the Pacific Northwest. I have been employed in publishing, human rights/human relations, community college teaching, public health, and social services. I have never, even once, had an employer (or an interviewer) who knew what Willliams was. Not even once. I did have one who thought he knew, and talked about the nice vacation he took with his wife to Williamsburg. I didn’t disabuse him of the idea.</p>
<p>I do interview people now applying for positions. The “where you went to college” part never takes more than 30 seconds. (Although if you live around here, a BYU degree is likely to get you far because of their intense networking.)</p>