<p>My experience with LACs comes from my interactions with students at two REUs I participated in. It was pretty obvious that students at top research universities have an advantage over students at MOST LACs. This is not necessarily only an admissions advantage, this refers to the overall experience. Compared to the other students at the REU I attended this summer (at a top state school) who were mostly from small LACs, I know significantly more about the grad school application process and grad school in general (because of interacting with graduate students at my home institution), have much more research experience, and have taken several grad classes. I actually could potentially skip a lot of classes once I enroll in a graduate program and start research earlier.
I wouldn’t judge schools by the number of PhDs they produce, but by where the students end up. At my school, many students go into other fields following graduation, but the ones who do get PhDs consistently attend top programs, the among common names in the last few year have been Harvard, Stanford, Berkeley, and Cornell.
My major advisor also once mentioned a student of hers who had trouble adjusting to grad school. She thought that the undergrad preparation of the student had something to do with it. I was surprised to hear this student actually attended a top 5 LAC which I had heard was very rigorous.
So overall, I don’t really understand the purpose of attending an LAC if you want to go into research. I don’t think the academic environment is any better than that at a research university. It is smaller, but like I said, if you can’t advocate for yourself in a larger environment, then a PhD is probably not for you. My father is in academia as well (not physics) and told me that you should go to the place with the most cutting edge research because of the stimulating environment.
The research opportunities at a university are much less restricted than at an LAC. People argue all the time that most of the research at universities is not accessible to undergrads, but they would definitely be surprises if they actually saw what some of these undergrads have accomplished even before grad school.</p>