<p>What makes a LAC different than a regular nat’l university?</p>
<p>Although I am no expert, after reading a lot on these forums:</p>
<p>They offer a smaller class, so you can get into the classes you want to, and there are less students in the classes. (Although there are probably a few large ones, not as much as a large university).
They can offer specialized degree programs that other universities may lack, really depends on the college. </p>
<p>That’s the general idea…there are probably specific advantages and disadvantages within each school, so it’s really up to you.</p>
<p>A university is several schools under one umbrella – like a business conglomerate. An undergrad school. Grad schools. Law School. Med School. Nursing School. Agriculture School. Business school. Research units that sell their services. Perhaps a health care division that operates hospitals and physicians practices.</p>
<p>A liberal arts college is one thing: an undergrad college.</p>
<p>Think of the large university as a shopping mall. The liberal arts college as a boutique clothing store. The mall sells more stuff. The boutique knows you by name and offers more personalized service.</p>
<p>Both malls and boutique stores have their pluses and minuses. As a general rule, they teach the same stuff to undergrads. The curriculum at top universities and top LACs is the same. They just teach it somewhat differently.</p>
<p>There are some college that have a little of both. For example, Brown/Dartmouth/W&M/Wake Forest/Rice all offer top notch undergrad instruction but are a little larger (3500-5500). They also have selected grad programs as well as larger athletic programs.Best of both worlds.</p>
<p>I like interesteddad’s explaination. I would also add that there is a high probability of a LAC being a.) in the northeast, and b.) in a small town, whereas bigger universities are more geographically diverse and can pop up in big cities more often.</p>
<p>And Rice has <3000 undergrads. ;)</p>
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<p>Actually, I think those colleges became universities because their locations provided the fuel for growth. Adding PhDs and grad schools was a natural way for colleges to grow. For example, Harvard started out as Harvard College (the undergrad part is still called Harvard College) and then grew from there, adding countless graduate and professional schools scattered across Cambridge and Boston.</p>
<p>The top LACs simply made the decision not to grow, but to remain small, intimate undergrad colleges focused exclusively on teaching four-year college students. The decision not to grow enrollment is why some of them have astronomic per student endowments (the endowments kept growing, the number of students didn’t).</p>
<p>And then you have Pomona. When they had the demand for growth (and the endowment money), they decided to grow by founding additional LACs on adjoining property (Scripps, Claremont McKenna) rather than add grad schools and become a university.</p>
<p>BTW, I think Rice has made the decision to grow significantly (to 4000+ undergrads). U Chicago has done the same thing over the last decade or so.</p>
<p>Very few universities have fewer than 4000 undergrads. 5000 is typical for private universities. 10,000+ for public universities.</p>
<p>LACs tend to be in the 1000 to 2500 range.</p>
<p>Rice is not 4000 students. Unless you count grad students, it is in fact less than 3000.</p>
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<p>Not yet. Read their strategic plan. They plan to grow significantly in the next few years.</p>
<p>“And then you have Pomona. When they had the demand for growth (and the endowment money), they decided to grow by founding additional LACs on adjoining property (Scripps, Claremont McKenna) rather than add grad schools and become a university.”</p>
<p>Pomona did not found the adjoining colleges. Pomona’s first president, James Blaisdell, desired for a group of institutions divided into small colleges (similar to Oxford) that shared a library and other resources in common. In the mid-1920s the Claremont Colleges were incorporated, but founded by separate donors (Ellen Browning Scripps, in the case of Scripps).</p>
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<p>Semantics. Blaisdell had donors. He considered growing Pomona, but opted for the model of multiple LACs sharing a larger contiguous campus. He tapped Ellen Browning Scripps to purchase the huge chunk of land surrounding Pomona that is now the home to Scripps, Claremont McKenna, Mudd, Pitzer, etc. The female college (Scripps) came second. Then the male college (Claremont McKenna). </p>
<p>You are correct that, technically, Pomona did not found the other schools. Pomona’s founder and President founded the other schools. A difference without a distinction.</p>
<p>Look at the size of the Pomona endowment compared to the other Claremont Colleges. It’s easy to see who was driving the wagon.</p>
<p>As a current student of one of the non-Pomona Claremont Colleges I would say that it’s more accurate to say that the founders of those schools founded them, at the suggestion of and with help from Pomona’s founder. Saying simply that we were all founded by Pomona is just trying to be deliberately obnoxious, IMO. All of the other four schools founders’ had their own individual visions. Ellen Browning Scripps, for instance, might not have been so compelled to create another college were it not for the sexist admissions process that Pomona had at the time.</p>
<p>From Pomona’s website:</p>
<p>"By the mid-1920s, the growth of the College presented its leaders with a difficult choice: Should the College seek to retain its special character as a small college by limiting its expansion, or should it surrender the advantages of intimate size and allow growth to transform it into a university? Guided by President James A. Blaisdell, Pomona chose a third path. </p>
<p>Using Oxford and Cambridge as a model, Pomona led the way in founding a consortium of institutions unlike any other in America. Over the next 75 years, two graduate schools and four other undergraduate colleges joined Pomona as members of The Claremont Colleges consortium, located on neighboring campuses, allowing cross-registration and sharing important facilities such as libraries."</p>
<p>From Scripps’ website:</p>
<p>"1926 - Pomona President James A. Blaisdell suggest the idea of an Oxford model educational institution to Ellen Browning Scripps. Ellen Browning Scripps was the first woman to graduate of Knox College, Illinois and part of the Scripps family legacy of newspaper publishing. An educator, publisher, and philanthropist, Miss Scripps decides to found Scripps College as an institution dedicated to the education of women, citing its mission as: “The paramount obligation of a college is to develop in its students the ability to think clearly and independently, and the ability to live confidently, courageously, and hopefully.”</p>
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<p>So everyone’s right (although I do prefer sra08’s choice of phraseology). Yes, each college (and technically, Scripps was the second undergraduate school, but the third Claremont institution after Pomona and CGU) was founded for its own reasons, with its own mission, and under the guidance of its own donors and visionaries. At the same time, however, no school was founded totally independently or in isolation from the other institutions. It was a collaborative effort every step of the way, and so it remains.</p>
<p>Such is the beauty of Claremont :-)</p>
<p>(And as another non-Pomona student, please excuse us as we cling desperately to our individual school identities. It’s a side effect of going to an 800-ish student school in the midst of LA!)</p>