After bad break ups, people on big campuses never run into each other?
Almost all of the down sides of small colleges have focused on quality of life issue, the social side of things. I get it. My GS is at UMass because he doesn’t like to stand out in a crowd. In contrast, I have a GD who went to Rice entirely because she loved the idea of the residential colleges there. She WANTED to be involved in everyone’s business. She wanted to be involved with the group dynamics and the group decision making. It’s the involvement that comes with the idea of the old New England town meeting. My GD really waned to be part of a community and to be involved in building that community. Without something like residential colleges, it’s really hard to do that at a Big Ten or SEC school. As much as some people hate the idea of everyone knowing their business, other’s love it. Of course, at a small college, a student can choose to live off campus, eat meals at their apartment, choose when to go to the cafeteria, and thereby avoid embarrassing encounters which they’d prefer to avoid.
The advantages of a small college are almost entirely academic and have been enumerated a myriad of times and that’s what hasn’t been mentioned here. While it’s possible to find those educational benefits at a large university, it’s also common not to be able to find them there because there are a lot of things working against you. Hit or miss. If your major is a small department, if you find your people in a club or extracurricular, if you are in theme housing, the educational experience can foster your experience as part of a community.
Personally I’ll choose the small college, but I understand why my GS loves UMass.