This is great info–thank you. I don’t know about it for him, since he’s never even been to this type of area/climate (I have, and even lived in AZ for a bit)…it might be too big a leap, though we’ll discuss it. I am happy to hear this info about the school…my daughter is interested in that area of the country and plans to attend grad school eventually.
There’s not really similar LACs to Colorado College - other than maybe Cornell in Iowa.
I say that given it’s a course by course schedule vs. a regular semester.
As for a personal experience, it’s often up to the kid - but there are also “smaller” programs at schools.
My daughter went to 9000 student College of Charleston and was in Honors. But within Honors, they pull the school’s top students (so if you have a top student) into the Charleston Fellows and International Scholars programs - so now you have a cohort - and they go on a trip abroad together, meals at profs houses (mine even stayed at her profs house the night before the trip), have multiple mentors, access to VIPs - having met ambassadors and other dignitaries.
So you really have to dig deeper - and if the student is a top student, a school may have a special program or cohort to provide a different experience than other students receive. Many have LLCs where kids are grouped together by interest and take a class or classes in the area - again to help grow relationships.
But there are several parents on this website who talk about large schools and relations their students have - so I think it’s often dependent upon the student.
I’m sure some kids at LACs don’t form relations too - again, up to the kid.
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Yes, and that’s not really the appeal for him–which gives me doubts
Every college experience is different and so is every school. This is why fit is so important. I was just making the point you can find similar experiences regardless of school. Both kids had lunch etc with professors. Lots of times it’s up to the student to do it. The “making a large school small” mentality.
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Using this as the starting point, I suggest that you look into LACs in New York State. NY has a unique approach to environmental preservation which dates back at least 130+ years to the establishment of the Adirondack Park in 1892, mandated to be “forever wild” by state legislation. It is where the concepts for the national park system was birthed. The Adirondack Park is a unique combination of public and private lands, which combine to form the largest public park in the lower 48 states. Its 6 million acres are equivalent in size to the entire state of Massachusetts with the land almost evenly split between private land and a public preserve of wilderness + wild forest with mountains, lakes, rivers, & streams. The 600,000 acre Catskill Park is a smaller version of the same.
Five excellent LACs are particularly well situated to take advantage of these two preserves. Three sit on the edge of the Adirondacks, offering the best access to that preserve:
Union College
Skidmore College
St. Lawrence University
Two others sit in the valley and rolling hills between the Adirondacks and Catskills. They are a little more removed but still offer good access to either of the two preserves:
Colgate University
Hamilton College
With public preserves as big as these, it’s hard to take full advantage of them without a car to get you to where you want to hike, camp, canoe, ski, or explore. But the colleges have hiking clubs, outing clubs, ski clubs, etc which organize trips and provide transportation. The Adirondack Mountain Club also organizes events and provides networking to facilitate opportunities anyone who lives these wild lands to be able to be able to gain access to them.
These 5 colleges present a range of levels of difficulty for admission and so provide the different levels of challenge needed to build a list.
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Utah is much cheaper than CU Boulder and will probably now be cheaper than Arizona after recent merit changes in AZ. In particular you can get residency after the first year if you stay for the summer. It’s a convenient flight (Delta hub) and it can’t be beat for the outdoor lifestyle (skiing, climbing, hiking etc). There are national parks in every direction and it’s very common to get away for the weekend or even just a day trip. You can almost see the U from here (Mt Timpanogos):
My D went to the U for college and has just moved back to SLC, and many of her friends stayed after college as it’s a great place for young people with a strong economy.
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Another good one to add, especially if cost is a consideration, is SUNY Geneseo.
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Another small college to consider, also in NY - Hobart & William Smith. A friend’s high stat kid got a pretty good scholarship there and loved it.
In my experience, there is a big difference in environment and culture between large colleges and universities and small colleges (and small can mean 6,000 or less than 2,000). Once a prospective student starts their college visits, they typically decide pretty quickly which one they picture themselves in. On our tour of the University of Tennessee, the tour guide made the point that while there are many ways to make a large university feel smaller by joining clubs and academic groups, it’s very hard to make a small college feel bigger.
My kids would never consider a small college environment - maybe because they both attended a k-12 private school, which while not small (their HS graduating classes were about 300), put them in an environment where they were seeing the same kids for all those years. I did try and push some smaller private colleges, so they could have a more personal experience, but neither one would consider it. They both thrived in large publics (one in-state, one OOS).
Both chose majors that 99.9% of colleges and universities offer. I will say that my oldest, who went to our state flagship, had a tough time her first two years getting classes and access to advisors. This surprised me given the “prestige” of this university. Conversely, my younger daughter, who attended and OOS public of the same size, had zero issues getting into classes and accessing advisors. When considering colleges and universities, this is something I would dive deeper into. As a parent who writes the tuition check, I don’t want to be paying for random classes that my student doesn’t need because they are unable to get into the classes they DO need and they have to fill their schedule with something.
You mentioned William & Mary above - we looked there with one of my daughters and the OOS COA was on the higher side so we didn’t apply (plus, too small). My neighbor’s kid goes to CU Boulder and that seems rather high for OOS as well.
As others have said, once you set a budget and identify a list of schools that meet it (large & small, public & private), start visiting and let your son decide.
Not so much anymore. Because of the northern influx, the popular ones get more and more competitive each application cycle (while offering less merit for OOS). Several southern states are also lobbying for their state universities to accept a higher percentage of in-state applicants.
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Why would you want to make a small school feel bigger? Small schools often have 2000 students. Isn’t that enough? Certainly not here to knock big schools, I just get tired of people saying that and not really thinking about what it means.
My high school graduating class was almost 1200 kids. I was not interested in a college that was smaller than my HS. Not saying that’s rational- just when I thought about “going to college” something “more intimate” was not what I was after.
Everyone comes at it from a different perspective….
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Some kids don’t want a school that feels too small. They prefer the relative anonymity of a larger environment, where they can “get lost in the crowd” when they want to. At smaller schools, it can sometimes feel like everyone is in your business, which many students dislike.
I personally know several kids who chose larger schools for this reason - and one who’s miserable at a school with 6,000 students. “Small is better” is a common mantra here on CC but in real life, students have different perspectives.
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Besides selling themselves as a large public university, I think what UTK was trying to get across was to thoughtfully consider the large vs. small, the advantages and disadvantages of each. Large universities often hear the criticism that they are “too big” or that a student may “get lost in the shuffle”, when really there a lot of ways to make them feel more intimate and more individual. So, if a student gets there and it’s feeling too big or too overwhelming, there are suggestions that can be made to make it feel like a smaller school environment.
If a student chooses a small school, however, and is missing big school sports, ESPN Gameday visits, Greek Life, maybe more name recognition, more variety in food choices or activities or just a bigger student body - there aren’t many ways a small school can change those things.
No right or wrong, it’s just a matter of preference/fit.
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I get that not everyone wants a small school. I just take issue with this commonly repeated phrase “you can make a big school smaller, but you can’t make a small school bigger.” I don’t think it’s true, and I don’t think it’s something people want. I don’t think that many students actively pick a small school and then regret it because it feels too small.
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Ask anyone with a bad break up story junior year…
Yes, a small school can feel too small for SOME kids in SOME situations and it’s hard to reboot socially late in the game….
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Everything is individual to the student. D19 visited a bigger school than that (around 3500 undergrads/5000 total) and still said “it feels like high school”. A colleague of mine went to a LAC with I believe just under 3000 people and said it felt claustrophobic by the time she left. Some people also clearly get lost in bigger schools for a variety of reasons. I’d rather let the student decide what fits them than tell them how they should be feeling about the size of the student body.
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I started out at a LAC (a largeish LAC!) and transferred to a university mid way through college when the LAC started to feel too small and I ran out of courses that I wanted to take. I can’t be the only one…
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A small school can feel really small in one’s major. Even if there are 500 students in each class, if your major has 10 students in it, you may see the same 10 in each course of your major.
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Another smaller OOS college to consider–Northern Arizona U.
Smaller, LAC-like college in Flagstaff, AZ. It’s in the high country of AZ, not in the lower, hotter area around Phoenix. Plenty of mountains
OOS tuition & fees come in at just under $30K.
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Yes, I loved UT, a huge public school. So many of my professors were in the National Academy of Engineering. Their research facilities are outstanding, too, and undergraduates can work in them. But I was in-state, and unless a student gets a big scholarship (very rare), I wouldn’t recommend spending the money.
Every year we see stories of kids wanting to leave LACs for bigger s hoops / flagships. The opposite is true too.
I’m sure much of it is social …..