D applied to smaller LAC’s up to larger state schools. Motivated, competitive, and yet something of an introvert, she wound up at a top ranked public university with 30,000+ students and is doing well. She’s more social than she ever was in high school. I’m sure she would have done just as well at a small LAC, just in different ways. The quality of the program for her major and the research opportunities available have made the large research university a great choice for her. So, I don’t think you can go by a kid’s personality, and I don’t think you can lump a kid into one camp or the other. Many variables can be in play.
The LACs that attract students from all over text to be the elite ones that enroll few students from lower income families. They may give them good FA, but they may not admit many of them.
Obviously, state schools vary in how admission friendly and FA friendly they are to students from lower income families. Some state schools do have very high percentages of Pell Grant students, while others have very low percentages.
Two of mine went to large state flagships. One is a senior at a small LAC.
The LAC has surely been easier to navigate. Office doors are open, people answer their phones or return calls or email immediately. Red tape is minimal. Professors know her personally. Move in and move out days were relaxed affairs, with plenty of parking and no elevators. Two of her professors attended her senior game (D3 sport) and chatted with us. They clearly know her well. She applied to, was accepted at, and nearly attended several large state flagships. She would have had success at those universities. Her choices of majors would have been much larger. However, she would have given up the experiences of being a four year starter and leader on a team, and would have spent much more time navigating the bureaucracy of a large school. As a person with no prior dance experience, she never would have joined a large university dance team, nor would she have been given the opportunity to choreograph for the team. She might have felt insignificant at a flagship. She has loved her LAC experiences. She has thrived, made deep friendships and connections. She probably would have done the same at a large flagship, but we can not know for sure.
My other two loved those things that drew them towards the large flagship universities they graduated from. They participated in their sports at a club level. They loved the feeling of being a part of a large research, sporty, state university. They had many more opportunities to explore both broadly and deeply in a variety of subjects. However, the distinct possibility of failure through passivity is much more likely at a large university. If you never show up, or stop showing up, nobody will know. They developed close relationships with a few professors, but it took much more work to do so. The daily grind of dealing with the bureaucracy of a large university is a real thing. My two might have felt stifled at a small LAC. They loved their experiences. They thrived, made deep friendships and connections. They probably would have done the same at a small LAC, but we can not know for sure.
The answer could be as varied as the people making the choice, and probably for more than only 1 reason alone.
While my son did not have many criteria (he didn’t care about the weather, whether rural or urban, didn’t care whether it was preppy or sporty, etc., and didn’t care whether the classes were intimate or lecture style, so it did open up a wider net for him to cast) one of his main criteria was that he would only apply to universities with undergrad populations of approximately 5000 or more. His thinking is that more people would directly correlate with more options academically (ie, more options in which classes to attend, and even more sections in each class, etc.) and more options socially. He also wanted access to all that a university can offer, such as the ability to network with graduate students, access to research facilities, etc., not to mention more extracurricular and offerings just by nature of a larger student body. He also enjoys exposure to many diverse schools of thought, and so a larger student body might easily facilitate that. Not that LACs wouldn’t have diverse ideas, but I think at a larger uni, there’s just more of everything.
(thinking aloud: although it’s great that lacs’ resources are focused on undergrads, might not having a university with all that research happening enhance/benefit the undergraduate experience as well? Maybe that’s another discussion.)
Although not in my son’s case, in addition to some of the observations above such as anonymity, perhaps it could be that if a child wants to explore more of ‘who’ they are, mightn’t it be easier to find a tribe and test that out in a larger setting. What if, for example, a child changes somewhat during the next year or two; would it be more difficult to explore that avenue in a smaller school where the ‘vibe’ is somewhat already more prevalent?
As someone else pointed out, someone’s advantages are someone else’s disadvantages, hence a highly personal question with no pat answer.
No doubt most kids who are thriving in their respective schools would probably thrive anywhere anyway.
Just speculating.
One advantage a big school might have over a small LAC is a larger choice of majors and minors…some those small LACs might have a pretty small list of majors, say no more than 60. Whereas some of the big flagship schools might have over 100 majors and minors. Not good or bad, but something to keep in mind when deciding what and where to study…
In addition to the advantage that @natty1988 points out with respect to the number (and types) of majors available, the other advantage that a larger school might have over a smaller one is the number of faculty and their particular areas of interest. If you are interested in Medieval or Early Modern art and there are only four faculty in the art history department and most of them are Americanists and/or focus on contemporary art, you’re not going to be happy and their might be slim pickings with respect to classes available.
My D initially considered LACs, but the small departments in her major field of interest gave her pause. At Swarthmore and Grinnell, for example, there is exactly one faculty member at each of those schools that specializes in what D wants to study. If she doesn’t get along with that one professor or that professor is on leave for a year, she’s SOL.
That said, D also didn’t want to go to her state flagships with 30,000+ undergraduates either. She wanted a school that was large enough for her to have myriad courses from which to choose and a number of professors under whom to study, but small enough that she would frequently run into people she knows on campus and be able to create strong sense of community within and outside of her department, with her ECs and in her living environments.
As the oft-repeated CC trope would have it, you can make a large school seem smaller, but – unless your school is part of an easily accessible consortium of schools – it’s hard to make a small school seem larger.
@LoveTheBard So true, it is easy to make a large school feel smaller, but it’s very hard to make a small school feel large…
@LoveTheBard I’m glad I took the time to read all the responses before I posted because you stole my thunder.
I believe some students limit themselves to smaller schools than necessary. You can only interact with so many people. You can control the size of your sphere of influence. Who cares if you walk past thousands of kids on campus.
I think the honors programs at larger schools can offer the best of both worlds for some kids.
I know for a fact that the 300+ clubs my son’s school offers contributed greatly to his ability to meet new people and assimilate.
All that being said, small LAC’s are generally more prestigious and selective, and some people may value that above other attributes.
CC opened my eyes to the world of hyper-competitive academics and the educational arms race. To each his/her own, but hopefully, in the end, our kids will be better for the choices they make.
My S went to an LAC for the singular culture of that particular school which fit so well. Not just any LAC would have worked, but he did get lots of personal attention and enjoyed being a medium to large fish in small sea.
@Time2Shine The world of LACs has a very similar “prestigious” ranking as that of the Universities. There are some 200 colleges that are defined as Liberal Arts Colleges, which is the same number as Research Universities. While there are LACs that are prestigious and selective, there are also good LACs with 85% acceptance or higher, so that characterization of LACs is false.
There are many reasons that students choose smaller schools, and the prestige or selectivity of the school is not a common one. Most people for whom selectivity and prestige are the most important thing, will be applying to Ivy League and other Big Name universities.
It was years ago, but when I visited my cousin at her top LAC, I found no diversity at all. She was in a suite of 6 girls, all from NY, Mass, or CT, all white, all majoring in something like English or history. And 3 of the 6 were named Katie. Years earlier than that, my sister went to one of the NESCAC and while she was from the untamed wilds of the midwest, all her friends were from New England states. All white, most quite wealthy.
At some large flagships, more than half the students are OOS. In physical distance, my cousin’s 6 suitemates homes were closer to each other than 6 students from Texas or California might be at their flagships. Some might be from Dallas or Houston while others are from Brownsville or a 5000 acre ranch, so very different backgrounds. Racial diversity, SES diversity, but also educational diversity. You aren’t going to be surrounded by your high school pals. I went to my flagship, but it was in the third state I’d lived in and I’d only been there a year, so was I ‘from’ that state?
1 Like
@twoinanddone hm. I’ll have to disagree a little bit. The top LACs are way into diversity. So much so that, for our white suburban son, getting in seems impossible. Three of his top LAC choices are 50 percent URM. Add in the legacies and assume half are girls and his chances of getting in are minuscule especially in RD.
I grew up in Illinois and almost everyone I knew went to UIUC. If they didn’t stick with their high school friends then their new friends were also from Illinois. People knew your town and your high school. I didn’t venture far. Just to Northwestern. But no one there had ever heard of my town and there was not one other person on my freshman dorm floor from Illinois. Most not even from the Midwest. I loved it. So great for so many reasons to be around kids from such different places. This, of course, happens at many universities as well but less so at a big state school.
I still remember one infamous suite of six from my freshman year. You’d call, and the conversation would go like this:
Can I speak to Jennifer?
Which one?
The Asian one?
Which one?
“Three of his top LAC choices are 50 percent URM.”
What schools are those? I don’t know of any schools like that. Schools like Haverford might have 50% students of color but not necessarily from underrepresented groups. And usually that includes international students. No one is making it harder for white male students to get into selective colleges. It is a very rare school indeed that overrepresents URMs.
I believe Amherst is less than 50% white.
Williams. Amherst. Both 50 percent URM. Or “students of color”. I guess they aren’t exactly the same thing but still 50 percent non-white, so fewer spots for white boys who aren’t legacies or recruited athletes. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing. I am all for diversity and private schools have the right to make classes how they like. Just trying to make the point that some are very diverse.
LACs with less diversity like a Kenyon or Hamilton have more spots for someone like S19, but that may make them a little less interesting to him. That’s why it’s a catch 22. It will be harder for him to get into a school with a lot of diversity.
PS I thought one more of his schools was close to that 50 percent mark but it’s a little lower.
That harder has more to do with selectivity than with “spots,” IMHO. If you looked at Howard’s Common Data Set, you might conclude that they didn’t have many spots for him, but he’d nevertheless have a much higher chance of admission there than at Williams.
Diversity (arbitrarily defined as the odds that if you plucked two students at random, they’d fall in different racial / ethnic / nationality categories) was one of my kid’s criteria, and there were highly diverse schools at all levels of selectivity. University of the Pacific is more diverse than Amherst, and Occidental is more diverse than Williams.
As has been noted, there are many different types of LACs. Some are highly selective. Some are not selective. Some are mostly in state kids. Some are mostly out of state kids. Some are very diverse. Some have little diversity.
For example, Hartwick was one of the popular options among students at my HS in upstate NY, who did not attend publics. The valedictorian of my class went there. USNWR lists it as a a national LAC, yet its students are mostly in state, particularly near the area I grew up. According to IPEDS, 77% of Hartwick students are in state, which is higher than some publics. There are also LACs like Grinell where as little as 5% of the class are in state. I am not aware of any LAC that is 50% URM unless you have a unique definition of URM, such as including Asian students (many LACs do consider Asian students to be URMs). Oglethorpe (in Atlanta) is the highest I am aware of with 38% White, 36% URM, 4% Asian, and the rest multi-racial, international, or other. At the other end, Carroll College (in Montana) is 6% URM and 1% Asian. Among more selective LACs, some of the more racially diverse ones are around 25% URM using federal definitions, and some of the less racially diverse ones are around 10% URM.
@homerdog I recall reading somewhere that LAC’s were having difficulty recruiting boys and that some were going to great lengths to recruit them.
Williams is 51% white, 8% black, 13% Latino, 0% Native American, according to https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?q=williams&s=all&id=168342#enrolmt .
Amherst is 44% white, 11% black, 13% Latino, 1% Native American, according to https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?q=amherst&s=all&id=164465#enrolmt .
Note that the white people make up 54% of the US population age 18-24, according to https://nces.ed.gov/programs/raceindicators/indicator_raa.asp . So Williams has a similar percentage of white students as the US population of traditional college age people, although it is likely that a significant portion of Williams’ white students are legacies or recruited athletes.