Personality differences between those who go to large national colleges vs small liberal arts?

My shy, somewhat socially awkward, studious kid chose Penn State over several small (and much more competitive) LACs. Something about the rah rah; the ability to be anonymous when she wanted; the “making a big school small” appealed to her. It was a great fit: she excelled, made friends, got a great job. She knew what was right for her and I totally was wrong (I thought she’d be happier at a small LAC.)

My friend’s daughter attends an LAC like college…good school, not a top school, high average student in HS ( received merit). She struggles a lot socially, isn’t one to ask questions, engage, doesn’t try to get internships ( hasn’t had any).

I don’t think we can make generalizations. There are all types at all schools. There are successful kids at both…and kids who struggle at both. We all try and make the right choices …that’s all we can do.

@TheGreyKing: While I agree with your first two paragraphs in post #78 above, “Being anonymous in a giant classroom” does not necessarily apply to elite national Universities or to students attending honors classes or upper level classes at large state universities. It can, and it is often an option for those enrolled in honors colleges, but many elite National University offer a high percentage of small classes.

Colgate University has almost 3,000 students–large by LAC standards–is an elite school & is located in a beautiful town. (Bucknell University is another example of a school listed as an LAC but with engineering, business and a large (by LAC standards) student population of over 3,500 full time undergraduates.

A single visit to any college or university can result in false or partially incorrect impressions. Over many decades I have known lots of Cornell University students & graduates who have remarked on the closeness of their community or communities within Cornell University.

P.S. I also think that you present an unfair illusion by suggesting that students at large universities do not know many people by name. Just because they attend school with a large number of students does not mean that those students do not know a large number of fellow students by name & feel as if they have a close community or communities within that large university.

For us it’s been an interesting journey to see how my son was going to choose a college. He enjoys liberal arts studies, but his passion is towards science. When he started looking at colleges, the single most important factor was cost, unfortunately. That eliminated pretty much all of the smaller colleges. In looking at the larger universities, he found that almost all of them had smaller programs for honors, or research specific interests that would make the college seem smaller. Right now the University of Alabama has both the Honors College, as well as the Blount Scholars program that seems like the absolute perfect fit. It has the smaller classes, a dedicated living learning community that makes the huge university seem small. It works for him. He also got accepted to Tulane and has a scholarship there, but he’d need one of the competitive scholarships to make that affordable. Tulane is a research university but with a much smaller feel. I think you can get the best of both worlds at a larger college.

Also, I think that it is worth noting that an LAC such as Williams College offers an unusually exceptional environment as well as a myriad of opportunities available at only a handful of LACs. So, if one is using Williams College as the basis for comparison, then that comparison should be limited to comparing it to only elite national universities & well funded honors colleges at large public schools, in my opinion.

P.S. @elodyCOH: A very interesting aspect of the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa is that it has only 40% resident student population.

@Publisher- Good points in both your last two posts in this thread!

I agree that people seeking a close community feel will be able to find it within a larger university. There are always smaller communities to be found if you want them- dorm groups, clubs, teams, music groups, majors, etc.

My point was that, if we are looking for stereotypical differences between people attending small and big colleges, as is the premise of this thread, then the desire for finding that commuity more easily may apply to those who prefer small colleges. The small college attendees may be more worried about the prospect of being anonymous in a larger classroom and campus community, whether or not that actually would happen in real life!

And when people dislike small colleges because they state that they would find it “stifling” to “know everyone and have everyone know your business,” and that you “can’t make a small college large”— well, that is just the other side of the same coin- the opposite fear, by the people who would react to Williams in a parallel way to how our family reacted to Cornell.

Both are wonderful colleges filled with brilliant students and professors. I meant no disrespect to Cornell, one of the nation’s finest universities, where we personally know some happy current students and alumni. I was just trying to engage with the premise of the thread by sharing one reaction as an example of something a kid choosing a small college might feel.

At a residential college, they are no longer under parental supervision. This applies to students in general, not just athletes (and not just at LACs).

@ucbalumnus well, all of the kids who drink and smoke at our high school are under parental supervision as well and, boy, do they partake. It’s not stopping them.

Yes, but some who do not because their parents are more strict about it may choose to do so once out of parental supervision.

Some kids in HS drink and do drugs…some kids in college drink and do drugs. It happens. Some stop… others continue… some end up in residential drug rehab programs…

Happens in all types of colleges… all kinds of families.

I know kids…very smart perfect score kids…who had to take a leave of absence from college due to drug issues. My friend’s daughter was at a top LAC… one of her acquaintances became pregnant…kept the baby…took some time off to regroup…and returned to school.

My older D attended a top university ( single digit acceptances for undergrad) for grad school. She became friends with somebody who left undergrad his sophomore year due to alcohol problems, and returned to school at the age of 25 after taking some time off. She describes him as “ brilliant.”

These are real people…real families…real issues. It happens. That’s why I cant plug different personalities into larger schools vs LACs. Life doesn’t work that way.

You can find correlations between personality/interests and a wide variety of things – what car you drive, what groceries you buy, your college major, LAC vs large national, etc. However, those correlations may be small, with many exceptions.

As I mentioned earlier, there are a wide variety of different types of LACs with different characteristics and different types of students. Williams, Pomona, and Claremont were mentioned in the original post, so I’ll assume more selective LACs like this, which are typically the focus of the forum – ones that emphasize liberal arts majors, and have limited engineering offerings.

As has been noted, one correlation in interests is athletics. More than 40% of students are varsity athletes at Williams and Claremont. Other selective LACs usually also have a higher percentage of athletes. With a smaller student body, a large portion of students need to be athletes in order to field teams. In contrast, very few students are usually varsity athletes at larger flagships, sometimes as little as 2% of students. HYPSM… type research colleges also usually have a much smaller portion of athletes than selective LACs, although not as small as big flagships.

The lack of engineering offerings and emphasis on liberal arts also influences student selection. I’d expect students are more likely to be the type who like learning for the sake of learning, rather than than the type who see college as a necessary stepping stone on the way to getting a high paying job after their bachelor’s. This likely relates to why selective LACs tend to have a high rate of students receiving PhDs and a higher rate of students who are children of professors. For example, according to (banned link), 19 of the top 20 colleges that produce the most PhDs are LACs. The single outlier is Caltech. HYPSM do not appear on the list, nor do public colleges. As noted in the Amherst paper linked above, athletes at these colleges can show different trends.

One of the reasons why selective LAC students may be less likely to be concerned with getting a high paying job after graduation is students tend to come from wealthy families. For example, the NYT study found that families at Claremont had a median inflation adjusted income of $217k with 33% of students in top 5% families. Williams was not far behind at $200k at 42% of students from top 5% families. Colgate was even higher with a median income of $291k and 58% from top 5%. All of these median incomes were above HYPSM and far above all publics. 7 of the 9 colleges with the wealthiest families in the study were LACs. The 2 exceptions were WUSTL (need aware) and Georgetown. I could list many other correlations, and of course there are many exceptions to all of the correlations above as well.

Regarding drinking and drug use, I expect you’ll find a good amount of drinking and soft drug use at almost any college. There may be a small correlation with LACs, as several studies have found that students at smaller colleges are more likely to be heavy drinkers than students at larger colleges (https://www.collegedrinkingprevention.gov/media/Journal/082-Presley.pdf ). A quote from the NYT article is below. Other factors that were correlated with heavy drinking in the referenced studies include being located in a cold climate in particular northeast (surprisingly strong correlation), portion of students in fraternities/Greek, portion living on campus, portion of students who are athletes, portion who are White, and portion of students under 21. Selective LACs also tend to be high in several of these additional characteristics.

My introverted child much preferred the large universities. The idea of running into someone he knows everywhere he goes was completely off-putting. He would find a LAC extremely claustrophobic.

Well the question is a bit silly. Of course there are all types of people at both types of schools. What it comes down to is what do you want? When I was in high school and went to see various colleges, I went to a class at a major big university. Seeing 300 kids in a class was mind boggling to me. My spouse attended that U and loved it. We are very similar in many respects personality wise. I loved being in classes of 10-25 students and never took a class with more than about 150. Most were about 20-30. My kids also like small classes. But this may be due to what they are used to. Anyone can learn to adapt, it’s really just a matter of preference for learning.

My observation is that LACs are good fits for people who
a) prefer a small, more intimate surroundings;
b) are somewhat unsure of their interests as HS seniors; and
c) generally don’t plan to be engineers (Harvey Mudd, and maybe Swarthmore are the exceptions);

LACs are less well known nationally, especially to students from poorer, racial minority, or immigrant families. This makes LACs to appear less diverse than their university counterparts on average.

LACs also have higher female-to-male ratios on average than their university counterparts with engineering majors because far more boys apply as engineering majors than girls.

The reason top LACs produce a lot of PhD students is also because they generally lack engineering programs. Engineers typically don’t get, or need, PhD degrees.

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I’ve seen many nice, non-partying, smart high school kids explode when they get to college. Some may have even been the nice kids on the x-country teams. Some find freedom in being able to have ice cream for breakfast but others find unlimited gaming, beer, staying up all night more fun.

I was a pretty wild hs kid, and by the time I was 20 I was done. I worked with a woman who didn’t party in college at all (small, catholic women’s college), got married the day after she graduated, and she was dancing on tables at company events. You never know when that wild streak will hit.

@Data10 - you forgot that there is an engineering school run as a liberal arts school - Harvey Mudd.

As for income:

A. HYPSM schools have even fewer low income kids, and the median income of HYPSM families is higher than that of elite LACs. Yet HYPSM students generally go for high-income majors, and are generally known for the high income of their recent graduates.
https://www.newamerica.org/education-policy/edcentral/private-colleges/

B. You seem to have made the unsupported unwarranted assumptions.

Doing a PhD is not a ticket to a low income life, but quite the opposite. despite what one may read in the pile of “adjunct porn” articles by people who no little to nothing about academia, the vast majority of people with PhDs are not starving contingent teachers. the unemployment rate of PhDs is 2%, and the median income of people with PhDs is substantially over the USA median.

A kid did their undergrad at a top LAC will likely go on to do a PhD at a good research university, and will most likely go on to get a good job in industry or at a high-paying faculty position at a good school. Yes, they may make less than the brother who does an MBA and is handed a CEO position right out of college, but they’ll do pretty well for themselves.

Finally - in at least one study, kids who went to LACs were more likely to decide on doing a PhD AFTER they started school than kids who went to research universities, so a kid who wants to do a PhD is LESS likely to choose a LAC.
https://www.ilr.cornell.edu/sites/ilr.cornell.edu/files/Accounting%20for%20the%20Difference%20in%20PhD%20Creation%20Rates%20Across%20Liberal%20Arts%20Colleges.pdf

For full disclosure - undergrad + MSc in Israel, where the vast majority of undergrads are ages 21-24 after military service. PhD - large public school in the USA (UIUC).

PS. LACs cannot produce PhDs, so I guess you meant “have the largest number of students who go on to do a PhD”.

I would agree 100% with @1NJParent

Engineering majors have a higher rate of PhDs than most other fields. If you compare by specific majors, such as rate of PhD production among economic majors, the same pattern emerges with LACs dominating. A related study that goes in to more detail is at https://www.ilr.cornell.edu/sites/ilr.cornell.edu/files/Accounting%20for%20the%20Difference%20in%20PhD%20Creation%20Rates%20Across%20Liberal%20Arts%20Colleges.pdf .

I think that a major difference between students who prefer LAC versus those who prefer large universities is related to process versus goal orientation. It seems to me that LACs put more emphasis on the process of acquiring an undergraduate degree, while large universities are more goal oriented. The philosophy of LACs is to “Provide an Education”, while large universities focus more on “to provide training”.

That is why LACs are so focused on a Liberal Arts curriculum, and rarely have degrees that are primarily about “training”, like agriculture or engineering. Most Ivies started out closer to LACs, and still have a lot more of that attitude (Cornell being a clear exception), whereas the “Tech”/tech oriented schools (like MIT, V Tech, Cal-tech, or Stanford) and most of the state flagship universities, were established for training (which is why land grant universities all have huge engineering and agriculture colleges).

Of course it’s relative - Israeli universities are extremely goal oriented to the point of ignoring the process entirely. You’re 21, and are going to get your undergraduate done in three years (same credit load as for USA four-year schools). There is very little in the way a “college life” as it exists in the USA - no Greek life, no intramural sports, no “school spirit”, and no concept of “college experience”. The attitude is, overwhelmingly, “I’m here to finish my bachelors degree, and get on with my life, and I have no time to waste on anything else here. I’ll get my social and cultural life elsewhere, thank you”.

So, compared to my undergraduate, ALL USA universities are fairly process focused, but LACS are even more so.