It was a combination of the kids’ personalities and their parents preferences that shaped the decisions. For #1, who applied to some large public universities, some small private universities, and some small colleges, the set of colleges applied was determined largely by his parents. He made the ultimate decision to attend UChicago. For #2, who applied only to art colleges (plus Carnegie Mellon), it was her strong preference to find a college that was located in what she called a “real city” (preferably in the East), that led to her enrolling at RISD.
I don’t think “personality” had much to do with the decisions. Just preferences about the location and the qualities of potential classmates. In #1’s case, he wanted “a college where it’s safe to be a thinker.” To me that meant any number of liberal arts colleges including my alma mater (Reed). Chicago was perfect for him because it has an intellectual focus yet offers all of the advantages of a location in a large, “major league” city. But #2, while only applying to art colleges (with CMU being a hybrid case), it wasn’t personality as much as it was a desire to live in a city in the East that drove her search. Providence barely qualified, but its location allowed her to make frequent visits to long-time friends who were enrolled at NYU and Columbia.
My d would not consider an LAc. Walked out of every visit saying no way. She found it too limiting in terms of classes, majors and opportunity. Applied to all big state universities. I have to disagree with the poster that stated state universities don’t have have people from lower incomes. Considering tuition is free in our state for high stats kids it is in many cases the cheapest option. People are from all walks of life. We dont have to worry about yearly financial aid being instate as we know the cost. I myself attended an LAC and while we had great small discussionsthe opportunities available were pale in comparision to the public university she attended. Yes you do have to be more assertive, but always got the classes she needed without issue. LAC’s and big state universities are completely different environments that attract all kinds of students. One is not necessarily better than the other.
Yes, physics majors have a high rate of PhDs. However, physics majors are often such a small portion of students that the comparison has little meaning for the purposes of thread questions.
While stats are rarely ideal, clinging to assumptions that are not based on any supporting reference or evidence and conflict with stats is generally less reliable. The original claim was, "The reason top LACs produce a lot of PhD students is also because they generally lack engineering programs. " Many top research colleges have few students pursuing engineering (5-6% at Harvard/Yale), and the reported PhD rates from those engineering colleges are often higher than the overall rate for the school, such as the PhD rates listed for Cornell’s engineering school below. Note that soon after graduation, Cornell Engineering students have a higher PhD rate than any other reported Cornell college. The rate of Cornell Engineering PhDs soon after graduation is higher than Cornell overall long after graduation.
Most of the reports I’ve seen separate the different colleges at Cornell. Some specific numbers are below, comparing Cornell to some of the discussed LACs. Cornell does indeed appear to have almost as many advanced degrees as LACs similarly selective LACs. Cornell had generally similar rates of professional degrees (Law, MD, MBA) and a higher rate of master’s. The only area were Cornell was notably lacking compared to selective LACs was rate of PhDs. Of the 8% reporting PhDs at Cornell, 33% were in biology, 25% in engineering, 16% in social sciences, and few in other fields. Even if all the biology PhDs were from A&S and not Life Sciences, the A&S PhD rate at Cornell would still be well below many selective LACs.
A reason that LAC graduates are more likely to do PhDs may likely be the fact that, as students, they interact much more with professors than students in large universities. Moreover, those professors are going to put more effort into the interactions, have more time, and get to know students.
In large universities, the main interactions that students have are with graduate student TAs, or adjuncts teaching service courses. a large part of the courses taught by actual faculty are taught by tenure track faculty, who are more focused on obtaining grants than on being the best teachers possible, since, in every research university, and especially in the most elite ones, 90% of the tenure decision is based on the amount of money brought in with grants and the number of publications that result from these grants. Teaching just needs to be Good Enough. Teniured faculty care even less about teaching, since there recognition and fame is tied with their publications and grants, whereas the university care less even less about their teaching than about the teaching quality of TT faculty
In selective LACs, the major part of the interactions are with tenure track and tenured faculty, with a number of visiting faculty. In LACs, tenure is decided mostly based on teaching or research that involves undergraduates, so being the best possible teacher is the aim of faculty. Aside from that, people don’t go to LACs unless they look at teaching as their main career focus, so the high investment in teaching is true for tenured faculty as well.
What this means is that students at LACs are much more likely to have a positive view of people who have PhDs, as well as a close relationship with a number of people with PhDs, and are much more likely to want to emulate their favorite professors. Students at research universities will have a lot less contact, and their contact is much less likely to be personal and warm.
TT = Tenure Track, i.e., do not yet have tenure but are working towards that goal.
My daughter attends a very well regarded research university, and if her experience …or personality…resembled anything like what is suggested in post #123…she wouldn’t be there. Sweeping generalizations are often false, and I will have to respectfully disagree with what was written.
I deleted the rest of my comments in order to keep this thread on topic.
Cornell Engineering has School of Applied Physics, Dept of Computer Science, Dept of Materials Science within it. These schools/departments generally produce “scientists” rather than “engineers”. There’s a subtle but significant difference between the two. Broadly speaking, to function effectively, a scientist generally needs a PhD degree while an engineer generally doesn’t.
Mwolf- I am a graduate of two universities (not LAC’s), spouse a graduate of two even BIGGER universities, all my kids went the university track and after polling them- not a single one of us had a “meaningful interaction” with a TA and ALL of us had strong and close relationships with professors. As supervisors, mentors, teachers, etc. Your post is not grounded in reality- at all. TA’s grade exams, run review sessions, set up labs. They do not mentor and they don’t supervise, and they CERTAINLY do not take the place of professors in a seminar room.
And the idea that kids at research U’s don’t have positive views of people with PhD’s- well, you just made that up out of whole cloth.
And the contact not likely to be personal and warm? Again- total fiction. One of my kids graduated from undergrad 13 years ago and still has dinner or drinks with professors when he ends up in their city for business. Different kid has regular contact with a professor who comes to town to lecture- sometimes lunch, sometimes coffee. These kids couldn’t even remember the name of a single TA…
I have one kid at an LAC and one at a research university. @blossom post #126 has been my kid’s experience at his research university, too. All of my son’s classes have been taught by professors, and he has had no problems getting involved in research and developing close relationships with professors.
Adding to the above…
My daughter just told me she ( and a small group) was invited for drinks with her prof once they return to campus… She has been invited to another prof’s house for dinner…more than once…tutors another’s children, does research with yet another…
She has only been taught by tenured professors… except for one class ( 30 students) that was taught by somebody who was almost done with her PhD. TAs run some review sessions … yes she knows them but they don’t teach the class.
No positive views of people with Phd’s? Really? She has been on the fence for several years about going this path… and has had very extensive conversations for hours… and hours… with professors who she is very close with, and who shared their experiences… good… bad… etc with her. Not only did they share personal experiences, but 1 of them shared very personal information with her that is usually only discussed with close friends. When she struggles with important decisions who does she speak with? Her professors.
Cold and impersonal? Nope.
This is yet another reason why the question asked on this thread can’t be answered… too many variables among schools of all sizes … and among students.
@MWolf: I think that you may not have had much contact with national universities. Are you familiar with Honors Colleges ?
I have first hand knowledge at both types of schools. I found the rural LAC ( about 2,200) to be a suffocating experience. More like a continuation of my prep school experience–which was outstanding for high school, but I wanted & needed something more for college.
Attending a national university was an experience in freedom & opportunity & growth. Kindness & personal attention was pervasive & widespread.
There are many valid reasons for preferring one type of school over the other, but lack of personal attention & experiencing first rate teaching are not among them–especially with the proliferation of honors colleges & honors programs at large state public universities. If those are qualities one is seeking, it is available at large national universities.
I understand the desire of parents wanting their children to receive personal attention & to be known by everyone on campus–it is a protective instinct which is not necessarily conducive to growth. Unfortunately, the negatives of living in a fishbowl environment outweigh the increased responsibilities placed upon those attending large national universities.
PhD’s don’t come in two flavors- the kind who want to get tenure at Beloit or Lawrence or Rhodes so they can get to know their students, or the kind that want to get tenure at U Michigan or Berkeley so they can ignore their students and just do research. They come in ONE flavor- wanting to get a tenure track job, in their field, at any institution which will hire them.
The days where faculty get to pick and choose (rural? urban? Land Grant?) are over. You go where you go if you are lucky enough to break out of the endless post-doc cycle and get a real job in your field.
Prep schools, honor colleges - can we ground this in the reality for the majority of students?
Students can thrive in various environments or get lost in them. What you saw as positives at a large university I saw as negatives. Was it because I couldn’t handle responsibilities? Absolutely not. It was that my personality was definitely more suited for a LAC environment. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a choice due to finances.
@blossom those comments made me chuckle and shake my head, too. The idea that academics aren’t taking whatever fulltime job they can get in a crushing job market is funny and sad all at the same time.
As I tell my kids, education is a tree with many branches…
Wow, I cannot believe that someone would broad brush an entire category of colleges and universities and then apply bogus data based on their singular experience ( or worse take a data set and then apply their own bias). Folks, there are hundreds( thousands?) of colleges and universities. All are different and one can likely go anywhere from many places. It’s personal choice. Going to one institution or another will not determine if you will get a Phd ( which many will not desire as an end goal in any case). And your experience is not the only experience of someone who wants to pursue a similar thing. Someone may have had a completely different experience than you had and may ( ready sit down here) have been well educated just as some of you obviously think you are.
This is getting silly. You removed the word “engineering” from the engineering school majors/departments you listed. Only 3.1% of Cornell Engineering students are enrolled in Engineering Physics and Materials Science Engineering. The other 97% are enrolled in other engineering fields or CS, and are obviously the primary drivers for the high overall PhD rate compared to other Cornell colleges. The previous NCES stats and reports from other selective colleges suggest CS students as a whole have a lower PhD rate than engineering students, so I also doubt that 14% of students enrolled in CS are the primary driver. Instead the 82% of students enrolled in other engineering fields are almost certainly the dominant force for the high Cornell Engineering PhD rate compared to other Cornell colleges.
In my post, I responded to the data which pointed to a higher proportion of students of selective LACs continuing to PhD studies than students from selective research universities. I responded with a comparison of the experience of the majority of students who go to either of these types of schools.
So people responded with “but the minority of students who go to honors colleges have a different experience”, or “but my child/I/my brother had a different experience”.
Why do people not understand that “but a few don’t” is NOT a contradiction of “most do”? People also seem to think that “my experience” = “the general rule”. Also, I referred specifically to the most selective of each of these two categories. Since there is no data as to the proportion of students from less selective LACs or research universities, I did not, and cannot, speak to either the experience in those, or to the effects it may have on life choices of the people who graduated from those.
I guess you may consider a PhD at one major national university, a postdoc and teaching at another, an adjunct researcher position at yet another, and 7 years teaching at a fourth one, as well as extensive activity and connections across the academic world in over 20 years in academia, not to mention a wife who is still in academia as a full professor at a national university, to be considered “not to much contact”.
Must.Not.Be.Snarky.
At national universities, the majority of students are NOT in Honors Colleges, and, even in honors colleges, they’re still likely taking the same massive Freshman and Sophomore courses in intro Bio or math, and/or taking the intro Comp courses being taught by lecturers or adjuncts. The actual interactions that they have in their first years are still mostly with the TAs or with adjuncts. Not that it really matters. I wrote abut the majority of students, which affects the proportion of students, university-wide. So, even if the experience of kids in the honors colleges is exactly like that of kids at LACs, it STILL does not contradict what I said about the average student’s experience at large universities.
Moreover, I was making no value judgement. Many students prefer big university atmosphere and thrive in it. If you are at a top research university, you will still be surrounded by other smart students, which the major benefit of going to any good school of any type. You are also more likely to find a relatively large group of people with your interests, which may be more difficult in the smaller community of a liberal arts college. Selective LACs also tend to be geographically isolated, so not only is the student body small, but so is the community outside the school. This can be claustrophobic for many people, especially for the majority of the population of the USA who come from urban areas. You can still interact with faculty - you just need to be more proactive about it, and be ready for rejection, because faculty have less time for undergraduates.
In research universities, there is the added benefit, and negative aspect, of graduate students. So, on one hand, you can interact with younger people who are passionate about the field, while on the other hand, you will be at the bottom of the pecking order, and your research experiences may be limited to grunt work.
BTW, of the 2,000 or so non-profit universities and colleges, only about 200 are research universities and about 200 are liberal arts colleges. The rest are four year universities (both private a public) with either no graduate schools, or limited graduate programs, mostly for Master’s degrees, or community colleges. There are also a number of schools which train graduate students, including PhDs, but have a more limited research program.
Most PhDs don’t work in academia, and in academia, most PhDs do not have, nor will they ever get, a tenure-track job. The majority of people in STEM with PhDs work in industry (fewer than 45% work in higher education). Of those who work in higher education, less than 50% are being hired as TT.
In humanities, about 56% are teaching in higher education, but only about 1/3 of these are actually in TT or tenured positions. The rest are either FT non-TT or part of the growing contingent labor force.
There are SO many flavors of PhD that I cannot count them here.
As for the faculty themselves: without proving that you have a passion for teaching you’ll rarely get a TT job at a good LAC. You also won’t get tenure at a LAC unless you are an excellent teacher. You can be hired at a research university without proof of teaching passion or even experience in many fields, as long as you show promise or success as a researcher. You will get tenure only if you are an excellent researcher, even though your teaching is mediocre. So there are excellent teachers and mentors at every university. However, in research universities they are generally less common than at any other type of college or university.
PS. When I write “selective” I do not mean “better” in any absolute sense. They just require better academics to be accepted, and not only are academics often just as much functions of availability of resources as they are functions of intellectual abilities, but also there is no more intrinsic value to academic abilities than to any other of the multiple skills and abilities required for human life and interaction. I also have issues with the fact that the attitude of this country towards education has resulted in the situation that the only way that these schools can exist is by these schools being too expensive for most of the kids who could get into them.
“still taking the same massive Freshman and Sophomore courses in intro bio or math. and/or taking the intro comp courses being taught by lecturers and adjuncts. The actual interactions that they have in their first years are still mostly with the TAs or with adjuncts.”
This type of statement makes me doubt that you have any exposure whatsoever to honors colleges at national universities.
P.S. There are 312 National Universities & 233 LACs (213 private & 20 public).
These are the PhD programs offered by Cornell Engineering. I only left out the word “engineering” in one instance, namely, in “Materials Science and Engineering”. Also, in many engineering schools (likely including Cornell Engineering), students would enroll in the PhD programs but leave after receiving their master degrees, since PhD programs are funded while master programs are not. It’s a technique used by many. In other words, enrollment statistics aren’t reliable.
My daughter’s courses at a flagship were all taught by professors and that’s who she talked to when she had questions or wanted to discuss a paper or assignment. I think she had 3 large lectures (more than 100 students) and for those classes there was a discussion session once a week led by a TA, but the profs were still there. The majority of her classes had 24 spots in the class, and most were not full. Her adviser has a PhD from Harvard.
When my kids were looking at schools, they wanted ‘small’ so that’s what we looked at. I was horrified at the thought of going to a school in small town with 2000 students (or even worse, tiny towns with 1200 students). Really, I was claustrophobic just going on the tours and I had car keys in my pocket so I could escape). My kids liked them so on we trudged. In the end it was money more than anything that drove the choice. They were both happy they ended up at bigger schools.
One went to visit friends at FSU the fall of her freshman year. Even after only 2 months of college, she said she could have done fine at the big school. We are asking 16 year olds to pick what style of school they’d like, and by the time they are 17 or 18, those big schools aren’t quite as scare and they can see the possibilities. The small schools are still small.
Even as a 16 year old, I knew I wouldn’t be happy at a small school.
@ucbalumnus - In response to your post #117- yes, there are more and less pre-professionally oriented students at various colleges. There are plenty of pure liberal arts majors at both Cornell and Penn (e.g., one of my former students who went to Penn for undergrad specialized in Classics and was going on for a PhD the last I heard), and some of the brightest minds in the world will be both teaching and majoring in the liberal arts at that level of university! And yes, there will be a few students at LACs like Williams or Swarthmore with a preprofessional focus and drive, although they will need to major in a liberal art because that is the only option; your examples of the premed bio major and prebusiness economics major are good examples that support my point.
My point was that it seems unfair to universities to paint all universities as more preprofessionally oriented and all LACs as less so. There are plenty of intellectually oriented people at the top examples of both types of college experience.
If you want a highly specific preprofessional major (e.g., physical therapy or hotel management), you would not pick a college like Amherst. But if you want a history or philosophy major, you could be happy at Cornell. There are many substantive differences between those two colleges, but intellectualism is not one of them.