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

[Publisher]

FWIW:

Washington & Lee University is classified as an LAC, but most seem to major in pre-professional areas such as business or accounting. Also true for the University of Richmond (which is classified as an LAC although best known as a business school).

I would like to share that my personal concerns with small, rural LACs does not extend to any of the Top 25 ranked LACs except for two. And that my concerns are limited to small, rural LACs.

[Data10]

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”.

The quote and previous thread posts are about the rate of PhDs among students who received their bachelors at Cornell Engineering and how that rate compares to LACs, which relates to the point of the thread. It’s irrelevant whether you can get a PhD in applied mathematics, applied physics, or a variety of sciences. What’s relevant is whether you can get a bachelor’s degree and related enrollment. Math, statistics, and most of the sciences you listed are not offered for Cornell Engineering bachelor’s, so why would they explain the relatively high rate of PhD’s among students who did their bachelor’s at Cornell Engineering? While there are graduate programs in both “Applied Physics” and “Engineering Physics”, the former is not offered as a bachelor’s degree. As I expect you already know, the only undergraduate major is “Engineering Physics”, and the department name also includes the word “engineering” (https://www.aep.cornell.edu/aep ) . It’s only the graduate program that is available without “engineering” in the name.

The 3 fields you listed earlier are available for bachelor’s degrees as “engineering physics”, “material sciences and engineering”, and “computer science.” The only one of these fields that does not have a minuscule <2% enrollment is computer science. While CS does contain the word “science” it its name, that does not mean “to function effectively, a scientist generally needs a PhD degree”, so CS majors must get a PhD. Instead CS majors generally have a lower rate of PhDs than engineering majors. Considering the fields of the received PhDs, I see no reason to assume Cornell differs. Even if Cornell was at outlier with more of the CS bachelor’s students receiving PhDs than engineering bachelor’s, the engineering majors outnumber the CS majors by 6 to 1 (at the Cornell Engineering school), so engineering majors are almost certainly the driving force in the overall PhD rate for Cornell 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.

The undergraduate major enrollment numbers are for undergraduate majors, not PhDs.

Plenty of engineering master’s students also have little out of pocket costs. At some highly selective grad schools, it’s the norm. Many students also directly enroll in PhD programs, without a Master’s first. Of the many engineering students I’ve met while pursuing my multiple engineering grad degrees, I have yet to meet anyone who enrolled in a PhD for the intentional purpose of getting their master’s as you described. I certainly wouldn’t assume this is expected.

[skieurope]

MODERATOR’S NOTE:
Closing thread since it’s just devolved into debate.