This is how you and your child select the right college

Parents Forum
21

Opposite POV. Back in the Stone Age…I went to a very small college…900 students total…for my freshman year. As a point of reference…my HS graduation class was 1200 or close to it.

I knew everyone, and I mean everyone…in the whole college. I played in a hand bell choir directed by the college president’s. I had dinner with a professor either in the dining hall or at their home at least once every couple of weeks.

I transferred to a large public university after my first year.

To be honest, I didn’t like being in a small fishbowl.

22

And it’s not necessarily the size of the college, but the size of the dept. Who cares if there are umpteen thousand in some dept you won’t spend time in? And after a couple of years, even in a large humanities dept, you may be dealing mostly with faculty in your specialty.

23

“I do not pretend that colleges are one-size-fits-all but there is a trope on CC that at large unis, you become “just a number.” It’s just not universally true and it’s insulting to those of us who work hard at these unis to forge relationships with our students.”

I hope that I didn’t insult you in my prior post, and I hope that I don’t now. I try to be honest on here, and my views tend to be unwashed for sensitivities.

I attended Stanford. Not exactly the large flagship, but not quite a LAC in scale either. Certainly not the physical plant, which is one of the largest (and lovely) in the world. Stanford, to an 18 year old, can be overwhelming.

I was well educated there. But even with the very high standards of Stanford in mind, were I to do it over again, I likely would have chosen a highly selective LAC over the prestige of the ‘Harvard of the West’. Then again, not in any version of the past, nor in any dimension of time, would I have known then what I know now, so it’s academic at this point.

That all said, while I acknowledge that there are many professors like you who want to make the large, public flagship small, it doesn’t quite make it in my view. I can’t prove it, but I suspect you and your other well-meaning colleagues are the exception to the rule. The disadvantage of the large, state, flagship university is the impersonal nature, and thinly-spread resources, of the first two, sometimes three, years of the undergraduate experience. Moreover, at the flagships with vaunted departments or graduate schools, often the survey courses are designed to “weed” and thus favor those who are for whatever reason ready for college exams but may not necessarily be the most talented in the long-run. And that latter comment is coming from a guy with three IB kids, who as a group do tend to be quite ready for college right out of the gate.

There is little to no incubation at the large university. Sometimes, the best of the best were not the best of the best at the outset, and at a huge school you may lose that kid or drive them to another field of study. In an environment where the prof’s job is to cut down on the applications to the flavor-of-the-day department (CS for example), or the highly ranked biz school or the overly-subscribed engineering department, your very bright and hard working kid may not fare well. That prof. will assign an incredibly low mean grade and run the class in a very Darwinian way. That’s not the ideal for a great education in any way, shape or form. A lot of my HS classmates who attended the University of Washington described it just that way. And they would also say, yes, they were for the most part, just a number.

Like I said, it’s not personal; it just is what it is.

24

@thumper1 , fortunately, there are many great choices between the extreme of 900 and the 70,000 that is Ohio State.

25

At Ohio State you can certainly get small classes and seminars but it won’t likely be until your third or fourth year and probably only in your major. So say my friends who are at or have graduated from OSU.

26

“And it’s not necessarily the size of the college, but the size of the dept. Who cares if there are umpteen thousand in some dept you won’t spend time in? And after a couple of years, even in a large humanities dept, you may be dealing mostly with faculty in your specialty.”

Well, if they’d give me those first two years at a discount to reflect less attention and resources for my kid, then your point would be more compelling.

I ask again, what is the purpose of an honors college at a large flagship? Why did those come about? What are they attempting to mimic, and why??? And, finally, why are they reserved for a caliber of student that is well above the statistical average of the rest of enrolled students? What is this “college within a college” anyway?

Who cares? I care. I want my kid’s reading of Chaucer or her introduction to micro economics to be in an environment where she’ll be called upon to answer a question and a follow-on question and another and another. In an environment in which the professor will get to know her learning style, her strengths, her shortcomings, reflect on a paper she wrote and have THAT reflection show up in his or her lectures.

All four years matter. You don’t just get your education your junior and senior years. It all counts.

And then, as I said in another post, there’s the weeding, which is another issue altogether.

27

@MiddleburyDad2 “you may lose that kid or drive them to another field of study.” That’s a concern even at colleges much smaller than the mega universities, depending on the major. It’s a concern of adcoms, not so much because of sheer size of the school or dept, but the overall competitiveness, the level of the peers, in that major. That kid who’s lacking, say, rigorous math or the sorts of thinking, (but thinks cs or engineering would be oh, so interesting,) would be starting behind. Even at a smaller college, there may not be the level of hand holding that kid would need.

And smaller colleges are simply not immune to weeding,eg, pre-meds. One needs to look further. Sometimes, not pick a “smaller” environment, but a less rigorous, less competitive one.

28

@MiddleburyDad2

I went to Ohio University…about 27,000 when I was a student there.

I had plenty of opportunity there to also develop relationships with my professors.

29

@lookingforward , yes, I agree. There are no panaceas. That said, I’m not talking about hand-holding, and I’m not talking about a kid being in an class or school in which he/she does not belong because they are unprepared.

This gets back to my first post about subtlety and things that are not obvious or easily reducible to a “gotcha” retort.

There is a skill that some kids master early when it comes to passively sitting in class, figuring out what’s going to be on the test and being very ready to take it. Sometimes people who are learning for learning’s sake, who are perhaps pretty deep thinkers and who have, in the long run, a great deal of potential aren’t necessarily the same people who will survive that Darwinian gauntlet. Often times, they are the same people.

But, of course, if you don’t belong at Swarthmore and somehow you snuck in, you are going to find out soon enough the hard way.

Nobody and nothing is immune to anything. I’m talking about the big picture.

30

Oh…and even at my teeny tiny college…psychology 101 and 102 were in a lecture hall with 100 students in it. Required courses for just about every major back then!

31

I have to agree about the weeding out process early on at non-LACs. I was an engineering major at NU and had advanced placed out of some calc and chem. My first classes were so hard for me. I’ll never forget the chem test where a 28% was the mean. What’s up with that? Had I been at a smaller school, I maybe would have gotten more attention or at least someone would have acknowledged that I was struggling. It would have been easier for me to find resources to help. As it was, I just gave up and switched majors. I didn’t have any advisor to offer other options. In hindsight, I can blame myself for not being the kind of student who found those resources for myself. I remember thinking that I should seek out my TAs but they hardly spoke English and they weren’t much help in our small break-out groups, so I just decided engineering must not be for me (even though I was a very strong math and science student in high school.)

32

Middlebury, I think you are making gross over-generalizations. I do not think we are the exception to the rule.

And, just my own personal opinion here. I went to a K-8 where I graduated with 20-some kids. High school had 6k+ people. College and undergrad both have tens of thousands of students. I have experienced the whole range and I have found that people- teachers especially- generally want relationships with their students. They want to help. They are not going to hunt you down and force you to have a relationship though.

ETA: Oh and my best friend went to a small school though not an LAC. It was about the size of our high school and he was an engineering major. Yup, definitely had weed out classes since he was one of the people weeded out and ended up graduating with a psych major.

33

My kids went to a grade school that wanted 25 in each class, with 2 classes per grade. Their K had 23 and it was fine. By 4th grade they were down to 19. It was terrible. Too many cliques and favorites, a main group that controlled everyone else, not enough kids to do some activities and others overcrowded because not enough kids for two teams. I did not think smaller was better. In high school with the limit of 25 in the general classes, everyone took the honors or AP with 35 or 40.

I let my kids tour small LACs but it quickly became clear they were as claustrophobic as I was at those schools. I need more options, more classes offered even if there are 30 people in them, more than 5 professors in the math department.

34

@homerdog
I went to OSU- so I know that feeling of being lost. I went to a top high school in Ohio, but we did not have AP classes back in 1980. I definitely felt that I was less prepared than the few students in my class who had taken some college courses in high school. Things moved very quickly there on the quarter system.

Fast forward to my d starting at a large university this year. I think she went to a help session/ study session for AP Calc two times (it was offered every week) and that was the only time she ever got help on anything in high school. She said she did not need help and would prefer going to a large university so she could sit in class and not have the prof notice when she was off-task because she would get bored and her attention would wander off. Sometimes teachers would get annoyed with her because she would do other things in class (looking at phone, etc). However, she was a top student and got the ideas very quickly and then became bored.

Regardless, I warned her she may need to get help in college. I also explained that if she waits a week to get help on a subject it will be too late because the pace is much faster at the college level; she would be buried and she would not get material that is foundation for other material. I am very happy that she has sought out help right away when she needs it in college and she actually seems to enjoy discussing her subjects with various Professors and TAs. She is definitely forging relationships with her teachers. She has spent some time in Chem prof office hours asking him to clarify lab expectations, and she also posts Chem jokes on his classroom blog which he likes because he is a very likeable teacher with good sense of humor. Also, after seeing her exam scores, he sent her an email inviting her to apply to be a TA for Chem next year. She called me to tell me yesterday and was very excited about the opportunity.

She is part of the Honors Program at her university and also attends what is called a residential college that emphasizes undergraduate teaching. So, she has access to some small classes and also has teachers that are more geared to the undergraduate experience rather than doing research (something I found was prevalent at OSU in the first two years). There is more emphasis on teaching than weeding out within the residential college. BTW- some of her professors teach classes in the basement of her dorm and eat breakfast & lunch in the dorm cafeteria. So, not all large universities are impersonal.

35

Big university and small class size can surely co-exist so long as faculty lines are properly staffed.

When a class size is too big, it reduces the interaction between the instructor and students on a per student basis. My own experience is that once the size exceeds 50 at the undergraduate level, the quality of delivery starts to suffer. I always like a size of about 20-25.

36

@twoinanddone 35-40 kids in an AP class? Is this at a public school? Our district would go insane and storm the board meeting if we had that many kids in a class! :))

37

There is a reason why there are thousands of different colleges out there that range in size, course offerings, campus setting, etc. Different students have different needs/wants. Different students thrive in different university settings. Just check out the thread about why given colleges get crossed of kids’ respective lists. For every kid who disliked a given school for X or Y there is another kid who moved that school up on his/her list for the very same reason. And vice versa.

Help your kids find a place that suits them well (the misnomer in the title of the thread is there is a “the right” school – that isn’t the case at all – many different places where any given kid can do well – find one and run with it – “the right school” is a big reason from what I have seen why so many people find the college selection process so stressful though that is a different discussion). Look at different options and pick one and your kid thinks will be a good fit for the kid, the budget, the life goals, etc. That other people make different selections doesn’t make you right and them wrong. Just different.

Now to a little defense of my state’s flagship:

I agree there are many great choices between those extremes. Ohio State happens to be one of them. About 45,000 undergrads on main campus in Columbus. Even if you include grad students and all students at other Ohio State campuses you still do not get to 70,000. Though I have seen the 70,000 number incorrectly cited on this thread more than once.

Here are some quick facts setting forth some of the school’s merits: http://undergrad.osu.edu/majors-and-academics/quick-facts No doubt though the school isn’t right for everyone.

The link above notes that 72% of freshman undergrad classes have 50 or fewer students in them. Some may view 50 as a large class. Though a lot of people seem to believe Ohio State holds classes in the football stadium or only in 800+ seat auditoriums. Hearing some people talk you would also think that students are prohibited from using their name on campus being required to call each other by their student number. None of that is true but the myths continue.

In terms of class size from what I understand, major classes are typically smaller. Though the degree of that may depend on the major and the classes in that major. But I also understand there are small class options in non-major courses as well that are available freshman year forward. They will not be in super popular classes such as rocks for jocks or psych 101 though. Seems to me the kid looking for small classes though isn’t likely to want to take those classes anyway. And kids who do from what I have seen are often looking for the anonymity that comes with large classes. YMMV.

38

I took a class on Shakespeare with a renowned scholar (who was also a fantastic showman and lecturer). It took place in the university’s biggest lecture hall, and there were kids sitting on the radiators, crowding the aisles, sitting outside the doorways auditing-- just to get the experience of hearing a masterful teacher make the words come alive.

I met with him just once- a 10 minute meeting. Did he know my name? No. Did he make me dinner? No. Everyone on campus advised Freshman and Sophomores to make sure to find time on their schedule to take a class with him- any class- no matter what your major was, no matter whether you loved Shakespeare or not, even if you were taking his seminar on “Julius Caesar” and you’d already read the play 42 times.

Do you really think your kids are going off to college to sit in a seminar room with 11 other 18 year olds to hear them talk about Shakespeare and what he means to them? You are paying the big bucks so your kids get exposed to big ideas taught by brilliant scholars who are also phenomenal teachers. And if that means there are a few hundred other kids in the classroom sitting at the feet of the master at the same time- I can live with that.

This class changed my life.

One of my kids had a choice between a required class taught by the professor who had won the undergrad teaching prize for 8 years in a row- taught in a huge lecture hall, or a perfectly fine professor who taught the next semester, the same course, but in a small intimate room.

Kid said that not only did most classes end in a standing ovation, but that several years later he can still quote almost verbatim some of the lectures. The professor was able to make very complicated and technical topics come alive.

You want to tell your kid to miss that experience? I did not. And I’m glad he had it-- along with lots of other phenomenal professors.

I had seminars of 8 students; I had lectures held in big halls. To miss out on the “famous” professors because your parents think small classes in and of themselves are better is crazy. The famous professors teach huge classes because they are so incredible that everyone wants to hear them. Wisdom of the crowds and all that.

39

My D went to a large OOS school, and talked herself as a sophomore into the class of the most prominent scholar in their field. The class was huge, but he liked her audacity and let her in. That was the beginning of an incredible mentoring and personal relationship. He supported her research for the rest of college, including personally introducing her to people that undergrads would never get to meet in support of that research. She is listed in his latest book, and despite having been promoted up above department chairman, he personally bestowed her honors degree on her and stopped the proceedings to hug her. She was a big school girl and thrived in the presence of all the opportunities and experiences. Her brother, however, is at a very, very small school and I think that is the best fit for him because left to his own devices, he would hide.

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@zoosermom Great story! I just think it takes a certain type of student to pull that off. Of course, there are kids who will be superstars at a big college…or those who go for it and seek out their special mentor. I hope we know our kids well enough by the time they apply to college to know if they could make a larger school work or if the relative small size of a LAC makes more sense. I’ve read a number of postings where kids think they want small and then they feel stifled. Not sure how to avoid that mistake but I sure hope we do!