“In my opinion, one benefit of large University Honors classes is that only the best academic students can take these classes. The intellectual standards of these courses is very high, and is driven in part by your fellow classmates. In some LACs, they might have small classes in the same subjects, but you will find some students in the class who are not necessarily top-notch academically. (For example, a B/C student on athletic scholarship).”
Generally speaking, LACs don’t give athletic scholarships, and the admissions “break” for athletes is in a different zip code than it is at flagship U. With that said, sure, a low-end LAC is not going to compete with the tippy top students at a flagship honors college.
But that’s like comparing UVa with Linfield. Let’s compare UVa, and the typical honors college, with Williams. That makes more sense.
If we want to focus on the low-end LAC, then we should compare it with a low-end public. Honors colleges, by definition, are selective so it’s hard to do that.
“I see your point, @MiddleburyDad2. So then, where does a place like U Toronto fall on this spectrum? Massive public university, broken up into several residential colleges. ALL first year students have the opportunity to take six credit hours (1 FCE by their scale) of seminar classes. The goal is to help students transition to college life, and establish meaningful relationships with at least one full professor.”
Sounds like a large university trying to mimic the experience of a small residential college. Which is great! It sounds like a large public university trying to bring the “honors college” experience to everybody. That is even better.
I think honors colleges differ at each university. At some schools, the honors kids do indeed have their own dorm and go to class together. At Wisconsin, it’s very different. No dorm. And many ways to do “honors”. You can be honors in your major and eventually have smaller classes. Or you can do their Letters & Science honors program which sounds like a Great Books program separate from your major. As far as I can tell, you don’t get any preferential treatment for signing up for classes either. Seems like someone shopping for an honors program has to look at each school individually to access what it means.
Exactly, which is why you it makes more sense to compare them to upper-end LACs. As compared to, say, Linfield College, a fine but much less selective college, the hypothetical strong student in her example may well be better off at the honors college.
FWIW, two of my kids were admitted to the UW honors college (one applied and withdrew after her ED result). Of the two, one strongly considered it. For the other, it was a back-up plan.
At UW, it sounds like the honors college is a bit roped off from the rest of the university. The way it was explained to us, the honors kids have access to anything at the university, but the rest of the university generally doesn’t have access to Honors College “stuff”.
When people see a statistic like “72 percent of classes have 50 or less people in them,” what do they think that means? Do you think that it means that a typical student will have that percentage of his or her classes that are smaller than 50, maybe even very small?
It doesn’t mean that, not at all. It means that the typical student will have almost all large classes. It’s a math trick.
I will explain this with an extremely exaggerated example. Play along with me. Lets say you have a school with only 200 students and 2 classes offered every semester. Everyone takes one class. One of the classes has 175 students in it. The other one has 25 students in it.
The school can honestly say that “50 percent of our classes are 25 or less students and 50 percent are more than 25 students.” Technically, this is true.
However, fully 87.5 percent of the student body will will have 175 students in their class, and only 12.5 percent of the student body will have a small class. Statistically, there may be a certain percentage of “classes” that are small, but the large classes seat so many more people that this percentage becomes entirely misleading. To reiterate: there may be 2 classes, but 7 out of 8 students are in the huge class.
Large schools use this misleading statistical trick all the time. I don’t want to pick on Ohio State, but it was being discussed earlier. Ohio State says that it has the school has “29.8 percent of its classes with fewer than 20 students, 47.8 percent of classes with 25-50 students, and 22.6 percent of classes above 50.”
Looking at those numbers, it is statistically likely that the typical student in a typical term will have zero classes with fewer than 20 students, perhaps one class with 25-50 students, and 3 classes with over 50 students (anywhere from 50 to several hundred).
So be aware when you read stats like that and understand what they really mean.
Honors programs at the best public schools are easily comparable to the top LACs. I was admitted to UT Austin Plan II Honors and hold it to a very high regard. The average grad has a LSAT of a 166- higher than Harvard (165) or the top LACs (164 at Pomona, Swarthmore). The testing profile is equal or higher to the best LACs. The experience they provide is top notch and if it comes down to costs I’d absolutely advocate paying in-state for an honors program over full price at an Ivy/top LAC.
There were only two people from my class admitted to Pomona. I went to Pomona primarily because I wanted an out of state experience, and the other did Plan II honors instead primarily because of finances (turning down others as well like Columbia, Swarthmore, Vanderbilt). We were all surprised at first, but she said she really thought Plan II honors was the best deal for the money. She did very well- graduated Phi Beta Kappa and got into many top 20 medical schools- so choosing the “less” prestigious option didn’t hurt her at all. More importantly, she had a very robust and meaningful experience she wouldn’t trade for anything else.
It also depends on the major, the school and the kid. One of mine is in a very small major in a largish university. His major would not be offered at a LAC. He has been doing research in a real lab in his field since freshman year. He has some large classes, but mostly things like chemistry where it really doesn’t matter to him if there are 25 kids or 250, he just has to slog through and learn the material.
Some kids love being in a class with 10 other students and discussing some fine point in great detail. Others do not. Some kids find knowing every student in their class year a wonderful thing, but others find it suffocating to never meet anyone new or never be able to re-invent themselves.
I went to a medium-sized university and had classes of over 100 kids (chem, calc, even bio 101) but also high school sized classes and small seminars. I don’t think there was much of a down side to the mix of large and small classes. Also had a wide range of people to meet, a wide range of activities, and no trouble getting the classes needed to graduate on time. I know several kids at small LACs who needed an extra semester because a required course is only offered every other year. And kids at very big schools who could not get into required classes because there was just too much demand.
“I know several kids at small LACs who needed an extra semester because a required course is only offered every other year.”
I know a multiple of several who needed an extra year at a large public university because they couldn’t get into a required and/or desired course. The first examples and anecdotes of course crunch problems that I ever became aware of originated at the large public flagship university.
Just as many think the large class size issue is over-played at large flagship, I also tend to think that the course selection issue at LACs is a bit exaggerated. If I had to pick one, I’d trade the LAC experience for a few more courses in the catalog any day of the week.
Frankly, if LACs do nothing else, they try and get you graduated on time. They do this because it’s one defense against their extreme costs (they market themselves as “on time” places to go to school), because they’re ranked on their ability to do so, and because they are managing a manageable population. I can’t tell you how many times my kids at Midd and Pomona were badgered by their counselors about getting on track. It’s almost an obsession at good LACs. They don’t want you hanging around around four years. It hurts their rep and their rank.
If I were choosing solely on the basis of 4 years and out, w/o question the LAC would be my choice.
@nostalgicwisdom , I’m guessing that if you attended Pomona and was admitted to UT’s honors college that you also had a lot of other choices, and thus could have pursued any number of out of state options that were not LACs. Pomona, as we all know, is exceedingly difficult to get into.
why did you choose a LAC like Pomona? Why didn’t you go to a school like Vanderbilt or Michigan or Berkeley or UVa? Duke? Chapel Hill? USC? Northwestern? You could have walked into any of those schools if you were Pomona material. None of those appealed? why not?
That is exactly the case at many suburban public school districts from what I have seen. Small number of kids are put into gifted/honors classes/program. Rest of the class is not. Sometimes the classes are smaller but often its the same size class but just smarter/more serious kids taking the class with you. Pace is faster. Discussions broader. Lot fewer discipline issues as well. Honors kids get the benefit of a smaller/more selective high school but at the same time have access to the resources a well funded public school provides (in terms of facilities, activities, etc). So its effectively two different school districts in the same building.
What about the other kids? From what I have seen, they do not get the same level of education. At least in part its because they do not take advantage of what the school has to offer (school isn’t as much of a priority for them for various reasons). Another issue is some of those kids do not qualify to be part of the honors program.
I likely would have a different view of the school had my kid been in that group. Neither were. I let the other parents worry about their kids and take steps they deem appropriate.
@ThankYouforHelp I agree with your analysis. Though it wasn’t being offered for proposition that that 70% of kids would have small classes. Offered in response to statement that small classes aren’t taken at Ohio State until 3rd or 4th year and probably then only in major classes. Your analysis shows that isn’t true (at least to extent 25-50 kids is viewed as a small class).
Large colleges aren’t the only ones who play games with class size. Touring a 5-6k undergrad school a couple years ago, there was a lot of talk about smaller classes. Made an unplanned stop into a building while on a campus tour to escape some weather. As the guide continued the talk, noticed a large classroom which sat a couple hundred kids. When asked about it, guide said it was common for entry level courses to be large sections with a couple hundred students. Small classes except when they aren’t.
No doubt very small colleges will offer more small classes. There are plusses and minuses with that. Along with all of the other plusses and minuses various colleges offer to various kids looking to enroll.
@saillakeerie , yes. two of my three kids attended just such a school in the suburbs of Seattle. they attended a school with one of the state’s first and largest IB programs. though you don’t have to test or grade in, and IB classes are available to everyone, kids who don’t make academics a priority are encouraged to think twice before going full IB diploma. The course loads usually make this point on their own in short order.
In any event, I often would hear resentment by the ‘non-IB’ crowd at our school, as I would from the parents of the local district high schools that didn’t offer IB. “IB this, IB that. It’s not that big of a deal.” Parents at our school often complain that the administration and the staff are entirely too concerned with IB to the neglect of the other kids. I say hogwash and sour grapes. The IB program attracts funding, amazing teachers and, harder to quantify and identify, an overall increase in the academic ‘vibe’ or culture for lack of better words at the school. Everyone benefits from the program being there, whether they care to admit it or not.
With that said, I would be surprised if the same overlapping benefit can be found at a 45,000 student school with a relatively small honors program, especially if the honors courses aren’t open to everybody the way IB courses are at our school.
@MiddleburyDad2 But presumably you would agree that although all kids in your district benefit from the IB program, not all benefit equally? Those participating in it benefit more than those who are indirectly benefited from it, right?
Not sure what the demographics of your district is in terms of ability/smarts but assuming its not a selective district, are there kids who may technically be able to take IB courses but who have little to no likelihood of succeeding at them?
Why would it be the case that an honors program would need to have the same overlapping benefit? Maybe not all kids are looking for those benefits in enrolling at said institution. Is there a problem with that (at least if the school is up front about how the program works)? Most colleges tend to be better in certain areas than others (to the point of being mediocre at best at some things). Should they drop those majors? Why would kids go there for those majors?
Kids at large institutions can still benefit from honors programs even if they do not participate in them. Such programs can provide many of the benefits you note for IB programs. Maybe not to the same degree when talking about large institutions but again not everyone is looking for those benefits.
