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What is the difference between a LAC and a big university? Which is better for what?

By Nitroxideracer (Nitroxideracer) on Saturday, November 29, 2003 - 12:39 pm: Edit

As far as I know, a Liberal Arts College sets you up for one of two things:

1) Graduate Study
2) Research (i.e. Graduate Study)

Though I'm not an expert. LACs endow you with the "basics" of all the stuff you can do in grad school, but they are a bit less pre-professionally organized. They obviously are smaller, and thus offer a lot less choices, but can be great for highly-motivated people who don't know what they want to do.

By Haon (Haon) on Saturday, November 29, 2003 - 03:09 pm: Edit

Not true...many Universities have "colleges of liberal arts" which are basically LACs within a University.

Tech schools (MIT, GIT) are obviously more preprofessional than LACs, but LAC and Unis really set you up for the same thing in life.

The advantage of LACs is close faculty attention and interaction, smaller classes, more attention to the individual student, tighter alumni networks, and usually better comunities. The advantage of Universities is slightly more research opportunities (unfortunately, usually only for the top students), more class offerings, and more name recognition among the general public.

I'd obviously recommend an LAC above a University to any but a few prospective students.

By Ariesathena (Ariesathena) on Saturday, November 29, 2003 - 06:35 pm: Edit

Haon's definitions of liberal arts vs. universities are good... I'll add a few things on the university side. When there is a graduate programme, there are usually a bunch of upper-level classes to choose from... it's not just more classes, but you can take more at a higher level. You can do more research, but it depends on the school. A huge (15,000 enrolled) university won't offer much for research, but a small university will offer a lot more. As a chemical engineer in a small university that was much like a liberal arts school, at least 80% of my classmates did research with professors and graduate students. 20% of them got a head start on master's work. However, I think that my alma mater is more the exception than the rule in getting those numbers of students to do real research.