Comment by verst | Hacker News Reader

Comment by verst | Hacker News Reader

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Exactly this.

I went to a liberal arts college and had small class sizes (most around 9-15 in size, with the largest being 30) - I could see my professors 1:1 pretty much anytime I wanted, but there was also a preceptor (TA) for each class who didn't teach, but was available to answer questions related to assignments, projects etc. I went to the house of many of my professors for food or drinks too. Generally also was on a first name basis with professors.

The downside is that liberal arts colleges aren't research institutions and they are generally undergraduate only. This means you don't have as many choices for advanced courses. However, the professors at liberal arts colleges really tend to be there for the teaching and tend to enjoy that. One of my math professors was the head of the mathematical association of America and also authored the books on Analysis (the mathematical subject - not a data science thing) we were using.

Many professors at small liberal arts colleges still conduct research. And because of small class sizes, there is a good chance for a motivated student to get to know their professor and participate in that research.

There are also research consortiums of small colleges. I did original geological research 2 out of my 3 summers in a small college via the Keck Consortium:

https://keckgeology.org/

I did research for a professor as an undergraduate at a big university. Once you are out of lower division courses and into your upper division major classes, your classes are much smaller and the professors start to know you as you see them around a lot.

>The downside is that liberal arts colleges aren't research institutions and they are generally undergraduate only.

What's ironic about this though is how many universities won't accept their own undergrads into their grad programs... IE: they know that their undergrad programs are sub-standard but they don't seem to take action to improve them because the money and the focus is on the grad programs.

It has nothing to do with the quality of the undergrad degrees. Even most top tier programs suggest going somewhere else for grad school because each department has its own research culture and it is good to pick up on more than one

When I applied for grad school (long ago) they just said it was better to experience another department. The undergrad classes we similar enough to the grad classes that it was good to see a different approach. So if you had a family reason (spouse's job etc) that meant you needed to stay in the area, then they'd let you apply. Otherwise, they wouldn't write recommendation letters to our department.

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