Why Small Colleges Are Great For Science Students

Of course if your a valedictorian of a high school class, there is one small science school in Pasadena, Ca that applies. It will provide undergrad research opportunities. (Caltech) which has only 750 undergrads.

When I was looking for colleges bigger seemed to be better: course catalogs filled with lots of cool sounding courses, lots of selection....

Now, I think a having a good mentor would have been the best possible thing to have had. I didn't do too bad, since I was in a small Astronomy department with no graduate students, and the most precocious students were all that had for that role.

I'd stay well away from Caltech as an undergrad. The teaching is often terrible and there's little there to introduce students to the wider world of scholarship. Research experiences generally mean you get foisted on a graduate student, and I know a lot of grad students think that the undergrads are kind of a pain to work with because of their ego.

I say this as someone who greatly enjoys the campus as a graduate student.

Interesting information.
I see it has an influence in terms of comfort and academic competition with the other. Moreover supported by the instructor of the course can be can be used in teaching.

Education is more incentive for science students is necessary, although many aspects and things that need to be considered to be feasible and have quality in the field of science.

I’d stay well away from Caltech as an undergrad. The teaching is often terrible and there’s little there to introduce students to the wider world of scholarship.

Similar statements apply to a lot of big-name universities. Yes, big-name universities tend to have most of the big-name faculty. But for every Richard Feynman or Carl Sagan who are able and eager to reach out to nonspecialists such as most of the students taking introductory courses, there are many who do not wish to (and some who should not) teach undergraduate courses. There are still advantages to attending many of these schools: they frequently have more resources and wider coverage of topics, and some of them are public universities, so the cost of attending can be substantially lower (especially if you are fortunate to have one in your state) than SLACs or Ivies. But there are tradeoffs. Ivy League schools and the like offer you the advantage of membership in their alumni association--though if you are planning on science as a career, that's not such a big advantage. At the same time, Harvard in particular is notorious for mediocre undergraduate education (some of the schools in this peer group make more of an effort). All things considered, you are better off with a Ph.D. or other graduate degree from the likes of Caltech or Harvard than with a bachelor's degree from one of those schools and a Ph.D. from a mediocre department.

It's difficult balance to make because:
1. You don't know if you're going to leave college in the same general field as what you came in. (I know PLENTY of folks who thought they were going to do physics, realized it was not for them, and then went on to great success in things like Linguistics or Political Science.)
2. Getting a PhD is NOT a universal plan for everyone (and thank you Chad for your PNAS series).

My personal vote, as a member of the millenial generation myself who has watched the struggle of many of my peers is--go to the best university you can where your tuition is affordable. Seriously. I am incredibly thankful that my UG, Rice, was so committed to keeping tuition low (doesn't appear to be the case anymore :( ) that I was able to finish school with < 10 thousand dollars in debt, which I was able to pay off on a grad student stipend (well, Caltech is generous) in a couple of years. Being debt-free gives you tremendous flexibility.

As a general rule, I'd give a hearty recommendation to Flagship-Public-State-University + honors program if you're in a state with a good one. Maybe you can go to an adjacent state and get a decent benefit if you're not*. Then you get a lot of the benefits of a SLAC (viz, personal guidance), there's enough instructors that you can often strategically pick the good ones, there's plenty of academic options outside your major (I still think taking Intro to Sociology was one of the best things I did as an UG), and there''s a wide availabilty of things like research if you want. And if you decide you hate the physical sciences and all they stand for by sophomore year, you've got plenty of opportunity to transfer to something else.

And having gone through such things, it's often better as a non grad-student to work on a more modest research project if you are able to do much more with the work. Spending a summer crimping BNC cables at the fanciest lab ain't worth jack to actually going through the process of, say writing code to operate a high-speed camera for a small niche experiment.

*I'd recommend programs like WUE but it's much more Directional-State-University instead of University-of-State, sadly.

You write "The country’s liberal arts colleges serve only a tiny fraction of the total college-age population, but are probably over-represented in science grad schools" and in fact they are, and there is data to show it. The NSF periodically creates reports on the "Baccalaureate Origins of US-trained S&T Doctorate Recipients". For the 2013 edition, see in particular Table 4 of http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/infbrief/nsf13323/. For the 2008 edition, with a slightly different focus, see http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/infbrief/nsf08311/.

There's a group called the "Oberlin 50," of which Union and Williams are both members, that made the specific argument in the mid-1980s that the high productivity of selective liberal arts colleges in producing science Ph.D.s justified increased research support.

ooh yeah its a good idea to mentor students in high schools who are interested in physics, as it will boost their confidence in following the right career path in universities .And it also help them on saving their time on books then going to the internet researching; as you will be providing them with all the information they need based on physics.#14065925

Being in a small place, like a small town, school, college and university can have both ups and downs. It really is a privilege to not be just another number, to be known by everyone and to have a small group of friends in a small college. The academic advantages acts as another attraction, because there are smaller groups of students and help is more easily provided to a struggling student. Although, bigger colleges offer a wider variety of courses and subjects and also teaches students to be more independent. In my opinion, let these students decide what would be best for them.

Science is very broad but for students I agree that it's great for them to study science in small colleges. One gets to share their own theory or their own concept to other people in a shorter period of time, as science changes and updates constantly and one has to move on to something new.

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It is very essential for science students to attend a small college because science is very important and yet specific that these students need attention with their findings. It also allows them to be motivated by constantly interacting with their lecturers and fellow students since there are new discoveries and findings regularly. It also draws their focus solely on science.

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Knowledge as we know nowadays is more accessible than what it was long time ago. Therefore the level of education that we get in small colleges is not necessarily different from the one we will get in bigger colleges. It is therefore rational for a student to choose a small college rather than a big one.

I believe that it does not matter where which level of institution a student is studying. We find that a student who studied at a university got the same level of education as the one who studied at a college. As long as the institution has good education and facilities, we all achieve the same.

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By a mere logical approach it makes much more sense to study a scientific discipline as a niche and in smaller groups hence colleges. It's a similar environment to a high school because every learner is given the opportunity to enhance their potential because the teacher can actually address every learners' weak points since its a smaller group. And you find that in these college settings the practicals and experiments performed are of greater value than they are in large lecture groups. So quite frankly it would make more sense to join a college as opposed to a university if you study a scientific discipline.

Small colleges allow prospective scientist to interact with one another whereas it is very difficult to do that in large universities. Lecturers can even pay students individual attention during a lecture. however, not everyone can afford private college expenses.

It's just that people seem to think that University degree holds more credits in the work environment but this post makes sense however as u15062415 has mentioned college fees are too pricy...

But what about the fact that a University degree holds more value when in the work environment? Or has that misconception been destroyed ?

This is very true, its a pity that some of the families can't afford private colleges.