Too often students and parents overlook some of the best colleges in the country because of the name, “Liberal Arts College” and what this term actually means. There is no formal definition of the term, but a generally accepted view is that these schools focus on undergraduate study and that most of their degrees are awarded in Liberal Arts areas. I want to go back to that first part, “focus on undergraduate education” it should bring up the question, what are those other schools focusing on? Liberal Arts colleges tend to be smaller schools and this can lead to them having less press coverage than larger schools with great football teams, so we don’t hear a lot about them. Every description you will see will use terms like, “student focused”, “focused on education”, and “small classes”.
Liberal Arts colleges offer a broad array of subjects that are not limited to English literature. You can study physics, biology, chemistry, computer science, economics and even some Engineering classes. Often these smaller schools will link up with other larger universities in what are called 3+2 programs where you will attend the smaller school for three years studying physics and then switch to a larger school for another 2 years.
So don’t reject the label of a Liberal Arts College simply based on titles, after all if you are going to spend $40,000-$60,000 on a year of college, it would be nice to know that the schools were “student focused” and “focused on education”.
St. John's School, Guam 