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If you want to write for the newspaper at a small college, all you have to do is find the editor and propose an article. Boom, you’re a reporter, maybe even a columnist. At a large university, you’d probably have to be a journalism major, and even then a lot of the newspaper jobs are actually full-time, paid positions.

If you want to be a DJ for the campus radio station, at a small college all you have to do is find the station manager and ask to come on board. You’ll start with the worst time slot, but it’ll be your show. You can play rockabilly, gospel, and have poetry readings, all on the same show probably, if that’s what you want. At a large university, you’d have to follow the playlist.

At a smaller institution, you can more easily become captain or founder or czar of something, compared to major universities where student senate campaigns have a media budget. You can be the lead in the play without being a theater major. You can go on biology field trips without being a biology major. You can play cello in a quartet without taking a single music class. You can try lots of things without specializing yet.

If you want to get to know your professors, and have them know you, it’s sure a lot easier if there are ten or twenty students in a class than if there are one hundred or two hundred.

Suppose you want friends. Maybe you think that on a campus with 15,000 students you’d have ten times as many people to know as on a campus of 1500 students. This is like the saltwater sailor’s lament, “Water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink.” The larger the campus, the less interaction outside of class. At a large school, you won’t know the one thousand people in the student union at any given moment. At a small school, you’re likely to know all o the few dozen students in the student union at any given time. Also, at large schools, the overwhelming majority of students live off-campus. They go home after class, and lots of them go home between classes. You’ll see them, all right, walking past you to find their cars.

The most important factor in creating a school’s on-campus atmosphere is on-campus living. It is absolutely essential to creating a bond between students and between students and the institution. Yet few universities succeed in providing this – Yale, Princeton, and Rice are the only ones that come to mind – but practically all the smaller colleges do.

	A Few Thoughts on the Large vs. Small Decision *from Cool Colleges* by Donald Asher**


	If you play a sport in high school and you’d like to continue to play it in college, consider a smaller college. There probably won’t be a scholarship for it, but there will be field time and the camaraderie and the competition and the excitement that you’ve come to love about your sport. At a large university, you’re either a national-level contender, or you don’t play. If you want to write for the newspaper at a small college, all you have to do is find the editor and propose an article. Boom, you’re a reporter, maybe even a columnist. At a large university, you’d probably have to be a journalism major, and even then a lot of the newspaper jobs are actually full-time, paid positions. If you want to be a DJ for the campus radio station, at a small college all you have to do is find the station manager and ask to come on board. You’ll start with the worst time slot, but it’ll be your show. You can play rockabilly, gospel, and have poetry readings, all on the same show probably, if that’s what you want. At a large university, you’d have to follow the playlist. At a smaller institution, you can more easily become captain or founder or czar of something, compared to major universities where student senate campaigns have a media budget. You can be the lead in the play without being a theater major. You can go on biology field trips without being a biology major. You can play cello in a quartet without taking a single music class. You can try lots of things without specializing yet. If you want to get to know your professors, and have them know you, it’s sure a lot easier if there are ten or twenty students in a class than if there are one hundred or two hundred. Suppose you want friends. Maybe you think that on a campus with 15,000 students you’d have ten times as many people to know as on a campus of 1500 students. This is like the saltwater sailor’s lament, “Water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink.” The larger the campus, the less interaction outside of class. At a large school, you won’t know the one thousand people in the student union at any given moment. At a small school, you’re likely to know all o the few dozen students in the student union at any given time. Also, at large schools, the overwhelming majority of students live off-campus. They go home after class, and lots of them go home between classes. You’ll see them, all right, walking past you to find their cars. The most important factor in creating a school’s on-campus atmosphere is on-campus living. It is absolutely essential to creating a bond between students and between students and the institution. Yet few universities succeed in providing this – Yale, Princeton, and Rice are the only ones that come to mind – but practically all the smaller colleges do.