I found this blog entry pretty interesting. The short version is that smaller colleges and universities send a much higher percentage of their female students on to PhD programs than large research schools. Apparently they get more attention and are taken more seriously at the smaller schools. This in turn leads to success. Imagine that.

I must confess that I have a bias towards small universities. That may be because I attended one and I really think it served me well. I think that often there are opportunities at smaller universities to do things as an undergraduate that you would not get to do until you were a graduate student as some larger universities. This is not universally true of course. There are departments at large universities that really do a great job with undergraduates to be sure. And not all small schools are all that great. So I'm not saying that large universities are the wrong choice for everyone by any means. But at the same time I think that small universities and colleges have a lot to offer and can be a much better choice for a lot of people.

A lot of it depends on what you want out of a school. Where do you want to live (urban, suburban or rural)? Are you a very social person or quiet and shy? Do you want to be lost in a lecture hall of 300 (or 800) students or do you want to be in a room with 20 other students even as a freshman? Do you want to listen to a famous professor and talk to him one on one once a year?  Or do you want a professor who has office hours and who will tutor you himself? If you can get into Harvard than you are probably smart enough to make it in the world without a Harvard degree so you should make sure you want to live in Cambridge and not somewhere else. You don’t want others to judge you by where you went to school but on what you know and how well you perform your job. The school you attended may help you get your first job but how you do on your first job will have a lot more to do to determine where your second one is.