<p>First time poster here, but long time reader. Anyone have any experience with Lake Forest College just outside of Chicago? DS has been accepted with good merit aid, and it has been his top choice since October. We have visited once, and were very impressed with their academics and particularly the small class size, and 90% acceptance rate to Med school. Everything was going smoothly along, we are planning on visiting on accepted students day next month, then...... my son was on some "college review" websites and he started to read that the students feel the school is small, cliquish, and they very rarely get to go into Chicago, which is one of the main draws for DS. The opinions on the website said the campus has no social life except for frats and sororities. Now, he is saying he is having second thoughts. Any Lake Forest students or parents out there that can give us some scoop? We appreciate it!</p>
<p>That pretty much fits with LFC’s reputation as a haven for rejects from the better midwest LACs like Grinnell, Carleton, Kenyon etc. But I know they have been working to change that image. I’d take the 90% with a big grain of salt as it’s very hard to verify. They might be including only students whose med school apps they supported. I would not put too much weight on reports from the site S---- Review. Lots of dubious posts there possibly from competing schools.</p>
<p>Here’s a recent story you might be interested in:
[?Amazing</a> Grace? leaves $7m for alma mater - Giving- msnbc.com](<a href=“http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35729174/ns/us_news-giving/]?Amazing”>http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35729174/ns/us_news-giving/)</p>
<p>I know several kids who went there as we are less than a half hour away, but they were commuter students, so I don’t think you can refer to them as cliquish. One of them works in my office, and is an absolutely terrific guy (but I’m biased as I’ve known him since high school and he was an outstanding kid then).</p>
<p>I had a family member that went there. She loved it, but she was also in a sorority. Has your son been to visit? The best thing is to go and see the college for yourself, if you can. College review websites tend to just reflect the extreme opinions, because only students who REALLY love it or REALLY hate it go online to fill out those surveys and profiles. The majority, the in between students, don’t take the time. [Edit: I see now that he has been to visit. He should go with his impressions, and not rely on college review sites that bring out the worst in people through anonymity. He is the best judge of what will fit him.]</p>
<p>One word of warning though, for all colleges that are “just outside” of somewhere, it is pretty likely that they don’t get into that urban locale that often. College keeps you very busy on campus, and even for people in a fairly close by suburb, there may not be as much travel into “town” as they expect. Particularly true if they don’t have a car, they may not want to deal with the “hassle” of the bus (though a train, if there is one, makes it easier). I know kids who go to the University of Maryland, College Park which is really close to DC and connected to DC by Metro subway that come into DC maybe once a semester. So make sure that they’re happy on campus and around campus, without banking that they’ll just go into town all the time.</p>
<p>Thanks everyone for responding. I did see that article over the weekend. What an interesting woman! I will tell my son to do some investigating when we go for admitted students day next month. His next favorite school is Ohio State, a completely different kind of school, but we also like it, for different reasons.</p>
<p>Funny coincidence. I just got back from the gym where I ran into one of the kids (commuter student) I mentioned above who’s currently a student there (but on spring break). If he hadn’t been in the middle of a pick-up basketball game, I might have pulled him aside and asked him for more info! I barely managed to get his attention to say hi and nice to see you.</p>
<p>I think it is fair to say that Lake Forest is a match or safety school for good students whose applications weren’t strong enough to get them into outstanding LACs such as Grinnell, Carleton and Kenyon. I think to call them “rejects” is unduly perjorative, however. I do agree with Barrons that both the med school acceptance rate and the comments on SR need to be taken with a grain of salt; the same could be said about SR comments and med school acceptance claims for many schools.</p>
<p>I can’t speak from first hand about the “cliquish” comment but would observe that the student body is drawn from more than 40 states and quite a few foreign countries (13% of students are international). Furthermore, less than 40% are from Illinois. So if the students are cliquish, it looks like they didn’t start out that way.</p>
<p>As for getting into Chicago, if you want to go what is holding you back? A bad on-campus social life? The Metra from Lake Forest to Union Station takes less than an hour, runs frequently and costs no more than $10 round trip. I think the kids who want to explore Chicago do and the ones that don’t, don’t.</p>
<p>Rejects was just shorter and clearer. It is what it is. No harm intended. I’m sure for some it is place that was the first choice but the reputation is more the safety for the higher ranked Lacs. I think it has a pretty low retention rate too for such a good-looking school.</p>
<p>83% retention rate from freshman to sophomore year and a 59% 4-year graduation rate from the most recents stats I have seen. As you say, lower than you’d expect for a school that looks as good as it does and which costs as much as it does.</p>
<p>Aside from selectivity, grouping Lake Forest with Carleton, Grinnell and Kenyon appears to be an apples to oranges comparison. It seems like Lake Forest is more pre-professional, perhaps like the University of Richmond, and less of a pure liberal arts experience. I don’t see Carleton, Grinnell and Kenyon offering accounting courses.</p>
<p>I lived near LFC for ten years and hired a few interns from there. In general I’d say LFC is a nice college, but nothing special. It seems largely pre-professional, not the kind of place you’d go to get a traditional liberal-arts education. The kids are not very worldly and do not venture into the city much. It’s not that you can’t enjoy Chicago if you’re a LFC student, but most of the kids seem to be fairly well-off suburbanites who are more interested in suburban comforts than big-city grit and excitement.</p>
<p>On the other hand, if you want to live in a REALLY nice suburban areaone of the nicest in Americathen LFC may be for you. The northern suburbs of Chicago are clean and pretty, with great shopping, lots of neat places to eat, and clear, blue Lake Michigan a bike ride away. In fact you can ride your bike all the way down to Chicago, along the lake much of the way, when the weather’s nice.</p>
<p>But you won’t get the “big city experience” *per se *at LFC unless you really go out of your way.</p>
<p>“The Metra from Lake Forest to Union Station takes less than an hour, runs frequently and costs no more than $10 round trip.”</p>
<p>It runs frequently if you’re commuting downtown at rush hour. It does not run frequently in the evening or on the weekends, and it doesn’t run at all after midnight. It also drops you in the west loop, which is not where a college student exploring Chicago wants to be, so then you need to get on a bus or cab to get to the museums, Wrigley Field, concerts at the House of Blues, etc. that college students would want to enjoy.</p>
<p>It can be done, but it’s a serious undertaking that requires a good deal of planning, and more than $10, and is time-limited in a way that most college students would find burdensome (you’d be lucky if the headliner at the concert even takes the stage before it’s time to leave the venue and get back to Ogilvie for the last train of the night).</p>
<p>Northwestern runs free shuttles between the Evanston and Chicago campuses every day, and also has a free Saturday bus that goes from Evanston to downtown attractions and back. I don’t know if Lake Forest has something like this, too. That’s what it takes to make exploring the city on a regular basis practical for groups of undergrads.</p>
<p>My information comes directly from the Metra web-site. Maybe they aren’t telling the truth?</p>
<p>Back in the day I was “that close” to buying a house in the older part of Lake Forest. But after some thought we backed out due to the long commute downtown and the fact that I worked in West Loop which is a long walk from the train. So we bought in Evanston instead and it was a smart decision. Lake Forest is beautiful but very limited in amenities for college students. Evanston has much more to do and easier connections to Chicago.</p>
<p>If you consider service every two hours to be frequent, then it’s frequent. I don’t.</p>
<p>The service isn’t as good as the service from Poughkeepsie to Grand Central, and LFC is 40 minutes closer to Chicago than Vassar is from Manhattan. It’s also cheaper in Illinois. Doesn’t stop lots of Vassar, Bard and New Paltz kids from making frequent trips to NYC.</p>
<p>[Milwaukee</a> District / North (MD-N) Schedule](<a href=“http://metrarail.com/content/metra/en/home/maps_schedules/metra_system_map/md-n/schedule.html?schedule-start=LAKEFRST&schedule-end=CUS&schedule-day=md-n_saturday&schedule-time=07%3A00&schedule-submit.x=61&schedule-submit.y=15]Milwaukee”>http://metrarail.com/content/metra/en/home/maps_schedules/metra_system_map/md-n/schedule.html?schedule-start=LAKEFRST&schedule-end=CUS&schedule-day=md-n_saturday&schedule-time=07%3A00&schedule-submit.x=61&schedule-submit.y=15)</p>
<p>Hudsonvalley, the Metra web site may tell you something, but those of us in the Chicago area know a bit more. It’s a good half hour by car north of Evanston. Lake Forest is a well-to-do suburb, but it’s not “close to” Chicago any more than North Central College in Naperville is “close to Chicago.” I mean, it’s close to Chicago in the sense that it’s a suburb, but it’s no by means right there where the action is.</p>
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<p>I have just the opposite impression. I think the kids who go to LFC are precisely that, kids who wanted to go to LFC, not kids who were trying to spread their wings to Carleton, Grinnell, and the other midwestern LAC’s. Kids who were trying to spread their wings to those schools might wind up at Beloit or Knox or maybe Kalamazoo. Not LFC.</p>