D21 might major in English, gov, maybe also dabble in film; is undecided. She is progressive and somewhat of an activist. She has mentioned the possibility of law school, but is not sure.
She wants a liberal, interesting group of students who are accepting. She hates cliques. D is not the most outgoing, though has been very active at her HS despite that, but wants a place where it is easy to make friends. She is LGBTQ+ but doesn’t want to be somewhere where her sexuality defines her. Wants to be able to go to a party (non-frat related) now and then.
All will be around the same price as we are full pay.
On paper, it’s hard to tell the difference between Vassar and Wesleyan. Can anyone weigh in on that?
Also, how is Barnard compared to those 2? I know it has more required classes. Do students get the same prof-student connection they seem to get at the other 2? And, what is the social life like?
Regarding ILR, she knows this choice has the most required classes. Does anyone know if some portion of the kids might be like I described her?
She got to tour Smith and wasn’t sure how she felt. It does have the most open curriculum.
Any information on whether any of these have better postgrad employment than others would be very helpful.
Thanks. Without regular tours, or even getting to look at some of these schools, this is difficult.
For LGBTQ folk, the differences between Wesleyan and Vassar are negligible. Wesleyan is a bit larger but a lot of that is due to more sports teams and in particular the helmet sports that attract, indeed - require - more guys.
Barnard? It’s in the city that never sleeps. Every thing a young, hormonal, man or woman could want is right there and you never have to worry about the early morning “perp walk” that folk at New England colleges have to (Why? Because who’s going to notice another drunk with glitter in their hair on the streets of New York?)
Can’t speak too much about Cornell except to say that it may be an odd choice for someone who wants to avoid cliques.
I’d say the best fit based on your description would be either Barnard or Vassar – for her possible major, going to a non-frat party, activist but not too outgoing personality.
Wesleyan seemed a bit cliquey (perhaps wrongly?), Cornell will have frats, Smith has activism but might not be ideal for a “not outgoing”/discrete student.
To compare, one would have to actually have attended the other two - so pretty unlikely.
As far as “required classes”, compared to other colleges my daughter had visited, Barnard actually seemed to be the least rigid. Yes, there are some freshman seminars and writing classes that are required to make sure everyone knows how to write college papers, etc. My daughter (like probably many high-achieving students) would have little patience with just “checking off course-boxes” - and she never voiced frustration in that regard. If anything, she felt privileged compared to her friends who were stuck with a rigid “core” curriculum at Columbia College across the street.
Other than some sensible Freshman courses, the rest of the requirements are actually not specific COURSES, but AREAS of study, which usually can be easily satisfied by a wide range of course topics. She was able to fulfill some math, computer science, etc. requirements by taking courses that were VERY applicable to her REAL interests.
Prof/Student connections appear to be very suitable. The key is to actively take advantage of visiting hours and get to know your professors. Many Barnard classes have fewer students than comparable Columbia College classes, further enabling personal connections.
Again - I can’t compare other schools. There’ll always be some Professors that are a better match than others, but never once have I sensed frustration about not being able to get to meet in person, and/or to have the Prof work with her through any confusions.
These are all good schools. They will all have a group of liberal, accepting students; they will all be relatively LGBTQ+ friendly; they will all offer her the chance to go to a non-Greek party every once in a while. All have great academics and post-graduation prospects. To help her make a decision, I’d start by focusing on what’s different about these five places.
Barnard is in a large urban area and is affiliated with a large, prestigious, resource-heavy research university. Vassar and Wesleyan are in large suburban towns/small cities that are within an hour or so of a larger city (NYC for Vassar, Hartford for Wesleyan, and those are every different cities). Cornell and Smith are both essentially in college towns - Northampton is a very liberal place and is renowned as one of those most LGBTQ+ friendly cities on the planet (especially for young women). What kind of environment does she prefer? Does she like the idea of riding the subway down to hang out in Lower Manhattan once in a while, or does she want to get most of her fun on campus?
Barnard and Smith are obviously women’s colleges, while the other three are co-ed. Both are in consortia, so it’s not the same as a tiny women’s college in the middle of nowhere - but there is something special about the women’s college experience (I went to one). Most of her classmates and all the student leaders on campus will be women (or nonbinary, genderqueer, or otherwise gender non-conforming). Is that an experience that she wants?
Cornell is quite a bit larger than all of these colleges, and it appears that she’s locked into a particular major there (industrial and labor relations). Is she OK with both of those things? Everything else she selected is a small LAC - what’s the reasoning behind Cornell in the list? Even if the ILR program is smaller, she’ll still be attending Cornell, the larger university.
More required courses isn’t necessarily a bad thing. They don’t preclude students from exploring; on the contrary, students who are interested in lots of things may really enjoy a core curriculum, as it exposes you to a wide range of thought across many fields and shows how they are interconnected with each other. The areas of science and humanities, arts and social sciences are not as distinct and siloed as people tend to think they are - a traditional liberal arts education is designed partly to illustrate that. (The opposite - attending an open curriculum with the intention of getting “spiky” in one specific area of inquiry - can be more limiting, IMO.)
Cornell strikes me as being the odd man out of this list. I think at this point, your D needs to be ruthless and eliminate the two she’s least interested in.
Reading this— “She wants a liberal, interesting group of students who are accepting. She hates cliques. D is not the most outgoing, though has been very active at her HS despite that, but wants a place where it is easy to make friends. She is LGBTQ+ but doesn’t want to be somewhere where her sexuality defines her. Wants to be able to go to a party (non-frat related) now and then”—Wesleyan sounds like the best place for her.
*Wes does have frats, but my understanding is that Greek Life is not a dominant force on campus.
I agree with @lindagaf that Cornell seems like the outlier. My impression of Cornell is there’s a bit of a perfectionism/stress culture where it’s a source of pride to complain about how overcommitted you are. It also feels like a work hard/play hard place.
If it’s between Wes and Vassar, I’d lean towards Vassar. It does not have a reputation for being cliquey and its reputation seems less overtly quirky than Wesleyan. It sounds like your D is intrigued with the idea of Manhattan (given Barnard) and it’s not that hard to get there from Poughkeepsie. The campus is classically beautiful. However, if she likes architectural eclecticism with a dash of brutalism, Wesleyan also has a certain charm.
OP here. She applied to Cornell ILR in case she decided she would definitely do a pre-law route; she also applied to NU Journalism (WL),for a similar reason. And both are small schools within the larger university. At this point, she’s nixed ILR.
She still loves the idea of being in the city. I finally did a deep dive into Barnard/Columbia’s course catalogue yesterday and was surprised at the class size of many of the classes she might take for any number of majors. Some were as many as 150 students. I am going to do more of this today, as she is digging into the catalogues at other options, but it looks like they have huge classes, even in higher level English classes. This surprised me. If that’s the case, she may nix this option. They did have very interesting courses though.
I keep wondering if it’s worth taking her back to look again, quickly! She’s doing as many online sessions as she can. Smith has chats with a group of current students, which is very helpful. Unfortunately, the other schools aren’t as great with that piece, which I think really helps kids with the “fit” and vibe piece.
Your comment about cliques at Wesleyan echoes what I’ve heard from D’s friends there. We live in NYC and while there are a lot of NYC residents at both schools it seems like there are more at Wes, often from the same schools or social circles (usually private schools) so they know each other already. My D applied to both and strongly preferred Vassar. We got a much warmer, more down-to-earth vibe, and they didn’t constantly name drop famous alums, my D’s pet peeve.
Revisit all? Or just one? Really, she should be down to two, or three, tops by now. She needs to stop thinking about “yes, but this one has this and that one has that.” Get rid of the options she’s least interested in. Be ruthless. If she’s been to them all, there are plenty of resources she can use:Facebook pages, Instagram, Niche, Unigo, the school website, Fiske, this board. But time is ticking. Start by cutting. Keep cutting.
Actually, getting from Wesleyan to NYC is not that different than getting there from Vassar. There’s a shuttle bus that leaves Wesleyan hourly that will take you to Meriden Station, about 20 minutes away. Take any train to New Haven and from there you can transfer to MetroNorth. Or, take Amtrak which stops at Meriden once a day. Either way, the trip to Manhattan is only 45 minutes longer than from Vassar.
Understood. Worse comes to worst, you share a Uber to New Haven. At that point, the distance and convenience getting to New York City are virtually equal.
Classes at Barnard and Columbia College depend on the topic and the course style. Yes, if she chooses a lecture-style course, there may as well be a large number of attendees. Even with those, my daughter found it easy to follow-up with her TAs etc. In fact, like many people who get into these schools, much of the learning will take place by studying outside of the actual lecture.
On the other hand, seminar-style courses tend to be small and intimate, specially those conducted at Barnard itself.
My daughter always had had a strong English language interest (taken English awards at her High School each year) and has taken many courses on various subjects and areas of interest - some lecture some seminar - as appropriate. I’ve never heard her express regret/frustration. Instead usually, she’s quite bubbly, eager to share the Professors’ unique viewpoint or style – and where she might passionately dissent on her Professors’ angle on whatever academic angle of some piece of poetry, some author, etc.
I saw your exchange with the OP @havenoidea on the other thread so I thought I would comment here because you seemed confused about why your comment might land as offensive (and, I might add, gross).
I will write this assuming that you are curious and want some feedback?
First, the OP asked about social life, which is a very common question on CC and I haven’t seen any other response that took it to a sexual place like that. And you did that 2 sentences after mentioning LGBTQ+ “folk”. It felt to me like you were then describing their social lives in those sexual terms. Can you see how it might read like that?
And second, you created a sexual visual, including hormonal, “perp walk” and drunk with glitter in their hair regarding the OP’s 18 year old daughter. (That is who this thread is for.) Making an assumption that you are a middle aged man and a stranger, can you see the ick factor with that?
Hope this helps! Not sure if I am correctly representing the OP’s feelings on this - this is how I felt reading your post.
Sorry, but when someone asks about the social scene at a particular college, I assume they mean dating included. Barnard would indeed seem a strange fit for someone easily offended by street life.
I completely disagree and I believe your information is simply outdated. I am extremely familiar with the current culture at HWCs and 18 year old women in 2021 are fortunate enough to not have to accept sexist references that associate women’s sexual activity as shameful. That phrase is over and I am happy to help you learn that. And I can hazard a guess that they would absolutely find middle aged men referring to their dating and sexual life as offensive.
If you would like evidence that you are in the wrong here, I am happy to have my daughter post your view to the HWC discord server she is active on, which includes many, many current Barnard students and you can hear for yourself what they have to say.
BTW, a drunken, hook-up culture is not what my D is looking for in a college (besides which she doesn’t drink and hasn’t dated). “Social life” for a LAC means is it inclusive of others; will I fit in. With Barnard, because it is in such a vibrant city, many students ask about the social life because they still want the close-knit community associated with a LAC.
The women who go to Barnard are smart, driven, talented and want to use the city for internship experience. They are part of Columbia University. I can’t imagine someone saying what you’re saying about women attending Columbia College.
Well, you do bring up a valid point in that one of the key features of the term, “walk of shame” is its double-standard. Very few men get to experience it and have it applied to them in quite the same way as women do. If you’re telling me that sex-shaming has been eliminated at Vassar, Wesleyan and Smith, I’m happy to hear it. My whole point was that it doesn’t exist at Barnard for the reasons stated.
