<p>All are good schools, although, IMO, Smith is a notch above the others, with Bates coming next. But my opinion is based purely on academics, not what you want in a college. What about the course offerings? Does one stand out for what you want to study, and are courses in that area offered often enough so that they aren’t just names in the catalogue? Do you want to close be to a bustling town, or doesn’t that matter? While all are located in colder climates, both Bates and St. Lawrence are much farther north – does that matter? Do you care that Smith is all-women?</p>
<p>Dincollege, if you are asking whether the claims the Food for Thought original poster made are true or not, I believe the answer is no. I think it was some prankster who wanted to play a joke on everyone on the Smith forum by making up exaggerated, ungrounded claims.</p>
<p>I don’t think the claims made by the OP in Food for Thought are untrue as much as exaggerated. Yes, there are openly gay women at Smith, and yes, the environment is friendly to alternative lifestyles (not just homosexuality but also vegetarianism/veganism, environmentalism, and political activism). But no, the students don’t force their beliefs and lifestyles on others. No, the academics aren’t subpar.</p>
<p>Thank you for the clarification, MWFN; you said it better and more thoroughly.</p>
<p>I don’t think it’s fair to say Smith is a notch above Bates. Smith does provide some awesome opportunities that Bates doesn’t, but the student body, academic rigor and reputation of Bates is equal to Smith’s, and the SAT scores of incoming class higher.</p>
<p>I admire Smith color very much. Was MY first choice for my D (not that that mattered, she chose Barnard and was very happy there), but I find on many Smith forums the idea that Smith is a “a cut above” many schools, usually Mt. Holyoke, but others too.</p>
<p>Smith is too golden a place to need to gild itself with this rhetoric. Smith and Bates are very different places.</p>
<p>Based on what I know of the two, I would say that Smith and Bates are definitely comparable in terms of academic quality. However, as someone who doesn’t enjoy the traditional college party scene, I think Smith offers a more diverse range of social opportunities than Bates does.</p>
<p>Ah, but I said that was my opinion. I don’t think Bates is a mediocre school at all/. In my book (again, my opinion), it runs a close second to Bates.</p>
<p>Bates and Smith are such different places! For one thing, one can’t even begin by comparing SAT scores, as the student body at Smith (on average) much, much economically poorer than at Bates, with 3X the number of students on Pell Grants, and 10% of the student consisting of older students (Adas). <a href=“http://www.jbhe.com/features/65_pellgrants.html[/url]”>http://www.jbhe.com/features/65_pellgrants.html</a></p>
<p>This is even putting aside that one is a women’ college that happens to be a liberal arts college (except with a big engineering program), one a coed liberal arts college. The size differences, especially considering the impact of the Consortium, are very substantial (Smith is 50% larger), primarily impacting the depth of curricula offerings. This will play itself out especially in both number and depth of language offerings, in upper class science electives, and in the arts and music. </p>
<p>35% of the Bates student body plays a varsity sport. The percentage of non-white students at Bates is less than half that of Smith (in actual numbers, it is about 1/3rd.) Only 40% of Bates students receive any kind of financial assistance. (It is well over 60% at Smith.)</p>
<p>Bates runs on a 4:4:1 schedule. It has a unique “fall semester abroad” program for first years, but no other study abroad programs of its own.</p>
<p>What they have in common is that they are both small, relative to state universities, both offer liberal arts degrees, and both are in New England. But the perceived student experience is going to be very, very different.</p>
<p>(Smith will have very many more straight women students. Non-straight ones, too! LOL!)</p>
<p>If you go to Bates, you really need to LOVE winter! The crew experience would be very different as well: at Bates, when you think of crew, everyone automatically thinks of men’s crew and women’s crew is just that–women’s crew. At Smith, just women are doing crew so you get the full support of the college for that sport. I remember at new student orientation in August, the teammates were happy to tell you about crew while we were in line to check in, they had a scull right there (very cool!), so you knew you would be welcomed.</p>
<p>Thanks everybody for your thoughtful, detailed and lively observations.<br>
The Dad (you sound like my dad!): your idea about the card is exactly how I have been feeling when mentioning to people Im interested in Smith. I feel like Im always on the defensive. Seems I shouldn’t have to feel that way.
Mini: I appreciate you taking the time to post all that data. I think I have been thinking more about the similarities than the differences between these colleges, so thats a helpful perspective.
I am starting to think from everyones comments that Im maybe more conservative than I thought. I have to admit that Im not comfortable hearing about peoples bedroom activities, no matter what their persuasion, and I really think people ought to keep such personal stuff to themselves. I also am annoyed by people knocking themselves out to be PC all the time. OK, I know Im going to get a lot of this stuff at just about any college I got into, but I am just wondering if its just all more-so at Smith.</p>
<p>I think you’ll hear just as much about bedroom activities at any college (except for a lot of the Christian colleges, and there are people who will talk about said things there, too). There are going to be some people who brag to their friends about the cute guy/girl they brought home with them, or about how many they have brought home. However, you can avoid these people and conversations if you wish to do so. My friends and I don’t talk about such subjects; we think there are better topics of conversation. Others tend to respect that. </p>
<p>I’m not going to lie: the PC-ness of Smith bugs me too, sometimes. As TD said somewhere about this, the best way to handle it is often to just roll your eyes and block it out. Most people seem to keep it to a moderate level.</p>
<p>“OK, I know I’m going to get a lot of this stuff at just about any college I got into, but I am just wondering if it’s just all more-so at Smith.”</p>
<p>I think it IS more so at Smith, and for one very obvious reason: it is a women’s college in a (still) male-dominated world. The very existence of Smith is a political statement - a place where ALL the resources are for women, all the focus is on women, all the thinking is focused on women’s lives, all the advising takes into account the advisee’s gender and potential life trajectory. All the alumnae are women, the entire career network is women, and the leadership of the institution is made up of women. The very existence of Smith is “in your face”. It is politically loaded!</p>
<p>It is a women’s college that provides instruction in the liberal arts (and engineering), not a liberal arts college that happens to be all women.</p>
<p>My alma mater Williams went coed 40 years ago. They did so, explicitly, for the benefit of men. The trustees’ conversations were fairly public. They figured they could strengthen their weaker departments that way (rather than just increasing the number of men), they figured at the time (not any more) that women were low-cost, as they were less likely to major in the sciences, they figured men would concentrate more by not having to travel over the mountains in winter (where they’d lose 2-3 a year) to meet women. It’s a long time ago, but I don’t remember ANY of the conversation EVER being about why it would be a good thing for women. Of course, things have changed since then (to some extent, and all for the better), but having had a daughter who was recruited there, applied, was accepted, and turned them down (for very good reasons mostly having to do with academics in what were/are more traditionally “women’s subjects”), and having been a regular reader of my alumni magazine for 40 years, I still wonder about how well they’ve thought it through.</p>
<p>“I am starting to think from everyone’s comments that I’m maybe more conservative than I thought. I have to admit that I’m not comfortable hearing about peoples’ bedroom activities, no matter what their persuasion”</p>
<p>You will encounter this at any school - - and from accounts of Ds’ friends (friends of both D1 and D2), this is more common at coed schools.</p>
<hr>
<p>“I also am annoyed by people knocking themselves out to be PC all the time.”</p>
<p>This does happen at Smith, but probably about as frequently as at other top lefty LAC (Wesleyan, Vassar, et al). I also suspect it is more common at the more divesre schools than at those that are more homogen.</p>
<h2>(agree w/ mini that there’s more in-you-face feminist/womanist and general political discourse at Smith - - but I see that as different than being PC.)</h2>
<p>That said, for a large/r cohort of relatively conservative students, Smith would not be at the top of my list.</p>
<p>I don’t think it’s any more PC at Smith than it would be at Bates (I don’t know anything about Franklin & Marshall or St. Lawrence), I don’t think there’s any more discussion of bedroom activities. In fact, I think there’s rather less. The vast majority of students at Smith are straight. So unless they are fortunate enough to have a boyfriend who lives in Northampton, they’re not going to be sleeping with their significant others as often as girls who go to co-ed schools where their snuggle bunny is right on campus. So they’re going to be talking about it less because they’re going to be doing it not as often. </p>
<p>And really, I had gay friends on campus, and we did not sit around all the time discussing in any kind of detail their sex life (occasionally we would. Usually under the influence of Sam Adams). When we talked about their relationships, it’s the same as it would be with any straight female friend. Does X person like me? I like X person and they seem to like me but then I said I love you and they didn’t say it back and what do I do? Do you think X person is cute? X person is graduating and I don’t want to break up. You know, normal relationship stuff, the kind you talk about with all your girlfriends.</p>
<p>LAC (btw, I’m in the LA area…are you? if so, id you attend any of the events for prospects?), one of my favorite reactions to Smith was from one of D’s friends from South Carolina: “I <em>thought</em> I was liberal until I came here.” LOL, but she graduated very happily from Smith.</p>
<p>D did have a classmate gasp, “You can’t be Catholic, you’re <em>smart</em>!”, which she took with better grace than I would have.</p>
<p>If you are simpatico with Sarah Palin or Michele Bachman, then Smith might be a cultural slog for you but since Smith has a very vocal (if I think absurdly silly in their stances) Republican Club, even that might not be true.</p>
<p>I would tag D as fairly liberal politically but culturally pretty moderate and she had a great time at Smith. I don’t think she’d trade her time there for anything, she’s very proud of being a Smithie.</p>
<p>LACluster, I’d also tag my daughter as politically liberal but culturally moderate (she even loves classical music) and she LOVES Smith.</p>
<p>I was just reading aloud all these posts to my husband, chuckling at S&P’s post about conversations about relationship stuff, and my husband told me this one that he heard somewhere (who knows where?): A Smithie says, “I was going to give up sex for Lent, but here it’s Lent all the time!”</p>
<p>Seriously, I can’t imagine my daughter’s friends bragging about their sexual exploits. First of all, most of them are straight and only one has a boyfriend at Amherst, so that whittles that down right there. Secondly, that’s just not who they are; they’re too respectful. I do remember last year when a friend “came out”, was interested in another and got rejected. She was devastated. My daughter and all her straight friends were comforting her, it didn’t matter whether the relationship was gay or not as their friend was hurting and they wanted to help. That’s the kind of caring sisterhood that Smith provides and that only a women’s college can provide.</p>
<p>One of the lessons is, relationships is relationships, and the baggage and angst is the same, whether gay, straight, or somewhere in between. People will talk or not talk as their temperament dictates, either way.</p>
<p>My daughter was so apolitical when she first went to Smith that I had NO IDEA whether she was liberal, moderate, or conservative. It drove me crazy because I just couldn’t get her to discuss things that I considered important. She might say a sentence or two in response, but she was not interested. No surprise – she emerged from Smith with a keen interest in what happens in our country, at all levels of government, and in the world. And it turns out that she’s pretty much like me: a moderate liberal. </p>
<p>The over-the-top PC at Smith used to irk me until I concluded that the students may have to go to extremes before they find their own voices. As groups, high schoolers tend to be fairly conservative, and upperclass college students tend to be liberal. I see PC in action as a means of calibrating what a person really believes. It causes people to think about others and how words and actions are perceived. In my opinion, anything that makes a person evaluate the basis for her beliefs ends up strengthening or revising her convictions, whether liberal or conservative.</p>
<p>Oh, about Franklin & Marshall: I’ve never been there, but I do know that it’s located in a very conservative area. Outside of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania is very conservative. </p>
<p>I know lots of students who have fallen in love with F&M, and it is highly regarded in the state, even if, like many smaller colleges including Bates and Smith, the average person outside of the area hasn’t heard of it. It usually competes with Gettysburg for students, although, like Smith and Wellesley, students usually have a distinct preference for one or the other, not both.</p>
<p>In terms of academics, I would still narrow it down to Smith and Bates, but there’s also a lot to be said about finding the right place for the student. A good education can be had at all.</p>
<p>I know I"m the minority voice here, but I never felt like the PC-ness was over the top at Smith. I think what people feel is overly PC changes depending on their mindset. Some people think it’s “too PC” to call Smith a women’s college instead of a girl’s school. I think it’s simply accurate to call it a women’s college, and just because someone feels like they don’t want to bother with it, doesn’t absolve them of responsibility to be accurate. Some people think it’s too PC to speak up when someone says “that’s gay” or “that’s ■■■■■■■■” as synonyms for that’s bad/messed up/stupid gross. I don’t. I certainly used those terms when I was younger, but as I grew older and more aware of the damage I was causing by my own choice of words, I stopped. I don’t know if that makes me overly PC. I like to think it makes me just aware of the power of words and so I try to examine the choices that I make so that the words I’m speaking are consistent with the values I want to express.</p>