<p>Noone has mentioned the "age" thing. Your daughter is obviously very bright, and I'm assuming, very mature for her age.... and yet, there is still a lot of developing kids do between 16 and 18 or 19. If I was her mom, I'd probably be steering her a lot more towards Swarthmore (less drinking, more close-knit community with people to look out for you), and steering her way, way far away from Penn! The LAC's are much better for hand-holding, if any of that needs to be done. :)</p>
<p>anxiousmom, Funny you should say that! I went to college at 16 and my family felt the same way. They steered me away from Cornell in favor of a small LAC (which I loved). I never felt there was any hand holding at all, although professors knew their students, of course. In fact, the other other freshmen decided to take it upon themselves to "look out for me" on trips into the city, parties, etc. Partying goes on at all these campuses if that's what you're looking for. And in a bigger school, you can always find your niche.</p>
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In fact, the other other freshmen decided to take it upon themselves to "look out for me" on trips into the city, parties, etc.
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<p>That would be the number one aspect of "community" that I have observed in my daughter's experience at Swarthmore. I assume that the same would be true at Wellesley.</p>
<p>Some other aspects are small and may go unnoticed. For example, one time last year, my daughter came down with stomach "bug" -- two days and nights of the usual. She she could have toughed it out in the dorm, but strolled over to the 24/7 health care center a hundred yards from her dorm where the nurses put her in a private bedroom with a TV, fed her chicken noodle soup and ginger ale, and generally gave her a little TLC for two nights. Is that necessary? No. She could have gone running down the hall to the dorm bathroom every 10 minutes for two days. But, for $40,000 a year, it was a nice touch.</p>
<p>I recently read the public blog of a Swarthmore freshman who posts a running blog for the admissions site. Great kid from the sounds of it. Wonderful blog. Anyway, she hit a patch of homesickness after Christmas break and blogged about how nice is was to be able to drop into Psych services and just talk to somebody who has talked to hundreds of homesick college kids a few times for a week or two.</p>
<p>Maybe you never get a stomach bug. Maybe you never get down in the dumps. But, it's nice to know that there are friendly, supportive, approachable people if you do.</p>
<p>I don't think "hand-holding" is the right word for the academic side of things. Professors have pretty high expectations. There is, however, a lot of give and take. I've heard about a lot of paper writing cycles that include discussing a topic with the professor, turning in a rough draft for mark-up, meeting with the professor to discuss revisions, followed by a final draft. I don't know if that is "hand-holding" or just a very effective way to teach writing. I tend to think it's called "hand-holding" if you don't have the student-faculty ratios to teach that way.</p>
<p>In other classes, it's standard procedure to go through a review process with a student "writing associate". Some classes have a specific "WA" assigned to the class from the writing center. Most colleges have these writing centers, but it's nice to see them actually used on a fairly widespread basis. My daughter raved about one "WA" cycle. She was trying out a new type of argument in a paper -- the "set 'em up and knock 'em down" approach. But, apparently had done a rather hamfisted job of it. Ten minutes explaining what she was attempting to do, a few helpful suggestions from the WA, and she had a much better paper. Peer learning.</p>
<p>Thanks again to those who have posted thoughtful responses and sent me emails--I appreciate them all. All these schools have something wonderful to offer---I hope she finds her niche in one of them so the decision time is not as agonizing as it is now.</p>