Choosing between: Vassar, Wesleyan, Tufts, Middlebury, Bowdoin

Student Lounge College Life
1

I am currently looking to do Early Decision at 1 of the 5 schools listed above. I’ve toured all except for Bowdoin. I’m coming from a very preppy, jockey, and stuck up prep school from Florida and really want something completely different in terms of social atmosphere and academic competition. I want to be at a school where collaboration and small class size is a priority, and the professors know my name. Also, I’m not used to being around super artsy, hippy kids (eg Wesleyan), but I rather be around them over super preppy, pretentious New Englanders. I would say I fall on the “hipster” scale at my prep school, but on the “basic” side if I were to go to a Wesleyan or Reed. There are different things about each school I toured that I really liked. I loved the campus and vibe of Vassar and Middlebury (I toured Middlebury and Vassar during their spring break so I didn’t see any kids… Any comment on them?). The academic curriculum and freedom at Wesleyan is exactly what I am looking for. I haven’t seen Bowdoin yet but I feel like I should. And I loved the location of Tufts.

That being said, being in a good college town is very important to me, as well as kids that I can relate to. I want to be pretty socially active in college. I am looking to date and have a relationship in college, so I’m also wondering which school has the best selection of males. However, if they are in any way too fratty, preppy, or obnoxious, I’m not interested.

Looking for the best choice of school based upon what is very important to me:

  • Liberal mindset
  • Interdisplinary, small class size, and academic freedom
  • good looking and cultured students, not too fratty/preppy but not too out-there artsy
  • good college town/ close to a city (NY or Boston)

If you have any other school recommendations, please feel free to share.

2

If you want to have a change of setting from your current environment, Wesleyan and Vassar would be good choices.
Middlebury student body would be most like what you are trying to get away from.

For location, Bowdoin and Tufts have the most going for them by a long shot.

You lost me with this sentence. Why is “good looking” so important to you it is worth including in that statement??
“good looking and cultured students, not too fratty/preppy but not too out-there artsy”

3

I would say not Middlebury – I recall getting more of a preppy vibe when I visited. Even if that’s inaccurate (which it totally could be), imo it doesn’t fit the location that you want at all.

Personally, I’m of the belief that if you don’t have a clear first choice, ED may not be the best decision.

4

If good looking student body is important to you - Middlebury has long been known as the school for the “Beautiful People.” Of course, many stereotypes have no basis in reality.

5

I get the impression from your various threads that the attractiveness of the student body is very important to you. Nobody can tell you whether or not you’ll find students at a particular campus attractive; you’ll have to visit and decide for yourself.

In my opinion, leaving behind your “stuck up prep school” means more than changing locations. It means checking your own attitudes at the door. New Englanders, for instance, can be preppy without being pretentious. If you want a “different…social atmosphere,” perhaps you should consider selecting a school based on the strength of its academics and relative affordability, not how many boys would make the cut for the popular table based solely on their looks. We Northerners would like to see our sons valued for their brains and contributions to their community, not their physical appearance.

I agree that if you don’t have a clear 1st choice, don’t go the ED route. Keep your options open.

6

Well, my go-to answer here is that if you can’t decide between a few schools then you shouldn’t apply Early Decision. ED is for people with clear first choices. You don’t have one. That’s true even if you are only choosing between two schools; that’s especially true if you are choosing between five. Applying RD will give you the most flexibility of choice.

“Best selection of males” is a pretty weird way to phrase that. It kind of depends on what you’re looking for, but I also don’t think you can stereotype an entire college full of people. At any of the five schools you’re considering you’re likely to find young men that appeal to you and young men that don’t. And there’s also a wide range of attractiveness.

That said, if you know you want to be close to a city, Middlebury and Bowdoin are kind of out - they are both pretty rural. (Bowdoin is close-ish to Portland, ME, but you have to have a car I think and Portland’s not a big city.) New Haven, Boston, and New York aren’t close to Wesleyan but are easily accessible by train. Vassar is a bit closer to NYC, but it’s still about 1.5 hours driving although NYC is accessible by train as well. Tufts is the only one that’s really close to a city.

The rest are found at all five colleges.

I also really agree with @austinmshauri . You sound like you want something really different from your prep school, but in the process you are stereotyping it and most other schools - which is counterintuitive to what you really want. Part of what college is about is learning to think critically, broadly, and with more complexity, so start now: even at a small school with around 2,000 people you will find 2,000 completely different, diverse, interesting people. Even though a school might have an overall ‘vibe’, there will be differences. For example, at Middlebury there are bound to be at least some people who are very much like your prep school classmates (in negative and positive ways), especially given the location and who tends to go there. But there are also probably skateboard kids, people who are “fratty” (whatever that means), hippies and hipsters, conservative Wall-Street-dreamer types…everyone. It’s also not a high school movie where everyone fits in neatly defined boxes. Some of the “hipster” kids are going to be conservative at heart and want to work at banks; some of the “preppy” kids might have a really deep interest in social justice and international affairs; some of the “fratty” kids might be very serious about school work and want a PhD. (I have tons of friends in Greek orgs. You can rarely tell the difference between them and someone who wasn’t, especially by the time they graduate. They’re people…who happen to be a member of an organization that does stuff.)

It’s also kind of interesting that you want something different and yet you are considering a bunch of colleges that are traditionally attended by prep school grads. These five colleges are the kinds of places that are like magnets for upper-class private school graduates - which is not a bad thing at all, just an observation. If you really wanted something completely different, you might consider schools that tend not to attract kids from there - like UF! In all seriousness, do consider New College of Florida. Very small school, very good school, and has a different vibe from the New England/mid-Atlantic small LAC. Also consider some West Coast LACs like Lewis & Clark, University of Puget Sound, Willamette, and Whitman. Or maybe some Midwestern ones like Grinnell or Oberlin.

7

With your focus on good looking people, maybe Arizona State, USC or University of Miami are better choices.

8

@samantha827, go re-read @juillet’s responses (@juillet’s posts almost always merit two readings, b/c so much good info is packed into them).

One thing that jumped out in particular is that college is

.

Although your post doesn’t indicate that you have focused much on this part yet, a central part of college is the academics. For your last two years a lot of who you spend time with will be the other people who are majoring in your subject- and even allowing for some stereotypes, there will be a range of people in your subject. Often college students don’t have one group of friends (as in high school), they have overlapping circles of friends: friends from the dorm, friends from the ECs that you enjoy, friends from your major/study groups, etc. And the result is that you can find yourself being genuine friends with people you never imagined knowing. A lot like real life :slight_smile:

I am agreeing with everybody else: you aren’t ready to pick an ED school yet- but that’s ok. Imo, this sort of thinking it through is really valuable. You don’t have to commit until the autumn, so when somebody throws you a new one (like New College of Fl!) try it on and see how it fits. My oldest had what she thought was a final list, including an ED (where she had visited and spent the night) around this time of year. By September she had a completely different list and ended up (very happily) ED at a school she hadn’t even be thinking the previous spring. All that time looking at other schools wasn’t wasted: she learned more about herself and what was important to her. Just stay flexible as you grow and evolve (which you will do a lot of over the next 6 months!).

9

If you want neither preppy, nor hippie and in/near a city, Tufts is probably your best bet of the choices you have indicated.

10

Wesleyan might be too hipster and not a great college town nor truly near a solid large urban area
Middlebury too preppy
Bowdoin too remote
Vassar, might be too hipster and too many women.
Tufts…might lean a bit preppy but not the full culture, just a hop to Boston, active social life. Wins based on what you want, from what I know.

11

% women at those colleges is 50, 51, 51.5, 52 and 56%.

12

All of those schools are pretty preppy. The kids that go to Bowdoin are cut from the same cloth that go to Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Williams, etc.

13

I’ll agree that there are a fair few ‘preppy’ kids at Bowdoin and Middlebury, but neither Tufts nor (especially!) Vassar are preppy.

14

If Connecticut were located anywhere west of the Mississippi, the entire state would probably qualify as one big metropolitan area of three million people. Throw in Rhode Island and you’ve got 4 million.

15

I recently visited Bowdoin and Middlebury with my daughter, and I thought Middlebury was going to be very preppy, and Bowdoin could possibly be her first choice. The day we toured Middlebury it was 18 degrees and windy, no joking, it was too cold for anyone to look preppy, she loved Middlebury. Our tour guide at Bowdoin was nervous, the student and administration staff member at the information session were preppy, but I thought nice and thoughtful young men. After the information session we asked a Bowdoin employee a question and we were taken back how unfriendly she was, to the point my daughter decided it was just time to leave, and I don’t think she is even considering applying there. Because it was February vacation they had the information session at a different location and that employee was not from admissions, but non the less represented the school poorly. The impression we got was, we gave you a tour, and information session, you are now bothering us, it is time for you to get in your car and leave, so we did. The one experience my daughter and I both noticed was when the tour guide was telling the group how Bowdoin is a heads up campus, and everyone says hi to each other, all the while class had just been dismissed and 25 students were walking behind her at that very moment, not one said hi to her or each other. From what you describe in your question, and from our experience I would NOT apply to Bowdoin early without visiting.

16

I am not the biggest fan of Bowdoin, but I do know a few current students there. They are all cheery, outgoing, pretty sporty and smart (if not quite as academic as Bowdoin’s current stats might make you think- Bowdoin seems to be “in” at the moment). The few times that I have been to Bowdoin the other students do seem to be similar to the ones that I know. Given that it was February and 18F, it might not have been the most chatty of times to be going from one class to another- and as it was February break it may not even have been Bowdoin students. So imo @Akqj10’s experience seems as if it could be an outlier. I am very sure that the Admin office would be appalled at the way you were spoken to @Akqj10, and I would urge you to send a note telling them about it, and how it affected your daughter’s decision not to apply to the school.

That said, I would not apply to any college ED without visiting.

17

oops- I conflated @Akqj10’s Middlebury & Bowdoin vists. Also, even if their visit was an outlier it’s still a data point, and I think that the great thing about CC is that we can share the good and the bad of our individual experiences and (like Rotten Tomatoes), the aggregate of our experiences gives more and better info for everybody to work with.