reed is currently my top choice but the high 5-6 year grad rate and stingy transfer credit process is making me question if it would be really worth it to transfer there from a CC.
are there any other colleges that are similar to reed in terms of academic intensity? i’m looking for a somewhat smaller college that doesnt have an insanely low acceptance rate (<30%). new college comes to my mind
also i plan on attending grad school in science so any college that produces a decent amount of people would be a huge plus!
i’m a physics major and will probably continue as a physics major when i transfer (:
also my parents will probably be able to pay full/almost full price for colleges as long as they are around or less than 50k. i also plan on taking out loans to pay the remaining costs
i definitely will! thank you! i’ve heard many good things about whitman. is it similar in academic intensity? i love to be challenged academically and that’s a huge part of determining where i transfer to!
Whitman is considered a small ivy here in the west & is a top notch school. Some kids turn down an ivy for Whitman because they want a laid back PNW lifestyle with top academics. As always research the health of the school given covid times.
Here is a listing of top ranked physics feeder schools (for students going on to get grad degrees) from the NSF in order:
Caltech
Reed (be concerned about fin. health of school)
Swarthmore
Lawrence
Carlton
Haverford
Williams
MIT
CO School of Mines
Grinnell
Amherst
Princeton
Wabash
College of Wooster
Gustavus
Vassar
Kenyon
Rice
Bryn Mawr
Univ. of Rochester
In public schools, Urbana-Champagne is well ranked as is ASU and Univ. of Arizona.
Where will the funding dollars go in the future if smaller schools struggle financially? What department is doing the physics you want? It’s a small world.
As for your transfer credits, I think covid may change the game on that. Just as price can be negotiable acceptance of transfer credits may become much more negotiable. It certainly does not hurt to ask.
I would say that Whitman and Reed are comparable in academics, but very dissimilar in terms of social environment.
Whitman is a very traditional school in that it has intercollegiate athletic teams and Greek life. Reed is very untraditional in that it has neither of those and a very eclectic sort of student life. Reed attracts a lot of students who are viscerally opposed to things like intercollegiate athletics and frats and basically has no “jocks”.
If you are looking for Reed alternatives that have equivalent academics you can generate a long list colleges with top academics from Caltech to University of Chicago and Whitman would be on that list
If you are looking for a list of Reed alternatives that have the same quirky liberal social environment then it will be a different list of schools.
The Venn diagram of schools that meet both of those criteria is going to be much smaller and will mostly be top ultra-liberal eastern schools like Swarthmore and Oberlin.
When I think of Reed, I immediately think of University of Chicago, Swarthmore, and Columbia. Whitman is similar in academic rigor, but its culture is different. Nonetheless, Whitman is a wonderful school.
After considerable research, my daughter applied to LACs such as Reed, Swarthmore, Whitman, and a few Claremont consortium colleges but decided she wanted to be in a large city and chose Columbia U. (and now is back in the Pacific Northwest and chose to transfer to University of Washington). We wanted her to choose one of the small liberal arts colleges, particularly Whitman or Reed.
Whitman provides really great merit scholarships for academic and specific achievements.
thank you so much for all of this information! i’ve been doing a ton of resarch on whitman for the past few weeks and it is definitely now my top choice next to reed!
it definitely has! although one of the colleges i am also looking into (Bard) is apparently not accepting online classes for transfer credits, despite my school mandating online classes
Reed is easily my dream school: small close-knit student body, very academically rigorous, beautiful campus, excellent professors, very liberal leaning (i’d rather go somewhere people share the same beliefs as me). I just wish the acceptance rate for reed was higher for transfers.
Is it true Reed accepts a lot/looks for ‘quirky’ people? i have ASD (a reason why i prefer small campuses as i don’t think i would do well at a large university) and my personal statement is somewhat interesting. Are they the type of college that would look past a VERY rocky hs career if a student presented personal/educational growth since?
I would say that Reed tends to self-select for obsessively academic and quirky type students. But do not confuse/conflate that with students who had a rocky HS career. Reed tends to get the brainy anti-jock types but they are still kids with top grades, high scores, and lots of HS achievement to point to.
It’s basically too hard of a school to go to if you are just looking for status and a business/law/med career. There are so many other options that aren’t quite the academic pressure cooker that Reed is. So they tend to attract those kinds of students are are seeking that out. The Reed alumni magazine always profiles recent grads. These are probably typical students: https://www.reed.edu/reed-magazine/articles/2020/what-is-a-reedie-2020.html
