<p>I realize that there will be an enormous variety of people at college, but which schools are notorious for having laid back, chill students? I cannot stand it when people are pompous and stuck up. Although people like that will be found at any school, which college has the least snooty student body? However, keep in mind that I don't want the classes to be easy and laid back - just the students. :) Thanks!</p>
<p>A few that come to mind right away:</p>
<p>Oberlin
Wesleyan
Brandeis
Bard
Hampshire</p>
<p>Rice and Wash U in St Louis</p>
<p>Hiiii. I looked at your posts, and I think you /might/ want to consider my school, St. Mary’s College of Maryland. It’s really chill/laid back and we’re surrounded by water. :)</p>
<p>Fordham university</p>
<p>Rice, Brown, and WashU</p>
<p>Son likes Pitzer College for this reason</p>
<p>Most schools in the South are extremely laid-back and friendly. In fact, it’s quite possibly their defining characteristic. The nice thing about them is that southerners in general tend to be laid-back, so you get friendly people off-campus as well, which is not always the case elsewhere (I got funny looks from greeting people on the street in Providence).</p>
<p>Options there include large publics (UF, UNC, UGA, etc.), single-sex colleges (Hollins, Agnes Scott, Sweet Briar, etc.), quirky schools (NCF, Warren Wilson, UNCA), elite LACs (Davidson, W&L), small universities (Wake Forest, U Richmond, Elon, etc.), and more.</p>
<p>Brown
Oberlin
Bowdoin
Tulane
Amherst
Williams
Florida
Bard
Brandeis
Rice
Hampshire
Wesleyan
Pomona
Grinnell
Carleton
Claremont McKenna</p>
<p>I have heard of all of these and visited some. You will find a laid back atmosphere at pretty much any LAC.</p>
<p>Brown University.</p>
<p>It is my understanding that from the above list, Rice and Williams aren’t exactly “laid back” and might be a bit competitive and intense.</p>
<p>John – I can’t comment on Williams, but I know a lot about Rice, and it definitely fits the description from the OP. </p>
<p>“I cannot stand it when people are pompous and stuck up. Although people like that will be found at any school, which college has the least snooty student body? However, keep in mind that I don’t want the classes to be easy and laid back - just the students.”</p>
<p>The classes at Rice can be intense, but the students are laid back and friendly and collaborative. They are the antithesis of “pompous and stuck up and snooty.” Even their clothes are chill. Rice students predominantly dress in free t-shirts that they got from Rice.</p>
<p>sorry blackeye, but the idea of having very very intense classes at Rice (which is the case) and “laid back” students just doesn’t fit too well in my mind.</p>
<p>@JohnAdams12: I’ve spent a year living on-campus at Rice, so I feel I’m well-qualified in saying that Rice has a down-to-earth, laid-back student body. Of course, we all work hard and all strive to do well, but we are laid-back in the sense that we are not cutthroat and arrogant about our abilities. It is the norm to see classmates working together on problem sets or studying for an upcoming exam together… the group study rooms at Rice’s Fondren Library are always booked (and reserving one requires 2 or more people). The classes at Rice are not “very very intense”… they are difficult, but they are not any harder than at a place like Duke, Stanford, Brown, etc. I would say MIT and Caltech are definitely more intense places than Rice.</p>
<p>I was also amazed to see a lack of rich kids at Rice, considering it is a top private. Almost everyone dresses casually to class (t-shirt and shorts). I’ve visited 16 colleges as a high school senior (including your beloved Princeton), and Rice students are some of the nicest I met.</p>
<p>slik nik, I am sorry, maybe I missed something</p>
<p>so in an intense academic environment such as Rice University, the fact that students work together means that they are “laid back”…sorry, I don’t understand. Maybe I missed something.</p>
<p>in addition, comparing Rice to MIT and CalTech, of all schools, and stating that Rice is less intense than those two schools, does not make Rice a non-intense school.</p>
<p>^^^ At some schools, intensity fosters competitiveness. This doesn’t happen at Rice. Instead, because of the laid back culture, students work collaboratively. Get it?</p>
<p>Anyway, I don’t understand why you’re intent on challenging a suggestion offered to the OP by a parent of a current student and a current student at one of the suggested schools. We’re in a slightly better position to garner a sense of the culture at Rice.</p>
<p>Time to move along and give the OP more suggestions.</p>
<p>Whitman College in the pacific northwest has top notch academics and a laid back, friendly student body.</p>
<p>I couldn’t disagree more with the statement made earlier —</p>
<p>“Most schools in the South are extremely laid-back and friendly”… </p>
<p>Friendly = almost always, (and the poster is correct when they say “in general you tend to get friendly people off-campus as well”).</p>
<p>But laid-back, No-No-No.</p>
<p>Truth is, it kind of blows my mind that a Sr member would make that statement…</p>
<p>Schools everywhere have their unique personality and the South is no different. Some examples: </p>
<p>Warren Wilson is a wonderful school that specializes in environmental education and is perceived as very laid-back but if your not into the environment and the required hard physical work than it would anything but laid-back. </p>
<p>At Sewanee (the University of the South), most students continue to wear sport coats and ties, or skirts and dresses for women on campus. They also have the “Order of Gownsmen”, who based on qualifying GPA, wear the academic gowns to class and while attending “official” functions. Not exactly a laid-back southern thing.</p>
<p>Wake Forest is not a school that I would ever describe as laid-back. Academically and socially challenging with an intense Greek and sports culture certainly doesn’t equal laid-back.</p>
<p>The South has several great small/med LAC (Davidson, Elon…). And many students would perceive them as laid-back because they pride themselves on a small community feeling that values constant interaction between high quality professors and involved students. Academically these schools challenge their students and draw more students from states outside the South, so I’m not sure that you can officially call them “Laid-Back Southern” either. </p>
<p>Funnily enough when I think of laid back I think of schools that encourage students to express themselves. Brown, Berkeley, RISD, but even at these schools being laid-back most-likely means that your focused on your own talents not on what the guy next to you thinks of your talents…</p>
<p>the laid back atmosphere is why I chose Tulane =]</p>
<p>blackeye, again, I repeat - since when do students working together on class assignments mean that it is laid back?</p>
<p>one action does not define the other</p>
<p>you can have a very intense class in which the work is very demanding and in which the students need to work together to get the work done. This does not mean that these students are “laid back”</p>
<p>In fact, Rice decades ago was so intense in its academics that it had the HIGHEST suicide rate of any college in the country. This, to me, is not a laid back environment.</p>
<p>and, by the way, the last thing that you want to do is advice a high school student falsely that a college is laid back when it is not.</p>
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