<p>I'm looking right now for colleges with an atmosphere that has an emphasis on intellectual growth, specifically where the Humanities are concerned. I'm not necessarily looking for Ivy League colleges, just colleges that make a big deal out of academia.</p>
<p>The closest thing to this sort of thing I know of is Reed, which is not an option for me because they give no financial aid to transfers. Meh.</p>
<p>Definetely University of Chicago. I think that Princeton review ranked it as most academic or something. It's very intellectual and has good humanities</p>
<p>U Chicago and Swarthmore are the two that first come to mind.... (Swarthmore to me seems a lot like the U Chicago of the Liberal Arts Colleges)</p>
<p>Swarthmore, Amherst, Carleton, Chicago, Grinnell -- also Sarah Lawrence, Bennington and perhaps even Colorado College.</p>
<p>Check out the LAC's, they tend to emphasize this environment, and if you're into women's colleges, bryn mawr and barnard are intellectually stimulating for the fact that there's not as much male distraction. Columbia is also big on this kind of thing. They've been known to take a lesser canidate who is passionate about learning over the perfect scores student who's a prestige whore.</p>
<p>Yale: Master's Tea + cool libraries</p>
<p>For a left-leaning intellectual option, you could add Wesleyan to the list.</p>
<p>I disagree with Yale</p>
<p>I recommend Swarthmore and UChicago, which are similar schools in terms of culture and student body, but not much else. You should take a look at St. John's (Annapolis and NM), which has an intense core curriculum. Hampshire, Earlham, Wesleyan are intellectual LACs. Columbia, Brown are Ivies with an atmosphere conducive to rampant intellectualism.</p>
<p>Any top university located in a college town is going to have an "intellectual" feel to it. That includes almost all the top LACs, schools like Brown, Cornell, Dartmouth, Duke, Michigan, Princeton, Stanford, UVA, William and Mary, Wisconsin and Yale. Obviously, schools like Cal-Berkeley, Chicago, Columbia, Harvard and Johns Hopkins are also highly intellectual.</p>
<p>i diagree with alexandre's list, there's a big difference between an academic feel and an intellectual feel</p>
<p>I live in Chicago, and attended a summer school program along with being tutored by a professor there for 12 years. The atmosphere is both intellectual and highly competitive. One of the schools, I think the Business School has a slogan "Where the fun comes to die", which is pretty much true (no sleep, no food, long study hours).</p>
<p>You might want to try one of the "Great Books" colleges. Over the course of four years they read the great works of Western thought - Homer, Plato, Aristotle, Sophocles, Euclid, Hume, Descartes, Galileo, Newton, Goethe, Rosseau, etc... instead of just reading secondary sources and commentaries. They definitely have an intellectual feel to them, and while they cover a lot of ground, they usually focus on bringing all of this around to humanities.
If you're interested, the two I know something about and would recommend are St. John's College and Thomas Aquinas College. If you want a list of Great Books colleges or universities that offer Great Books Programs, look through this list:
<a href="http://www.mercer.edu/gbk/gbk/othergbk.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.mercer.edu/gbk/gbk/othergbk.html</a></p>
<p>Celbrian, I agree that there is a big difference between academic feel and intellectual feel. That is why I left out some excellent university like Caltech, MIT, Northwestern, Penn, UNC, UTA, Washington U. etc... Those schools have a very strong academic feel, but not an intellectual feel. But the schools I listed in my initial list are actually noted for their intellectual feel.</p>
<p>Well I have an issue with duke I guess, I feel that while it is intellectual, it's not quite up there with brown and columbia and others as intellectual feel goes</p>
<p>I see. You may be right. I am not very familiar with Duke.</p>
<p>(sorry to butt in with my own question)</p>
<p>OK, along the same lines, which schools would you guys consider an "intellectual" or "academic" safety? I, too, am looking for nerdy schools (I think nerdy is a good thing, yo) where the "fun goes to die" and when it comes time, I'm applying to several of the aforementioned schools. However, most (all) of them are more in the reach category than the safety category. I'd like my safeties to also be academically challenging, because I don't even want to apply to somewhere, safety or not, if I wouldn't want to go, and I wouldn't want to go somewhere where the kids aren't antisocial bookworms. Suggestions?</p>
<p>I can't think of anywhere, but i guess your best bet is going to be small LAC's, private</p>
<p>"Reach" is a relative term. Some universities with intellectual/academic atmospheres are difficult but not impossible to get into. Schools like Chicago, Grinnell, Johns Hopkins, Michigan and Reed to name a few. Those aren't safeties, but they are matches for good students (1400+ SAT and 3.8+ GPA).</p>
<p>I wonder if intellectual schools (as opposed to academic as someone above distinguished) are schools that are theoretically oriented as opposed to stressing applied academics.</p>