Protected, insular… Totally eye of the beholder.
On “precious” – that’s how my kid found the environment, but he has good friends, whom he has lots in common with, who felt perfectly at home there. A specific student’s response is very personal – which I realized when my kids had completely opposite reactions to the same schools. So the fact that one kid sees it one way, doesn’t necessarily predict how someone else will experience it.
I wouldn’t say it is a negative connotation necessarily, at least not always. @porcupine98 is spot on.
@pittsburghscribe , you also mentioned the piercings thing to me before. My D was totally unfazed when I told her of it before she did her overnight, which she really enjoyed. Partying is an issue at every school in the country with very few exceptions, regardless of how much there is to do on or off campus. It was my D’s number one concern, and she came home assured that it is not Animal House at Kenyon. And why does showing piercings matter? Really? I guess I would far rather see that than a bunch of vomit-stained frat boys. Let’s stop focusing on one excellent college becasue of its perceived isolation. How about if I told you that Harvard had 2 professors listed in Princeton Reviews Best Professors listing of the top 300 in America. Kenyon had 8. And I bet there are nipple piercings even at Harvard.
Regarding Northeastern, we really wanted to have my son like is as they gave him a great merit award and Boston is an easy flight from London. However, DS never warmed to the place do to (in his view):
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The lack of emphasis on academics compared to the heavy emphasis on the Co-op;
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He did not buy in to the view that he would end up with interesting or useful co-ops. His view that the most attractive coops/internships (e.g. Fidelity or Bank of America) would be impossible to obtain as he had to compete with thousands of other NEU students plus (in his words) the 6 better schools in the Boston area; and
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He just found the other NEU kids he met there uninspiring and did not like the campus. So he turned down the scholarship.
@londondad which school did he end up picking?
@Lindagaf, I had no recollection of whether I had mentioned my niece’s experience at Kenyon previously and I certainly don’t keep track of who has posted about which schools. Sorry. I’ve got too many other things going on for that. Not sure why you seem to be offended by my post. I was just trying to provide information. My niece could care less if people have piercings. What made her uncomfortable is that a group of students walking through campus stopped and lifted their tops to show one another their piercings and admire same. She found the public display odd. YMMV. I didn’t say anything about it being like Animal House. She found it uncomfortable that students who had chosen to host pre-frosh spent the night partying and basically ignoring the pre-frosh throughout the weekend and talking about how great the school is because you can party and you don’t have to work hard to pass classes. Again, she doesn’t care if others party, but didn’t want to be on a campus where the students cared more about that than anything else. I had previously always heard only good things about Kenyon, and thought maybe she happened to land in a bad dorm, but recently heard of another similar experience. I hope your daughter is admitted and thrives there if that’s what she wants. You said she did overnight there and that was all that I was advising.
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As has been said many times, this thread is about the student’s/parent’s experience and perception from the visit. Each student’s/parent’s experience and the perceptions they gain from that are going to be different. Their is no “right” or “wrong” experience or perception; I think everyone understands that YMMV. Unless someone is stating factually incorrect information, I don’t see the point in arguing why that poster is “wrong.”
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I agree that there is no “right” or “wrong,” just a “not right for my kid…[and here’s why]” However, I’ve seen a few posters really slam schools that didn’t appeal to them, and I think it’s entirely reasonable for people who have had very different experiences of that school to challenge that impression with their own experiences. This is, after all, a forum for sharing impressions, no? Doesn’t have to be an argument, just “I saw it differently, and here’s why.”
We had some extremely negative impressions of a few schools ourselves, but here on the forum, where I may be speaking to people who know the school differently, or for whom it is just the right school for their kid, I’m just going to say “Didn’t appeal to my kid because X and Y” rather than “we thought the place was a real horror show and I wouldn’t touch it with a ten foot pole” [even if we might have actually thought that] If people prefer to be more direct about how much they hated a place, that’s fine, but it’s also fine for people to say “wow, that wasn’t my impression at all.”
I think the key word here is "challenge ". There’s a difference between challenge and negatively engage.
I agree @porcupine98. I think the give and take is what makes CC discussions interesting, as long as they remain respectful. Oftentimes, I learn new things from them.
Sometimes I like to engage myself and other times I don’t. For example, reading @Lindagaf’s comments in defense of Kenyon back on post #981, she also mentioned her daughter’s dislike of Swarthmore and Haverford.
“Swarthmore and Haverford both fell off the list after visiting. Both were just too small, and frankly, too difficult to get into. And she really disliked Haverford. She thought the honor code thing was so precious, and that the campus was hugely excessive for just 1200 students.”
I almost commented at the time (obviously doing so now 
) because it made me chuckle. Having a kid who attends Haverford, the thing that really appealed to my child was the honor code and bucolic campus with easy access to Philly. It’s not right for every student. The supplemental essay focuses heavily on the honor code. If you don’t “get” the honor code, you definitely don’t belong there. I mainly chuckled because I thought how can a campus be hugely excessive? Isn’t that a good thing? Having come from a 2,000 acre high school, my kids like space and tight knit communities. To each their own. There is a fit for everyone. Other’s impressions are not personal but I feel it’s okay to chime in with one’s own differing impressions or to correct facts. BTW, Swarthmore’s student body is around 1550 and Kenyon is about 1650, not a huge difference. 
Well, @doschicos , it’s supposed to be colleges that moved down or up, right? Re Kenyon, because the piercing thing has featured prominently in other threads, and seems to be a bone of contention for some, I wanted to add the perspective of my kid, who is a teen after all.
What my kid said about Haverford was this: “I can’t believe EVERYONE can actually be that honest.” And because she doubted that, it made her not like it. Really amused me because she then said, in all honesty, she didn’t know if she could be that honest either. Liars beware if you are thinking of Haverford, haha!
Here is a college that moved up, for a change, and I might have already mentioned it because this thread has been going for so long now: University of Rochester. She didn’t really give it full consideration until she went back again as an accepted student. Of course the “open” curriculum is a big plus. There was a real range of all kinds of students, from nerds, to preps, to goths, to hipsters. There seemed to be a lot of diversity. There was a distinct arty edge, despite the STEM reputation. People seemed relaxed and friendly. The new college village was nice, and there is a beautiful park nearby. The campus itself is lovely and feels very collegiate. And the professors have a great reputation. It was a final contender for her.
“Well, @doschicos , it’s supposed to be colleges that moved down or up, right?”
Exactly, that’s why I stated: “To each their own. There is a fit for everyone. Other’s impressions are not personal but I feel it’s okay to chime in with one’s own differing impressions…”
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It’s interesting the extent to which Haverford has successfully marketed its emphasis on the honor code as unique. They certainly focused on it for a larger portion of their Information Session than most others and said it made them unique. And I recall how the tour guide pointed out that students were just dumping their backpacks with their laptops and tablets in the vestibule of the cafeteria because no one supposedly every steals anything. So I’m not suggesting it’s not real. But I question it’s uniqueness because having toured 20 or so colleges, the majority LAC’s, we encountered many schools emphasizing their honor codes. We must have been shown walls where every student signs the honor code and has it posted in a public place for the 4 years on at least half-a-dozen tours. Off hand, the other school that really comes to mind is Davidson. They talked about it extensively, like Haverford. They don’t have scheduled finals, as an example. Every student can pick their own time that’s best for them and take their finals without proctoring. As but one example.
We really liked Haverford overall and it was high on the list for a while. The main things that pushed it down on my son’s list is he doesn’t know what he wants to study yet and found the list of potential majors limiting compared to its peers, and it was specifically lacking some of the early contenders for his focus. In theory he could have solved that with the consortium schools but it seemed best not to go in knowing you might need to commute to another campus for your major. Similarly, of the extracurricular activities he knows he is interested in, most were not on the Haverford campus but at the other two schools – music, drama, film, etc. In that sense, it’s exceptionally small size can be a disadvantage. Though Swarthmore is only 300 more students.
I was entertained by the Kenyon negative essay, but I don’t assume all the kids there are like that. It’s one data point.
To be fair, it’s only negative from my personal point of view (I don’t smoke anything and tattoos and poking holes in your genitalia give me the willies). From some of my friends’ point of view it would be a perfect fit for their kid-they would look at the preppy, pearl-wearing, full makeup for 8 am class college review with similar concern.
FWIW, I’m hoping my kids go to a school that has both kinds of kids…
This thread deserves the CC award for “Most likely to veer off topic.”
I do think the self scheduled exam thing does make Haverford and Davidson pretty unique. The level of trust between students and faculty, in part because of strong honor codes, is also unique and allows for that flexibility. It also helps to foster a huge amount of student self-governance which I think is fairly unique as well, something that is also very prevalent at Grinnell but surprisingly less common at most colleges than one would think. The honor code thingie resonates with some, not with others. Frankly, I think the Quaker values embodied by the school define it as much, if not more, than the honor code. It’s all about fit. It clicked with one child. For the other, it didn’t make the list, partially because that kid’s areas of academic interest, like @citivas’s son, weren’t where Haverford was the strongest.
It’s great to do one’s homework, VISIT! and kick the tires, and think about what works well for one’s child and their interests. There are so many great schools out there. The biggest mistakes I see is when folks emphasis prestige above all else. I’ve seen several unhappy college students because of that. Life is too short and college is too pricey to be unhappy.
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I loved the U of Rochester and I wanted my daughter to apply, especially since she earned the Bausch and Lomb award in HS which also waived the application fee. I loved the school when we visited, but unfortunately my daughter felt it was " too quiet" on the day we visited and so it dropped off the list. I told this story once but I need to repeat it: when we toured the library our tour guide spoke about the non-competitive atmosphere. He said that when he had trouble with a problem, he wrote it on one of the boards that was available and asked for help. When he returned he saw that somebody solved the problem and wrote out step by step directions. This is what I loved about the school and it was one of the " must haves" for my daughter- collaboration and a non-competitive environment.
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My kid cynically turned up his nose at the viability of self-governance at one school, and ended up at a different one with the same emphasis. #whatever #notpointingthatouttohimrightnow
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We liked URochester too, for all the reasons stated. In the end, a smaller school won out, which I think was the right choice for my kid, but it was a very strong contender until the very last minute. Lots going on there.
Bi-Co community member (H’ford/BMC) here: what is distinctive about Haverford’s Honor Code is how it shapes the community, there is a shared commitment to the community which fosters active citizenship and a shared set of expectations. The entire student body meets twice a year, at Plenary, to address issues of concern to the college community, and annually ratifies the Code, demonstrating that the students choose to operate within this system of shared governance. I gather than Grinnell’s self-gov is very similar, just operates under a different label. As a small community of about 1200, Haverford wants students who value that type of self-creation. It is not for everyone, just as the community at Oberlin, Wesleyan or Swat is not for everyone. Haverford happens to be readily accessible to locations up and down the east coast, with strong academics, and a history of a not-too-flakey student body, so it is often treated interchangeably with other excellent LACs. However, I would suggest that Haverford either “fits” or not, just like Oberlin, or Wes, or Swat etc.
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