@WalknOnEggShells My D is a STEM nerd who tends to gravitate to the quirky kids and Skidmore fit the bill. She is not very creative herself but loves all music and enjoys going to theatre shows. Her strongest negatives while looking at schools were greek life and sports, both of which she equates to “preppy” so many of the LACs we visited were tossed on that premise alone.
@CroissantMiser We heard “holistic review” so man times it became a family joke – if it were a different setting we would have said “Drink!” every time we heard it.
@WalkonEggShells My STEM oriented D had opposite reaction to Skidmore as compared to @NEPatsGirl – We were looking at LACS and I felt sure Skidmore would be the perfect fit as it is a fine school and my D also loves music and theater… However, she felt Skidmore was way too artsy and dismissed it quickly. Certainly we had the “wrong” tour guide for my D – the guide talked non-stop about art installations in the elevators, the looming center etc. and when my D asked to see the labs she said she looked at my D like he was a bit off (or thats how she felt anyway). So we left to tour Union which my D loved. I tried to get my D to re-visit Skidmore but she refused. It is a great school in a lovely town but I do think the tour guide killed it for my D. She has friends who loved the school but they were much more humanities oriented.
FWIW the LACs my STEM oriented D felt most drawn to were Lafayette (which she attended and loved), Union, Franklin & Marshall. If you have any questions about Laf you can PM me.
@Walkoneggshells Also nobody can predict how life will turn out of a student attends one school v another – that is kind of the scary thing about this process. If your STEM daughter wants an artsier school she should be careful to check that the school has enough professors, the depth of coursework, appropriate facilitates etc. in her primary area on interest.
@sushiritto Are you visiting any safeties or targets? Using the UC’s or other public Cal schools for those?
“Amherst - Huge athletic presence on campus and related issues? Naaaah. (Pay no attention to the fact that it seems like half the campus is walking around with a 'Amherst [SPORT[” jacket or sweatshirt)."
Not to mention that they recently did a study, published a report, and adjusted some policies on campus like housing because of concerns about the athlete culture. 
@CroissantMiser One school where you will not hear “holistic” is McGill. Well, you may hear it in the sense of “McGill admissions is not holistic”. Admission is by stats only. For Americans it is UW GPA and SAT/ACT scores. No hooks, no EC’s, no essays, no letters of rec either. This creates consternation among some who fall below the published minima.
Several of my son’s peers ended up at McGill and it was a safety/match for a bunch of them because it’s so much cheaper than most of the Northeast US schools for those in NJ where there are not a lot of public options if you don’t like Rutgers. They seem to like it.
@SoCalDad1961 , “checking our linguistics” Not sure it 's really so much a matter of linguistics . Without getting too off track (no pun intended), here is info if anyone is interested.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_Curve(Pennsylvania). Under North America heading examples.
http://www.railroadcity.com/visit/world-famous-horseshoe-curve
Holistic means different things to different places. I actually like using more than just the numbers. Some kids load up on the most rigorous curriculum and/or take classes outside their strengths and a school looking at more than just the numbers will notice. Just getting the grades is not what the best students are all about.
@citivas , FYI: almost none of the UC’s can be considered safeties anymore for anyone.
It’s an old, oft repeated debate here, but definitions of safeties vary considerably. Santa Cruz has a 58% acceptance rate, Riverside 66%, Merced 74%. Even Irvine and Davis at 40% and 42% would be safeties for some.
Did not know the history of the debate. Interesting. But I do think the acceptance rate was (maybe much) lower this year. Many people with amazingly high stats were rejected and/or waitlisted - and shocled and upset - from even what used to be considered mid-tier UC’s. And yes, safeties for some, sure, but not for as many as maybe they once were.
@citivas Yes, we’ll likely use the UC’s, possibly SLO, as some of our targets and safeties. We’re still in the process of formulating a plan, but I believe we’ll apply to some other private and public schools (e.g., OR, WA) in other states. D knows what’s she doesn’t like, say like Columbia. D is a high stats kid.
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Down
BARD – we are an arty family. Loved the look of the campus at first, but found that the buildings and the people seemed to be posing more than doing. This brings it down. It is gorgeous. I think some people love their experiences. I personally love the many vibrant programs, but you get the feeling that it’s all trying too hard and posing.
Way way down
SKIDMORE–again, we are an arty family and thought that Skidmore would be on our list for definite application. We heard the town is cute (it is). We heard that the buildings are modern but okay (they are). And we made special plans to take time off from work, book hotel rooms, and rent a car to go to its open house. Oh. My. Goodness. What a boring mismanaged open house. The most exciting thing about the event was the grounds worker in red plaid walking across the view during the presentations. This event bothered me so much that I was awake that night thinking about What Skidmore Should Have Done. This was my conclusion. Because the buildings are modern, they are a school whose facilities do not connote “magic” unlike many of the older LACs on the east coast, that have castles with crenelation. They need to create that magic for the parents and students. This they cannot do or have no insight how to do. Skidmore seems polished in terms of having multiple ice-faced people standing in business suits nervously watching from the sides as if no one would actually notice them, but they were looking to see if their effort worked. It was a huge effort, the open house, but Oh My Goodness. The first thing that any consulting firm or outside expert would tell them is 1) get your story straight. What is your core message? Creative Lives Matter rips off Black Lives Matter in a way that neither makes the Left comfortable not the Right. And 2) sell the sizzle not the steak. In other words: what is Skimore’s magic? How will skidmore overcome the look of their campus that makes every kids who’s seen Yale say: No f**ing way. And get back in the car. They have to get the kids over their embarrassed giggles that the name sounds like Skidmarks.
The first thing that all of the parents should have been exposed to was the magic of What Skidmore Can Do for Your Child in the form of what they’ve done for their alumni. It’s a simple task of showing slides in the auditorium of their many distinguished alumni, asking a performance group to wow us with their music, having on display the amazing art from the studios and so on. They needed to show us the magic of Skidmore.
What did we get instead? We got a long lecture about how X number of families came from California and Y number came from NYC. We also heard how Skidmore will help your kids get out of bed in the morning to attend classes, how they have some money that they use at the discretion of their first-yer seminar profs to take them to brunch or to take them once to the Met in NYC.
Tone Deaf.
Do they not realize that a huge portion of their applicants have practically grown up in NYC? There was no magic there. 90% of the discussion was about how Skidmore was there to help your child adjust to college. Boring. And you wondered what kind of student they attracted that they’d be worried they couldn’t do the basics of getting their butts to class.
If they found a way to get across the magic of Skidmore, people would be eating out of their hands. They could have put up banners from the parking lot to the auditorium showing big faces of their magical alumni with the accomplishment writ large. The parents would start to feel a buzz and so would the kids. Look! Someone who made film X. Look! Someone who solved problem Y. You could be the next Skidmore!
Also major arm-pit farts in Skidmore direction for assigning summer reading from an author that seemed to be a development prospect. Did they think we were stupid? Naive? If you assign a book from an author we havent’ heard of, and then we google it on our phones in the auditorium and we discover that this person is a prominent CEO and wrote a self-promoting book that Skidmore is now assigning to the entire student body: Development Prospect. Shameful. We walked out of the presentation at that point.
The feeling was that if they can’t pull off a decent presentation, then they have no right to $60K a year of tuition.
SMITH–down. Thought that it would be cute with old clapboard buildings and open spaces in the natural areas, all tucked in a cute down. Discovered that the natural areas around the lake are much more over-maintained and it seems more like a country club than a natural setting. Very into the fact that they are Smith and Desired. The attitude is what killed it for us, though. The admissions office was very busy and they seemed like they were doing us a favor by allowing us to fill out a form that we’d been there and could attend a tour. The entire impression was that it was self-satisfied and wouldn’t do much to make our experience personal. We needed to accommodate them and we should feel lucky for that opportunity. You should feel lucky that they bothered with you at all.
Stayed the same
WILLIAMS–exactly the sporty, academic, preppy, cute-town-in-a-bubble that we’d heard. Loved it.
BENNINGTON–loved the modern additions to the white clapboard New England style dorms. It’s an arty place in an isolated part of the world, perfect if you’re an artist or a thinker working on your own ideas. the town of Bennington is sad in many ways but does offer some nice services and there’s a great cafe
HAMPSHIRE–it’s exactly the way I imagined. Very lefty lefty, but not the IN YOUR FACE political lefty that Smith seems to be. It’s the do your own thing Hippy lefty, but with the sense that there’s a place to really find your own direction. The architecture is very modern but the mod dorms and the new campus seemed okay to me. There was an open feeling that you could try new things there. Cauttion though for the poeple who have no internal direction. I think you could also get lost there. It seemed a place where you had all the free reign to do amazing things, but if you have no direction, you can run yourself in circles. If you have direction, then you can go far.
Way Up
MT. HOLYOKE–every bit of the experience was carefully planned to create a feeling of hominess and comfort. You felt that they were both in control and that they cared about yoru unique experience and needs. The grounds wer gorgeous without being overly manicured (compared esp to Smith). There was a feeling of graiousness and intellectual rigor. The forests need the campus had distinct paths but also retained their “wild” feel so that you had a nice contrast. They ran a bus twice a week to the Malls and other faciliities in addition to the regular 5-col buses to the other campuses. This was hands down the best of the 5 colleges in our minds. A hidden gem as it gets overlooked because of the Amherst and Smith USN&WR rankings.
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@Dustyfeathers I love your descriptions! Thanks for sharing! This is my favorite discussion thread given the variety of personal opinions.
We had the exact opposite opinions of Smith and Mount Holyoke. We were flying in, and really wanted to see Mount Holyoke and called and emailed prior to our trip. There were no tours available, there would be no one to give us a tour, there was no way to let them know we were visiting (should they be tracking demonstrated interest) and they seemed somewhat confused that we really wanted to see the school. Now I will say that a student saw us walking around lost and gave us a tour, including her dorms, and was so friendly! I really wanted my D to love the school, but she didn’t… at all.
Smith on the other hand arranged a tour for us, everyone in admissions was very warm and friendly and inviting. I do see what your saying about the grounds being very well groomed and country-club like, and I must confess, that is part of the appeal for me.
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Dustyfeathers, I started this thread exactly one year ago, and the main reason was how unaccommodating Bowdoin was, and how friendly Mount Holyoke was. After visits all over New England she has chosen the first school we visited, Mount Holyoke, she found the perfect school for her.
Looking back at her rejections, wait list, and acceptances, we felt some schools were much more transparent with chances of acceptance and financial aid than others. At the time we visited Hamilton, they explained the amount of athletes, URM, geographical diversity, first generation to attend college, among others, and we felt she had an uphill battle on getting in. At Skidmore they explained they meet 100% financial need unless you were at the margins, and then they would consider your need. She was waitlisted at both schools, but I felt she was treated very fair from Hamilton and Skidmore was pretty sketchy. ( her scores were above top 25% Skidmore, so please no lectures )
So my word of advise, some schools, such as Colby are in the business of trying to get the most people to apply, while others give you a realistic picture of your chances. We found the schools who represented themselves well now that all is said and done: Middlebury, Hamilton, Vassar, Smith, Mount Holyoke, and Wellesley. My daughter still has fond thoughts of Vassar even though they rejected her, thats when you know you missed out on a good school.
Re Skidmore, their motto is “Creative Thought Matters”. That motto has been in place long before “Black Lives Matter” was even a thing.
@WalknOnEggShells Definitely take a look at Bucknell. I think it might be a good fit for your D
@Dustyfeathers Skidmore’s motto is Creative THOUGHT matters, not lives. And it’s been the motto for years. Just sayin’.