<p>Thank you everybody for all your help!</p>
<p>"however, his experience at Williams was so appealing that he chose another rural college, Cornell, for graduate school. "</p>
<p>Cornell is located in a metro area of 100,000 residents (30k in Ithaca proper) with an additional 27,000 students above that.</p>
<p>I don’t know what number you have to multiply Williams by before you get the same metro area population, or student population, but I am guessing that number is a lot greater than 1.</p>
<p>Cornell was not too isolating, there was always plenty to do, precisely because of the energy created by 20,000+ students, in this metro area. I doubt that situation relates to what is at williams very closely whatsoever.</p>
<p>As among choices at hand, D1 visited Macalester, really liked it.</p>
<p>monydad, Do you take offence at my equation of the natural beauty surrounding Williams and Cornell? To me, the OP’s major choice is between urban and rural. My point was that some love rural, some do not. Many students who want big, eliminate choose Columbia, Brown, JHU etc and eliminate Cornell and Dartmouth because of location. My son chose rural twice, but that’s personal preference for you.</p>
<p>Of course I know that compared to Williams Cornell is a much bigger school with a much bigger surrounding community, but that wasn’t at issue here.</p>
<p>Sorry if I misunderstood, I thought you were saying physical setting of williams, in part as it related to degree of isolation (per 2nd paragraph in #31) led to choice of cornell. </p>
<p>Pretty, non-urban setting may be similar, implications for experiencing that environment, in terms of degree of isolation/ seclusion/ activity level you perceive, may not necessarily be that comparable due to much larger community size at Cornell.</p>
<p>Size of actual community where you are is modifier to location, as far as likeliness that you may experience it as being too isolated for you.</p>
<p>Many people who would not feel that Cornell is too isolated might nevertheless feel that a school of under 3,000 in a smaller town is too isolated for them, actually.</p>