<p>Wow I wish I had found this place sooner! Long story short, my son applied to a haphazardly constructed list of colleges and now has to decide from among some strange choices, including:</p>
<p>Dartmouth. The only "Ivy" he was accepted to (he did not apply to all, but to several). The prestige impresses him, I am sad to say, but now that he has been accepted I think he is having second thoughts about whether this is the best place for himself. He has pretty much sailed through high school on a combination of basic intelligence and charm (he has talked his way into more extensions, make-up assignments, and extra-credit projects than I can keep track of). In his high school, he has been the classic big fish in a small pond. He is happy to have been accepted to Dartmouth (his self esteem would I think have taken a much bigger blow if he had been rejected by all of the reach schools he applied to) but he is hesitating about attending. I think he feels intimidated but he is not talking much and I am trying to stand back as much as possible. But it is objectively, in terms of numbers, rankings, etc., the best school he has to choose from, and I do worry a little that if he decides not to attend, he will be missing an excellent opportunity. On the other hand, this is likely to turn out to be the most expensive of his choices. Doable, but a strain.</p>
<p>Wash U. in St. Louis. Son got a very decent scholarship here. A bigger school than Dartmouth so likely to have more offerings in what he wants to study, which is a little off the beaten path: linguistics, in particular language development (son is conversationally fluent in two languages besides English, which he learned at different stages of his life), and also he wants to continue studying the other two languages. And he wants to study abroad, which would be more financially feasible here.</p>
<p>Rhodes College in Memphis: Son visited here and something "clicked." Which surprised me, because I definitely would have predicted the place to be way too conservative for him. Do not yet have scholarship information, and that could make a big difference in his mind (Wash U defintely rose in his estimation when it gave him a decent scholarship). I worry that he would be settling for the most comfortable, easy choice here. Not that he wouldn't be challenged--I am sure that he would be. But probably not as challenged as at Dartmouth. How to tell if his leaning toward Rhodes (if that's what it ends up being) is a sign that this is the place for him, and not just his fear? This all will become clearer 1. when we get the scholarship information from Rhodes, and 2. when son starts talking. But until those two things happen, does anyone have any advice?</p>
<p>Definitely not Dartmouth. Wash U has an excellent reputation and he will get a great education there. I don’t know Rhodes College. At all. All that means is that it is not extremely well known.</p>
<p>You might PM the poster known as curmudgeon; his daughter is at Rhodes, IIRC. Stellar student, loves her school, has had lots of great opportunities.</p>
<p>curmudgeon has a daughter at Rhodes doing premed. She turned down Yale for Rhodes, and is doing very, very well there both academically and socially. Search for his posts for more info.</p>
<p>Thanks for the replies already! We visited Dartmouth last summer, which we all know is not the same as visiting when classes are in session. Part of my inner struggle is whether to push any harder than to say that if he wants to visit Dartmouth before he decides, he can. So far he has agreed in principle that he knows he could visit again but he really has expressed no desire to actually do that. The small town/big city thing is not so much a factor, at least in terms of finding things to do. His idea of an exciting night is hours of guitar hero with his buddies. Jobs might be a different story. He has been on Wash U’s campus many times (it is the closest school to us and he has attended various things there) and he has visited Rhodes twice (once in the summer and once this spring, for an overnight).</p>
<p>I agree with vp – Dartmouth is small, VERY isolated, and the majority of the social life revolves around alcohol and the Greek system. Washington University has many more options, and is a superb school that can give your bright S many opportunities.</p>
<p>And with a large scholarship to Wash U, I would say there is no debate. JMO.</p>
<p>Seems that since Dartmouth would be a financial strain, it would be worth it to take it off the table.</p>
<p>Otherwise, I think either school would be an excellent choice. While Rhodes is lower ranked than is WUSTL, that doesn’t mean that the coursework would be less demanding. My S has tougher assignments at a 2nd tier LAC than I had at Harvard undergrad even though both of us majored in the social sciences. Some of S’s assignments in his freshman year psychology courses were what I was expected to do in the first year of doctoral studies in psychology.</p>
<p>Perplexed - if going to Dartmouth is a financial strain, I would want some comfort that he is willing to really step up and get the most out of the place. There are tremendous numbers of intelligent people at Dartmouth (as at other schools like Wash U), but the value to be obtained is not really in just getting the degree but in truly challenging one’s self to develop world class critical thinking skills and forming a pathway to future world class substantive expertise in a subject matter area that interests him. Although hard to quantify, that is a significant value of schools like Dartmouth - unlocking that value is far from automatic, however. And the comments about the hardest part of these schools is getting in is true (my experience too) - but that makes the motivational challenges even greater, to my mind. Floating through doesn’t make for a good contractual return for the student and is not fair to the parents either. By the way, boys tend to mature a bit later, so it is very possible he may be ready to indeed really step up. But I would want to have a lot of confidence he will likely do so before making that investment. </p>
<p>As an aside, my younger daughter has been accepted at many schools and will very likely end up at Princeton in the fall. I am fortunate that she brings no worries in terms of taking academic challenges seriously. All of the opportunities (including the ones mentioned here) are opportunities of a lifetime - even if our kids don’t get it - I will continue to state it. Those of us who started with nothing know how fortunate they are.</p>
<p>Maybe encourage him to do a side x side comparison at USNWR or petersons.com. But if something clicked at Rhodes don’t feel compelled to encourage another school just because of the prestige factor.</p>
<p>Dartmouth gives students the ability to study abroad more than any other schools I’m familiar with. With the flexible Dartmouth plan and the quarter system, you can participate in several programs. My son will be doing 3 different study abroad programs, 1 language related, 1 related to his major and a third related to his greatest passion. Where else can you do this?</p>
<p>Also look into the Rassias method which language studies at Dartmouth are based on. My son started a third language this term because he can’t believe how different and fun this method is.</p>
<p>With kids who’ve gone to 4 different top colleges, my DH having gone to Berkeley and Stanford and my own experience at Penn, we have never seen a happier, more engaged group of undergrads than those at Dartmouth.</p>
<p>The OP didn’t say if money was a big issue. If it isn’t, I’d absolutely take another look at Dartmouth, especially because WashU is in your backyard.</p>
<p>We’re in same boat here with Columbia vs. Oberlin Conservatory for a jazz major.</p>
<p>It’s hard not to be swayed by the “wow” factor of Columbia, plus being in the jazz capital of the world. But it is a music major within a cosmopolitan liberal arts college in a BIG city with no FA , vs. the music immersion of a music conservatory on the campus of an excellent offbeat liberal arts college in the middle of Ohio, with the possibility of a double degree and nice merit scholarship. </p>
<p>A wonderful problem to have, but a conundrum none the less.</p>
<p>I don’t think the academic differences between Dartmouth and WUSTL are worth taking into account. They are both excellent places, WUSTL is not meaningfully bigger, they both attract a strong student body. Obviously, there are a bunch of differences, including a financial difference in this case, and those differences should be what any decision between them is based on. But that doesn’t include Dartmouth being harder or more challenging than WUSTL, or having significantly better students. They are both hard, both challenging, both full of good students (and both very social places, too).</p>
<p>I don’t mean to dis Rhodes by leaving it out of the comparison here. I know nothing about Rhodes other than what I read here on CC, where it has lots of fans. I believe Rhodes is meaningfully smaller than the other two – a good or a bad thing, depending on the student – and is probably a lot more Southern in orientation – also good or bad, depending, or maybe just different. I suspect there are lots of cross applications between Dartmouth and WUSTL, and fewer between either of them and Rhodes.</p>
<p>I’m fairly sure that there are lots of cross applications between WUSTL and Rhodes. I think that Rhodes often is a safety or match for students whose reach school is WUSTL. One thing the two schools have in common is being in large cities in reasonably moderate climates.</p>
<p>It’s hard for me to imagine many people who would love both WUSTL and Dartmouth, though, since one is in a large fairly southern city with a moderate climate, and the other is in a remote place in New England with harsh winters.</p>
<p>"Son visited here and something “clicked.” </p>
<p>That sounds like the winner to me! </p>
<p>But then, I trust in gut instincts. Most of the time our brains steer us in the right direction often thru hidden subliminal clues we are not even aware of. </p>
<p>Sometimes it steers us wrong (like if his brain clicked because a hot girl was sitting in the library ) but most often, we are right to follow where our heart/mind takes us.</p>
<p>Some people consider St. Louis to be more southern than northern. I know that my older S didn’t apply to WUSTL because he felt it was too far south, and he’s not unusual in viewing St. Louis as being southern.</p>
) but most often, we are right to follow where our heart/mind takes us.</p>