<p>There are two more of the CTCL schools ranked in the Kiplinger top 100 public schools - New College of Florida and Evergreen State.</p>
<p>GOOD GOLLY</p>
<p>This is got to be the MOST âHijackedâ thread everâŠ</p>
<p>I looked at it feeling Very enthusiastic about inspirational stories. There were some - there were FAR more responses (multiple times by the same people) who chose to pass judgements.</p>
<p>Everyone seemed to intellectually articulate their feelings, never the less, the âEssaysâ written came NOWHERE close the the âpromptââŠthus I cannot offer a passing âgradeâ to most of the previous respondents. </p>
<p>IF you offered an encouraging and inspirational tale about how your life was Changed by a CTCL school - BRAVO! thank you for contributingâŠif not and you contributed anyway and perhaps multiple times, what grade would you assess yourself based upon this postâs prompt?</p>
<p>Me? - I am completely off topic so therefore I grade out at a very low DâŠI promise to do better next time :)</p>
<p>Keep those Inspirational tales coming - thanks much!</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Mea cupla. Iâve contributed multiple times without offering a single encouraging or inspirational tale. So I dunno, maybe a âDâ or an âFâ?</p>
<p>Way back in post #51, somebody made statements that challenged the premise of this thread and the whole âCTCLâ concept. Some of us wanted to address those statements (and follow-ons). Perhaps it would have been better to move that discussion into a separate thread. Chat forum discussions arenât always too tidy that way.</p>
<p>A tip for people not familiar with behavior modification, ignoring is a powerful behavior extinguisher. In this format, it simply means donât respond, donât take the bait. As I said earlier, I too, along with oodadoo am very interested in peopleâs positive CTCL and other small LAC experiences. Thanks.</p>
<p>icebat, youâre right, and I apologize to all for my role in the hijacking. CTCLs are a really great option for some kids, and they deserve better. My D felt like she had stumbled into College Wonderland when she found CTCL.</p>
<p>âMy D felt like she had stumbled into College Wonderland when she found CTCL.â</p>
<p>Thatâs pretty much how we felt too. I had so many friends ask me what my secret was to getting through this whole process with almost no stress. I credit the CTCL approach for helping us look beyond the expected and ârecognizedâ options to find just the right schools for our child. (As part of our search, we also discovered other great options that are very CTCL-like but not on the list.) Even though we are very happy with his choice, declining offers at several other schools that we had come to know and love was not easy. Even reading the comments of others on this thread has made me wistful for several of them!</p>
<p>Very ironically (to multiple previous off-topic posts) H turned down Carnegie Mellon and UVa (among a number of other schools) to attend a small LAC in the midwest - this was long before it was identified as a CTCL school. He decided to go there because they called him and talked to him about his intended major. He was very taken by the personal approach. On another part of the east coast I also decided to attend the same LAC because they called me and talked to me. Yes, our lives were changed - we came out of the regionalism of 2 of the largest metropolitan areas in the country and found out that people do really live in the midwest and are amazing - we are still here and love it. Now our D is also at a CTCL school - Beloit - and her life has been changed - in fact it is very hard to pry her away and she is already mourning the fact that she only has a year left.</p>
<p>MODERATORâS NOTE:</p>
<p>In case you havenât found it and want to use it, CC has an âignoreâ feature. Click âMy Control Panelâ at the top left, then under âSettings & Optionsâ click âEdit Ignore Listâ and there you can add as many Member names as you want.</p>
<p>-vonlost</p>
<p>I was just talking with a former coworker today who recently retired; and it reminded me of post #287. She had just come back from her sonâs wedding in Australia. Brilliant young man who turned down Stanford to attend University of Puget Sound (not a CTCL, but similar) due to some conversations with the physics professor at UPS. He had amazing mentorship and a fantastic 4 years; he and they could not be happier with how it turned out. He won a Fulbright, and is now finishing up his doctorate in physics in Brisbane.</p>
<p>Thank you vonlost. I did not know about this but just employed it to edit out the negative postings from my feed. Nice tool.</p>
<p>Thanks vonlost - I didnât know this either. I donât post often but I do need my daily cc lurker fix and end up feeling very frustrated when a thread I am following goes horribly off-topic by persistent negative posting. I never am bothered by the âsorry to highjack your threadâ type detours (in fact, enjoy that) but some posters seem to gain great pleasure from insulting and irritating others - not the spirit of cc at all. I just took advantage of this feature - thanks again!</p>
<p>Hi All!!!
I feel exhausted and drained from the effort of reading this thread for âpleasureâ! I just want to add that my DD just finished her second year at St. Olaf. She is mourning the end of their 2-year, 5-class Great Conversations program, where she has followed the thread of Western thought from ancient times to the present, with art, culture, religion and history woven through. She mourns its completion because she rightly recognizes how hard it will be to ever find a similar environment to discuss, read and learn like she could in this class series.
Her opportunities at St. Olaf have been amazing! She got her van driverâs license so she can borrow vehicles from the school to drive to neighboring high schools for mentoring and research. She participated in the national Collegiate Triathlon Finals in Tuscaloosa, AL last month (ridiculously it was her first triathlon) and spent the month of January in London, viewing 23 plays in 26 days.
Oh, and her teachers, several administrators and the college president know her and even us, her parents. She has made tremendous friends and continues to stretch her wings to find ways to give back. Please, nobody wake her from her dream!
The icing on the cake? She has merit scholarships that cover half the cost of attendanceâsignificantly cheaper than state flagship!</p>
<p>Catpb-</p>
<p>Thank you SO MUCH for your message about St. Olaf! This school is VERY HIGH on my daughterâs list, even though it is in Minnesota. Brrrr! We are going to be attending a CTCL fair in large part to meet with the rep there. Weâve not been to see the school yet but on paper it is an excellent match for my D. Thanks!</p>
<p>The CTCL are often run by people who change lives. People who work for others to change !</p>
<p>My Senior was accepted at: Cornell, Vassar, Haverford, Rochester, Swarthmore, Pomona and St. OLAFs along with some athletic recruiting at some D-1 schools. He was waitlisted at CiT but did not want to attend after his visit.</p>
<p>He chose a smaller school after visiting, not really knowing what he wants to do, He felt a warmth, a comraderie at the college he picked, that if he gets lost he has resources to get back up with. He has lived in 2 states and 2 foreign countries, top 1% 35 ACT 1550 SAT crit
and Math) Nat Merit, etc. etc </p>
<p>He visited some of the schools as a potential athlete, some as well respected scholar, and some he just contacted. He visited a school and the President remembered his momâs name, and said. If you need anything call us. </p>
<p>He made his decision without having full financial facts in front of him, which was the way we wanted it. He is going to School in a State he had never before visited, has no relatives and We, his parents are in Europe. Since the decision he received about the finest Scholarship offer I have ever seen. </p>
<p>Colleges want kids who will help be part of those changes to the lives around them !</p>
<p>the list of schools provided are alot like an old rental car company
We are #2 we try harder</p>
<p>This morning my son (a geology major at Whitman College) left Walla Walla to spend 10 days in and around Yellowstone studying geology and ecology with two tenured professors (one his academic adviser) and 9 other students. This is the kind of intimate educational experience that led us to investigate small liberal arts colleges in general and CTCL schools in particular. A friend, who is a consulting geologist and went to college at a highly respected UC, told us that their undergraduate field trips were to local and not very interesting places, he was very jealous. He actually said that seeing and studying geology at Yellowstone as an undergraduate will be a âlife changingâ experience. Yay!</p>
<p>Our DD1 was told that her CTCL degree was the tipping factor in her selection over other job candidates. Of course, I donât think she really needed that tip. ;)</p>
<p>Wow thats great ! Have him go spelunking(sic) with the tennis coach who is incredibly active as an outdoorsman. What a great experience.</p>
<p>gmund48, menâs or womenâs tennis coach? Seems like all the faculty and staff have personal passions that living in that area allows them to pursue. I personally would never willingly crawl underground, but Iâm sure my son would find it fascinating.</p>
<p>I love hearing about highly accomplished young people, like your son, choosing lesser known schools for good reasons other than prestige. My son is in the top 25% for attending students in test scores and high school GPA at his college, he was also accepted to higher ranked institutions, I fretted that he might not be academically challenged. However, when I asked him if he was the smartest one in his classes, he snorted and said: âMom, Iâve now met real geniuses and Iâm not one of themâ. Heâs had to work hard in all his classes.</p>
<p>Does anyone have any more information on Hiram? Iâd love to know more, as I think their unique semester plan and acres of wild lands managed/studied by the students would appeal to DS. Anyone?</p>
<p>Seems like things quieted down the past few daysâŠwhich is good because at times this thread felt like a bunch of bickering childrenâŠyet I found it fascinating because I kept discovering colleges Iâve never heard of! Iâm now curious to go check out Donald Asherâs Cool Colleges for the Hyper-Intelligent, Self-Directed, Late Blooming, and Just Plain DifferentâŠthank you, atomom. For the record, our sonâs godfather attended Macalester, another close friend College of Wooster, another BeloitâŠall found the experience life-changing and, as a result, encourage our science-minded son to consider a LAC (I donât think theyâre aware of the CTCL label) for the emphasis on teaching, encouraging broad thinking, nurturing. Son prefers to study in the UK rather than in the US, since weâre in Europe, but youâve all gotten me thinking about trying to find the equivalent there. Then again, maybe three weeks at Carleton Collegeâs Summer Science program will prompt him to change his mind 
Thanks to many for the afternoon inspiration.</p>