This thread illustrates that you need to think about why you’re asking the question. Are you worried about safety (or perceived safety?) Do you have an interest in event/things off campus (i.e., clubs, music, museums, etc.) Is there enough to do on campus to keep you engaged? Do you want easy access to internships/work during the school year?
I also wouldn’t underestimate how the environment OFF campus affects the environment ON campus. If people leave to go do things (in a city, for example), it’s far less likely to feel rah-rah. I know kids who think this is a good thing, and others who think it’s not – it depends on what you’re looking for. If students spend a lot of time doing things off campus (particularly in an urban environment) and your child feels threatened by that environment, that location matters. You might want to consider Trinity, Swarthmore, and Union – more variations of the same there.
@NoVADad99 and @gardenstategal I’m personally not worried about the surrounding area of Temple, nor is my son. The purpose of this thread is to get people’s opinions as to whether or not the surrounding area really mattered in your overall college experience. Hence the question.
In hindsight, I should not have used the Temple example.
It’s important you mentioned Temple. I live in NJ and its very much a fad school at least initially with students. Your son should be aware that only 19% of students live on campus. There is really no way to tell how many of the 81% live at home and commute. I would guess a lot.
It really depends on the kid. Different kids have different preferences. Agree with @happy1 on that.
Some of it is psychological too. Knowing you have access to a city or cool town even if you don’t go much is important to some. To some kids knowing that they are in striking distance of a Target or a mall in case they need something is a psychological comfort. Of course there’s always Amazon too!
The surrounding environment also affects the the type of people who attend the school. Temple students are probably predominantly northern urban types like your son. While U Alabama which also has good Merit and Engineering probably attracts more southerners and obviously the student body affects your experience.
Put me firmly in the camp that surroundings can enhance the experience. D spends a LOT of time studying. But when she’s not, she takes full advantage of Baltimore. Her Honors program regularly gets tickets to plays, museum shows, and musical performances for students. She goes to Orioles games on $10 student tickets. She has a group of friends that is working their way down a list of different restaurants to try before they graduate. If she was on a more remote campus, I’m sure she would have found her way, but this suits her. She’s grown up in a small town (we barely have Uber yet), but we’ve always traveled in cities, and I wanted her to be comfortable making her way around, using public transit, and most importantly figuring out what parts of the city to stay away from.
I think her experiences in the city helped prepare her for studying and traveling abroad.
S was just choosing between two similar schools, both academically and financially, and the tipping point ended up being location - he chose the school with lots of coffee shops and restaurants within walking distance and a vibrant arts community.
It did for my kids. It was part of their education in Brunswick and Boston. Both took advantage of life off campus and it shaped their thinking while moving forward.
Went to school in Syracuse- think I went into the city 5 times in 4 years. DD goes to school in DC and is in the city 1-2 times a week. Depends on the person and the city I guess…
D applied to school in very large cities and schools that were very rural - she felt she’d be fine at any (including Temple BTW).
The one she chose is in a small town albeit with many colleges in the area, and she has really enjoyed the fact that everyone lives on campus and rarely goes home on weekends, so there’s always stuff to do and people to do it with (because it’s a 12 hour drive away from home, going home on weekends is not an option for her nor is it for most kids at the college).
But the town is a place she goes to study sometimes (coffee shops, park etc), to volunteer with community health clinic and some other orgs, to pick something up at CVS, occasionally to eat at a restaurant, and to run on the trails in the area. There’s a free bus service she very occasionally uses to go further afield but I think she’s done that only a handful of times this year. But she goes into town (which begins across the street really) at least a couple of times a week.
So in her case location matters. It matters to her that people stick around on weekends and also that there are enough places that are walkable to enjoy various activities off campus.
She is not feeling the lack of a nearby orchestra/opera/ballet/theater district or hundreds of restaurants but some kids might.
I think the OP is severely underrating the aspect of the surrounding area. I know that one of the reasons I’m doing so well here is because of the beauty and general safety of my college town. Had I gone to my second/third choices (both in sleepy, boring small suburbs) or my fourth choice (sketchy, notoriously dangerous area), I wouldn’t have been nearly as happy/comfortable. I’m very pleased to have found happiness in a wonderful, small Southeastern city coming from the Northeast.
Thank you for your opinion @lbad96. You will note from my posts that I haven’t underrated, overrated, or rated anything. I am asking for people’s opinions as to whether or not the surrounding area really matters. And in your case it does really matter. Lots of different opinions here. All very helpful. Thanks again for yours.
@STEM2017 you’re very welcome, and I do think that it was someone else who may have underrated that aspect. I’m glad we could reach an agreement for once lol
I think it really comes down to the student. People find different things important. Some kids focus on location, some the professors, some the food, the dorms, etc. I pictured my daughter at a small LAC. She didn’t want to be “in the middle of nowhere.” She felt strongly that she wanted to be near a city but on a campus. I think the internship opportunities probably vary depending on location, too.
As I posted earlier, I went to Wesleyan. Aside from a couple of bars, there was nothing to do in Middletown on a weekend evening. Knowing that, Wesleyan made a very strong effort to make sure there were all kinds of different things to do on campus. My husband went to Columbia undergrad. Now, I’m sure there were concerts and plays and parties on campus, but his experience was that people used to leave campus to go out on Friday and Saturday nights, because there was so much to do and even in expensive Manhattan, there are inexpensive ways to have fun.
Not an undergrad experience, but I went to grad school at University of Chicago and law school at NYU. Those were two urban experiences different from each other and very different from Middletown. The school’s setting will affect everything from what it’s like to walk down the street to how quiet it is at night to what shopping and errand running is easily accessible to how many different choices you have when you want a cup of coffee or a quick, cheap meal to access to the great outdoors to a million other aspects of daily life. The important questions are kid specific. What setting does he prefer, if he has a preference? How important a factor is that particular preference compared to all the others?
Definitely not my experience, not at any of the three universities where I was or observed students (Spelman College in Atlanta; Columbia University in New York; Penn State in State College). In the two urban locations undergrads definitely left campus and did all the things they expected. In fact, I would even say that upperclass culture on campus suffered a little because students spent more time in the city with small groups of friends than they did partying or doing things on campus, necessarily. I knew lots of undergrads at Columbia (and friends at Spelman, when I was an undergrad) who were interning in the city, doing research at other nearby universities, and hanging out. There are Atlanta hotspots I remember very, very fondly because of my college experience. I spent a lot of time out and about in the city, especially once I hit junior year.
Same was true in State College. After sophomore year, many students moved off campus into the surrounding town.
I do agree though, that small college towns tend to grow up around a university and are good at catering to students’ needs. The first time I ever had Mongolian stir fry was not in New York but in State College - there’s a good place there! There’s also an excellent sushi restaurant in town, and lots of decent cheap brewpubs.
The surrounding area is what students make of it. Some students will never venture into the city and others will live in it. Atlanta was very much a defining part of my experience as an undergrad, and I know New York was a defining part of the experience for many of my undergrad students at Columbia.
HOWEVER, that changes when the city center is some real distance away without public transit. When people here mention that certain large cities are 1+ hours away by car (myself included), I am sometimes amused because few college students are going to traverse that distance with any real frequency.
The situation in Middletown seems to change from one year to the next. The college meal plan (which most people praise) is a real disincentive to dining out; even folk who cook for themselves are encouraged to shop with “points” bought through the dining service. But, if Wesleyan’s current president has his way, students will be making that ten to fifteen minute walk downtown that @millie210 wrote about, whether they want to or not: http://www.middletownpress.com/article/MI/20160429/NEWS/160429556
I’ve been using Google image search to look at college campuses. When you use a computer to do the search (instead of a smartphone or tablet), the Google webpage has menu tabs for “campus”, “dorms”, “football”, etc.
When you do the image search for Temple, you get a very eyebrow-raising tab that I haven’t encountered for any other college…
It’s interesting that when discussing urban campus safety issues, people think automatically about Temple, but I don’t see too many posts here about USC. They had a few students murdered near the campus the last few years, and you hardly hear a peep about this.
@NoVADad99 my D attends the University of Chicago, which get plenty of mention here about urban safety issues. For her it’s location has been an overwhelming positive. Being a very social justice oriented kid, living on the south side of Chicago has allowed her to be engaged in urban issues in a very hands on manner. She has explored just about every neighborhood on the south side. She also has loved the proximity to Chicago and was fortunate enough to be able to get a fantastic internship that she commutes to downtown. I couldn’t imagine her being quite as happy in a rural setting given her interests.
One of the criteria in my D’s college search was being walking distance into a town area. We live in the boondocks and she really wanted some type of off-campus recreation but not a large city. Her first choice (on paper) was immediately removed from the list once we visited due to the surrounding area. Several other schools were dropped down because of surrounding locations and some moved up.
She and her friends go into town often, at least twice a week, sometimes more. Its a 15 minute walk at best and has great restaurants, a movie theatre, a performing arts center, etc. This summer she’ll most likely waitress at a restaurant in town while she is at school for a research project.