<p>I read in another thread a few weeks ago that someone's child didn't care for the conservative feel of the Miami U environment. How can one tell (while you are reading tons of web info about Universities with music schools) if any of them are uber conservative or uber liberal? It's all about balance for us, so I want to avoid things leaning heavily in one direction, especially the uber conservative one.</p>
<p>imamiger - my kid attends Miami U (that’s Ohio, not Florida), and it was to me that poster directed her comment. I wouldn’t call MU conservative - I would call it preppy. Preppy means lots of northface jackets, pretty sorority girls in sundresses, and no more than two or three random piercings per body. 
My kid is NOT preppy, though - nor is she hippy. She is too poor to be preppy and too grounded to be hippy. </p>
<p>She has found there to be all sorts of folks there; something for everyone, and it didn’t take her long to find her niche. </p>
<p>But, to answer your question - the best way to gauge a campus is to visit it. Check out the cafeterias - we got a good flavor (no pun intended) from that. One felt like high school to us - everybody there at scheduled times, sitting in cliques; Another felt like an underachiever’s college - kids in rumpled clothes having burping contests. At one school in Ohio it seemed much more “crunchy granola” - with coffee houses, extensive vegetarian, etc.</p>
<p>Another way we gauged was by looking at clubs listed on the websites - especially if the schools list the size of the clubs. If the Young Democrats have a huge listing, and you can’t find the Young Republicans - that says something. How many religious clubs can you find? How many environmental? Or “alternate lifestyle”? Academic or social?</p>
<p>Don’t just look for things that interest you. Consider that every club on those lists is interesting someone at the school, and see how it balances out. We actually did a lot of pre-screening this way, since my D was looking at schools while we lived out of the country and couldn’t visit. </p>
<p>Read the school newsletter online. What are kids writing editorials about? There are other websites that give student opinions and ratings about various things. Check them out, too. (But take what they say with a grain of salt, since many of the posters often have an agenda of their own.) Other areas of CC also have school reports. Check out the individual school pages on CC, too. Gather info from many places.</p>
<p>My D is fairly conservative, but did not want a school that was only conservative. She - like many on CC - felt that much of learning comes from those who think differently from her. And yet, neither did she want to be the only one who felt or believed certain things. I think it is much harder to find a conservative school than a liberal one, if you exclude religious schools.</p>
<p>All that said … for music majors, it seems to matter less for some reason. Music majors spend an awful lot of time in practice rooms, and with other music folk. They have a common ground that gets them past a lot of silliness.</p>
<p>I think you have to research the different schools you are interested in. There are so many variables in just trying to find appropriate music programs to apply to that the liberal / conservative thing doesn’t come up much for music applicants. If you visit the main discussion forums you will find lots of opinions about the various levels of liberalism or conservatism at a wide variety of schools.</p>
<p>I agree with what others have written that the best way to see a school is to visit the campus and hang out and see what is going on. The other ideas about newsletters and such is cool, too, as are websites.</p>
<p>From my personal experience with colleges and universities is that most of them are neither as conservative, nor liberal, as people think. Some religious schools are very conservative and there are schools that are notoriously hippy dippy, but most tend to be mixtures. I went to a liberal arts school in the big, bad city, notorious as being liberal, and it wasn’t all that liberal, lots of everything there, and then some. Most schools in my experience are a mix, the numbers of each type wax and wane depending on the school, but there is always someone. Go figure this one out, Berkeley, probably one of the most liberal colleges anywhere, had John Yoo, the guy who is credited for okaying some of the more extreme types of questioning tactics against suspected terrorists, was a law professor there (friend of mine had him for constitutional law). </p>
<p>Music also tends to stand alone, based on what I have seen so far. Music students for the most part are so tied up with music they don’t seem to have the inclination to go far onto the spectrum, and even when they are different in political or social aspects they seem to get along based on music (doesn’t mean I haven’t seen some impassioned discussions and such, but what the heck). I suspect that unless you choose a school deliberately for an ideological perspective, a kid there will find their own most of the time.</p>
<p>I agree with the above…Music students tend to “play it as it lays”. After five years of music at a large university, she had acquired friends from the broadest political spectrum possible. She tends to categorize them by their music, never by politics.</p>
<p>A live visit is the best way to tell, if you can afford the time and money required. In addition to how liberal or conservative a place tends to be, you may also wish to consider how a student who does not side with the majority will be treated there. In some places, they will be under constant pressure to change their opinions or beliefs. In others they may be tolerated but mostly ignored. In still others, their views will be respected but they may be challenged to support those views in lively debate from time to time.</p>
<p>Also remember departments vary at large universities. I was in Berkeley for grad school, and a very liberal friend suffered terribly at the history department at UC Berkeley. Her professors were all very conservative in that department. This may not matter so much in undergraduate years, but by grad school it can make or break your graduating.</p>
<p>You can tell how liberal or conservative a school is by its dorm policy. If all the dorms are single sex by building, then it is probably a very conservative school. If the bathrooms are coed (like they can be at Oberlin), then it is probably a very liberal school.</p>
<p>^And if the rooms themselves are co-ed, then it is definitely a very liberal school. ;)</p>
<p>Bad, bad violadad!</p>
<p>So many schools have coed bathrooms and even rooms that you can’t tell much of anything from it. Stanford has them too, not just Oberlin.</p>
<p>Ah, but at Oberlin the dorm rooms and bathrooms are not merely co-ed, they are more like omni-ed with possibilities I hadn’t even realized existed. Sometimes I think they must invent new ones just to see how the administration will react.</p>
<p>Oberlin is fearless! But rumor has it that the conservatory students by and large are not as political.</p>
<p>Co-ed bathrooms…my D would turn down a school based upon that alone!</p>
<p>Many schools have coed bathrooms on coed floors in dorms (that includes NEC, Yale, Oberlin, UC’s, and many other schools mentioned frequently on this thread), but there are often options, like all women floors, where the coed bathroom issue could be avoided or minimized. Most students find it to be no big deal.</p>
<p>i think most schools have coed floors and bathrooms these days. a school like st. olaf’s will be gender segregated by floor. some schools still have single gender dorms for women, but to my knowledge, the only campus with separate dorm buildings for men and women is Notre Dame (and a few very conservative schools like Wheaton College or Patrick Henry, Christendom, etc.)</p>
<p>My D lived on a coed hall but they had separate bathrooms - she was relieved to find that out.</p>
<p>I was a little alarmed at the idea of co-ed bathrooms myself (and I am not really prudish), but the kids seem to handle it just fine.</p>
<p>A million years ago when I was in school, co-ed dorms and bathrooms were beginning to creep into the picture. The idea didn’t turn me on then and it doesn’t turn me on now. Call me prudish – but I’m still trying to get over unisex hair salons. I guess in a world where kids freely text each other nude pictures of themselves or post those pictures on FaceBook, my sense of propriety is irrelevant. I still take a medicine doll with me to the doctor’s office.</p>
<p>This has been going on since the late 60’s - when I started college, at a UC, we had single sex floors and boys could come to our floor only on Sundays from 2-5. By the time I graduated, I was living in a Co-op where it was “anything goes” - co-ed bathrooms was the least of it. It didn’t phase me at the time. Kids are generally very flexible and respectful of each other in these situations; mostly it is practical - to avoid having to go to a different floor to use the bathrooms in coed dorms.</p>