From a Rural Area, Child accepted to Ivy & top LAC , how to choose without visiting

College Search & Selection
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My D17 applied to a number of these schools and visited many. She was a perspective Neuroscience major at the time. Her impression and shared by the family was that Amherst was way too preppy and way too ‘Bro’ for lack of a better term. Lots of athletes - I believe a very high percentage of the student body with lots of Finance majors looking at Wall Street. She did like Smith and Mt Holyoke but thought Mt. Holyoke campus was a bit too isolated for her liking. She loved Smith and Northampton where it’s located and it was one of her final choices. She eventually chose between Columbia and the school she attended which is only 1 hour away from us and one of the main reasons she chose it. She was looking for a rigorous experience with like-minded students and I think all of the schools on your list fit the bill. Columbia’s added appeal was the urban experience and everything that NYC offers.

A couple of things I’d look into:
-Fluency in a second language will most likely mean Study Abroad or Summer Immersion program. What will be the cost of this and can you afford if you have t pay full cost? At my D’s school she spent a summer In Russia and was able to get a scholarship to pay for about 3/4s of the cost. Do any the schools have anything like that.
-I think just about every school has Substance Free Dorms or Houses. Smith housing seems very cool with a number of different sized houses/dorms and they definitely have Substance Free options.

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But if you follow that link you provided and search for ‘race’ you’ll find the following:

Campus Life

Lots of Race/Class Interaction
Little Race/Class Interaction
Both lists are based on how strongly students agree or disagree with the statement, “Different types of students (black/white, rich/poor) interact frequently and easily.”

So I agree it’s confusing but there are two lists and Amherst is on the latter one, despite the wording of the subtitle on that page. Hard to estimate how much stock to put into such surveys.

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On that page, “Lots of Race/Class Interaction” links to a list with:

  1. Rice University
  2. United States Military Academy
  3. William and Mary

while “Little Race/Class Interaction” links to a list with:

  1. Quinnipiac University
  2. Providence College
  3. Amherst College

Of course, whether you believe that the survey methodology gives good results is another matter (e.g. how many students at each college, and how were the students at each college sampled?). For example, some of the lists do not seem to match published stats, such as “Lots of Greek Life” not including Washington & Lee University or Dartmouth College in its top 20.

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Very confusing because the link posted has this descriptor for the survey below:
“Based on how strongly students agree that different types of students interact frequently and easily at their schools. Learn more.” I can see not that Amherst is indeed in the list of little interaction.

The ad banners are gone! I was having a lot of trouble with the site earlier. Sorry for the mistake!

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High school students all seem to be looking for colleges full of diversity and interaction with SES groups and races. Even if the numbers are there, I think most find the schools are not one big melting pot. My daughter’s had a pretty good diversity with both domestic and international students. She is a minority raised in a white household. She played a sport with mostly white kids (lacrosse). Her friends at school reflected that - mostly white, mostly athletes, a few classmates (engineers). She had a few friends who SES were way (WAY) above us (and that’s coming out now that she’s invited to weddings at the Four Seasons and Ritz) but it wasn’t a problem. Some did take expensive spring break trips to Spain and the islands, but my daughter had to play her sport anyway. Otherwise, she just said she couldn’t go. Not a big deal. Her friends got to count her as a minority interaction but she didn’t get to count them in her stats.

My other child, white, lived on the international wing of her dorm. It was a random assignment and she was excited to meet lots of kids from around the world. Not one of the students on that floor had any interest in being friends so she pulled her friends from her classes, sorority, a few from other floors in the dorm. Mostly kids who looked just like my daughter.

My daughter (first one above) didn’t get a good feeling at Smith. She was very young when she spent a weekend there, only 16. She’s also very conservative politically but thought she was very sophisticated socially (she’d had a few beers and wasn’t shocked with people smoking pot). Nope. She was asked questions she just wasn’t prepared for, like which pronouns she preferred and WHY. Had she thought about being gay, did she want to explore, did she mind if she had a gay roommate who brought home dates? She felt attacked and Smith was immediately off the table.

If she’d been recruited to Amherst, she would have gone in a minute. I loved Amherst. Smith students seemed militant and angry to me while Amherst students seemed less interested in changing the world but just wanted to run it.

My daughter did have a hs friend who went to Smith and lasted a year. She was a shy girl and I don’t think she liked the fit. There was a poster here on CC about the time my kids were looking whose daughter was at Smith and had the same feeling that those at Smith were very willing to discuss ideas as long as you agreed with them and were very liberal.

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@RuralCityMom, I am writing as the parent of a former Columbia student who lives in a rural area.

Like your daughter, my D19 had a number of great college choices. To her, once she was accepted to Columbia, there really was no other choice because it was her best academic match, but she deferred to us to finalize the decision. Financially all the schools came out about the same as our state flagship, so we said yes to her choice. I did have some reservations about her moving from a rural town to NYC and encouraged her to consider this abrupt change very carefully. Unfortunately, my daughter needed to miss the Days on Campus event for incoming students in order to present with her team at a conference.

Well…shortly after she arrived at Columbia, she had great reservations about living in NYC. Columbia’s campus is very small, and the lack of private spaces is a real issue for a lot of students. She did have a roommate, so this made it even harder for her to decompress. The sounds from nearby Mt. Sinai-St. Luke’s Hospital (constant ambulances) made it hard for her to sleep. We tried to help her soldier through, but although she loved her classes and made friends, she just could not see herself living in NYC for 4 years. She realized that she wanted a very different, more traditional college environment–and one much closer to home.

My daughter is having a great year (despite the pandemic) after transferring her state flagship university, which she had rejected right after her first acceptance. She discovered that it offers far more courses and opportunities in the humanities than she had imagined. She does miss the Core Curriculum (which is definitely not for all students), though.

Her new university has a large, beautiful campus with lots of outdoor and other private space, and she is living with a few of her high school friends. She thought the campus was too big back in 2018, but now she knows this is what she needs.

Sorry so long-winded, but the point is that for some students, moving to NYC from a rural area is really tough, and it’s not just the environment but also attitudes of local residents, too. Columbia is a wonderful university full of opportunity and resources, but it can be a tough environment for some students to grow.

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Thank you for this perspective on Columbia. It is hard to judge what 36 acres at Columbia looks like compared to 1000 at Amherst. I have been to NYC and walked by Columbia but since it was not at a time when we were looking at colleges, I have no idea what was undergrad and graduate areas.

My daughter is used to her own room, and while she has 1 sibling, there is a almost 5 year gap and her brother has health issues so in many ways she is like an only child. My daughter is so excited for a roommate but I am not sure she understands what 24/7 means with someone.

Our state U would be so easy to go to. On top of the full scholarship, my daughter won a very high level state award that would give her spending money. She is very familiar with many of the kids that are going to study in the honors science program because of competitions over the years. I think she feels like it will be just like high school, same group of people. While these students were very nice to her, they worked together on projects and in clubs, they would not interact much outside of academics because of my daughter was considered an outsider.

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Every school that you mentioned is very, very highly regarded at least where I am from.

Premed classes are very competitive. They will be very competitive at any of the schools that you mentioned. They will be very competitive at schools that are ranked quite a bit lower than the schools that you mentioned.

Both of my daughters had majors that overlapped a lot with premed classes (one starts a DVM in September). Both have friends who are premed. There will be tough classes full of exceptionally strong students. Some students will stand out even in the situation where every student is strong.

I would be nervous about the “very big city” aspect of Columbia given that you are from somewhere that is very different.

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There is a recent poster with very strong opinions on “flyover state school” vs “name school”. Interesting thread, maybe worth a look. Important lessons learned - #550 by Data10

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I’m always going to plug for Columbia, because I went there and loved it. It was also a lot easier to get into when I went, so big congratulations to your daughter. But apart from my own fondness, I also think it has so much to offer because the core curriculum ends up putting everyone on equal footing. It’s a shared intellectual experience and it erases any advantage that kids from high falootin’ prep schools might have had coming in. And while Columbia is in NYC, it is in a quieter residential neighborhood and the campus is lovely. She will be welcomed and celebrated for her differences. My memory of college there was how excited people were to meet people from all over who brought different values and experiences to the table. I have to believe that is still the case.

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I do always recomend that anyone moving to NYC from a quiet place bring a white noise machine just in case. I, myself, now have trouble sleeping in the country despite having been born in the most rural of the New England states.

Actually, white noise machines are helpful at every stage of life. I cannot tell you how many inter-tenant disputes I have solved with the gift of a white noise machine.

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Which are/were your child’s top two schools at which she was waitlisted ?

Which school is your state flagship ?

Either your daughter is very liberal & wants to attend a single sex school or Smith & Wellesley are not appropriate options for her.

From your list of 6 schools, only Hamilton & Amherst seem to be matches.

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OP- your D sounds fabulous.

In my freshman dorm we had the daughter of missionaries (she did not understand a single pop culture reference for the first 6 months of college as she had been living overseas in the pre-internet days), someone from multi-generational wealth who went to school in NYC, spent weekends at some fabulous country home, and “summered” with family on some coastal compound, a first Gen college student from the rural south who spent every spare minute writing letters to his HS girlfriend (aka “home-town honey”), the son of a janitor, daughter of a CEO of a Fortune 500 company, and of course, some random “normal people” who lived in cities or suburbs and whose parents were teachers (mine) or were doctors or other professionals. And a descendant of a Mayflower arrival who actually had a debutante ball but didn’t tell any of us until afterwards since she was afraid we would crash it!

Not everyone was matched with their soon-to-be best friend, but the dorm relationships were crystalized pretty quickly and we all had a best friend somewhere in the building, plus a gang of 10 or 12 to go to meals with, study with, play frisbie or ping pong, or go to a movie. We were jealous of the dorm next door- which we called the UN, since it had many more international students, but we made friends there as well.

The only school on your list which would give me pause for social reasons is Hamilton. Otherwise, I think your D would find her “peeps” pretty quickly, even if not her roommate. On the academic front, all of her choices are plenty prestigious.

Where is she waitlisted and if you can tell us what appealed to her about those schools, we can help with “this is most like that”.

What great choices!!!

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My child’s schools they were waitlisted at were Harvard (after more then one interview), Bowdion . Swathmore, UPenn and Dartmouth.
My child was also accepted at WPI , UMASS and every in state school. WPI gave a large merit scholarship but it still left they need for loans and she does not want loans when she has schools she would not need loans for.

I promised my child I would not say what state we are from because it would be easy to ID her by just 1 or 2 facts but our state flagship U is decent and has a lot of reseach going on. I do not think the neuroscience department is as strong as other schools or it is concentrated on just few select areas and that is why there is a need for certain professionals in our area and if almost everyone goes to flaggship U, who will ever learn the needed skills and come fill those jobs?

Wellesey was a choice because it had the academics , the good location , and good financial aid. My daughter is unsure about the all womens factor. As I posted before she is used to mostly boys in her classes. While there were some smart girls in her school most go into nursing , they know they will leave college debt free and have a good job waiting. I think my daughter hopes to meet females that are more career driven or just that she has something in common with.

I think like many students after being deferred early action she just added in few schools on the list out of panic.

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Note that biology and psychology majors in college tend to be mostly women.

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Ok. I don’t think Harvard waitlist moving this year. I could be wrong and if it does, rural is a good box to be in. I wish for her to get her first choice, if I belived in the power of positive thoughts I would say I was sending her those, but my excellent Columbia education has made me entirely too rational. Still, I hope for her. That said, dammit woman take Columbia! It’s a great, friendly wonderful school that will open all sorts of doors her whole life. I’m not going to say Wellsey cannot but it leaves a little less wiggle room. I negotiated with Columbia all those years ago and they changed my life. If Wellsley is giving you more, give them a chance to counter. Most people say have the parent call, but I say have your daughter call. That’s what I did. It worked.

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This represents a beautiful reason to apply to a college.

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Congrats to your daughter on her wonderful options, and she’s clearly very lucky to have strong support at home!

For me the part that sticks out is that she doesn’t sound too concerned about ‘sticking out’ for being from a more rural area – I think that signals a great willingness to try new things, meet new people and learn about new places! And fortunately, she will have the opportunity to do that in one form or another at any school she chooses, including your state school, if that’s what she prefers.

That said, she has a cool opportunity to live somewhere new and different, and she must’ve had a pretty strong motivation to apply to so many elite private colleges (hopefully more than just prestige-seeking!) Unless she’s done some real soul-searching and realized she would really be happier close to home at State U, I think it’d be a shame to let fear of the unknown hold her back from embracing a new experience. I’m sure she’ll find like-minded people and friends who enjoy a similar pace of life at any school, even if they differ from the stereotypical student there. And also, she is sure to grow as a person throughout her college experience – there’s a lot of growing up between the nervous freshman and the confident new grad!

My two cents would be, why not try out one of her East Coast options and give it her best shot? Hopefully she’ll find her footing and blossom there, and if not, it should be pretty easy to transfer back to State U – at least easier than the reverse if she started close to home and then felt like she missed her chance to branch out.

Going off to college is always a leap of faith, but I don’t see any warning signs that she’s not up to the task – it seems like you’ve raised a very self-possessed young woman who you can trust to find her way wherever she goes. Congratulations to you too!

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My son is from a rural area, very very small public school, high financial need, interested in engineering. WPI was one of the few colleges we toured before COVID, and he loved the concept, but after reading about financial aid there I looked up the net price calculator and suggested he not bother applying. Honestly I don’t know how any low-income students could go there.
I was a rural student looking at LAC many years ago – well, visiting the two colleges I was choosing between because I couldn’t afford to visit before or see any others. I had spent a year in Germany which really broadened my perspective, but I still knew from being on the Bryn Mawr campus that I didn’t want to attend an all-girls college – the strong feminist vibe felt overwhelming. My mom drove me on up to Vermont to Middlebury, and I chose it in part because we took a wrong turn and ended up on their summer writing campus in the mountains! The rural setting still spoke to me even though I wanted to get out of my rural state down south. College visits sure can make a difference!
My son is choosing between two colleges he has never visited, University of Maine and Boston University – not his top choices going in, but by far the most affordable, without loans. Though I wouldn’t want to live in a city now, I can see so many opportunities for him to grow by living in Boston.
Best wishes to you and your daughter.

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Edit: This is directed to OP.

Does your daughter want to stick around campus during weekends or venture out? My guess is that Columbia’s campus clears out on weekends. Will your daughter have enough spending money to be able to join friends at restaurants and other off-campus entertainment? I imagine it could get very pricey. I know these economic differences for students can make some feel left out, or lonely on campus if they can’t afford to go out.