My son, a HS junior, will be visiting schools soon. Parameters are: no greek life, not too big, near enough a decent sized city that public transport is an option for occasional weekends, challenging but not overwhelming academics (he’s straight A and tests we’ll, good programs in science and English/writing, and most importantly a welcoming LGBT environment.
So far we’ve got:
West:
Reed College (reach)
Lewis and Clark (safe)
Midwest:
Macalester (safe?)
Carleton (reach)
East:
Vassar (safe or reach?)
Amherst (reach)
Middlebury (reach) - is this too rural?
Suggestions for more reaches, safeties, or matches welcome. This is kid two and it isn’t getting easier!
While I don’t know your son’s scores, I wouldn’t consider Macalester or Vassar as safety schools, since they are still quite “elite” LACs as well. If he’s interested in the Midwest, St. Olaf, Lawrence, and Beloit would all be excellent, easier-to-get-in-to options as well.
As for Middlebury, I’ve only visited once for a prospect day and tour, and yes, it is quite rural, but at least it’s beautiful! It’s a great small town with all the necessary things, but if your son is not interested in a rural school, then Middlebury might not be his favorite.
With Macalester and Carleton on the list, I’d add St. Olaf. I know someone who attended there and felt it had a sufficiently welcoming LGBT environment. In the east, the University of Vermont might be worth checking out.
@granolakrunchr, my S18 (now a college freshman) had similar preferences initially when he was looking at colleges, although he was open to all school sizes.
Of those on your list, we visited Reed, Lewis & Clark, and Macalester. FWIW, for him, only Macalester stayed in the running after visits, but every person is different. He did not like the thesis requirement at Reed, Lewis & Clark seemed boring to him, and neither was close enough to the city.
Anyway, the main reason I’m posting is to be “that person” who asks whether you are giving adequate consideration to cost. When my S18 was a junior, we didn’t give much weight to cost, but later came to recognize that it was more of a factor than we initially acknowledged to ourselves. For example, if I had fully realized that Reed was not going to give merit aid, we wouldn’t have visited. By the time we were thinking of visiting Vassar (another he also found appealing), we realized that we were not able or willing to pay $70K+ annually. We are full pay, so your situation may be different.
P.S. Keep in mind is that many of these small schools track demonstrated interest, so be sure he gets on their mailing lists, signs up for webinars, etc. At Macalester, it is my impression that demonstrated interest matters for merit aid as well as admissions.
I’m not too worried about cost; my other kid got pretty decent need aid plus merit aid. All the offers were about the samme. Crazy expensive but we’ve saved for it.
@granolakrunchr Within 45 minutes of a reasonably sized city check out Saint Olaf (Twin Cities; no Greek life, strong in sciences) and Oberlin (45 min. to Cleveland; strong in sciences, creative writing, no Greek life). Maybe take a look at Muhlenberg (1 hour to Philadelphia; 2 to Manhattan). Merit scholarships available at all three if that’s relevant.
You can use the net price calculator on each college’s web site to get an estimate beforehand. For a college to be considered a safety, it must be known to be affordable.
Notwithstanding current news about certain Yale alumnus allegedly acting like the worst stereotype of a fraternity member while in college (and high school), Yale is not that fraternity/sorority-heavy at 10% of students participating (far lower than at places like Washington and Lee, Depauw, and Dartmouth). But if he wants 0%, Yale would not be that, although having a 0% requirement may be limiting in excluding schools where fraternities/sororities are a minimal easily-ignored presence.
East, check out Bard, Tufts, and Haverford
The second two are also quite selective.
Earlham misses the mark for urban but could work on a number of fronts. I don’t think Midd is a great option for what you’ve desribed. Maybe Wesleyan instead?
Most colleges are welcoming to LGB students; trans students still need to be more careful in college selection. In my opinion, he should be more concerned with whether the colleges on his list have sufficiently large dating pools. As a gay guy, I scratched most LACs off my list, as the combination of small student bodies, skewed gender ratios (many LACs are 60+% female), and often rural locations meant that the dating scenes weren’t exactly ideal. This is something best asked of current students while visiting a campus – very few people on CC will be able to attest to the gay dating pools at these colleges.
That said, most of the colleges on his list seem like pretty good options. They’re either large enough (Middlebury, Vassar) and/or urban enough (Macalester, Reed, Lewis & Clark) to have at least decent G/B dating scenes. He may want to consider some of the Claremont colleges (Pomona, Claremont McKenna, Harvey Mudd, Pitzer) and the Quaker consortium outside Philly (Swarthmore and Haverford).
I highly recommend checking out some small universities like Brandeis (3600 undergrads) and Rice (4000 undergrads).
For safeties, there’s some great public LACs like SUNY Geneseo, UNC Asheville, and Evergreen State.
If Texas is of any interest, Trinity University in San Antonio may be worth a look. They have a greek system, but not national organizations, and it’s not a big deal (my daughter attends, no interest in greek either). Campus is centrally located in the city.
Greek life is not zero but quite low and meets everything else (and would be a safety if Lewis and Clark is a safety with his stats) - Willamette in Salem, Oregon. It’s about an hour south of Portland. Very LGBT friendly from what I hear (my kid who is there is cis-straight but a lot of her friends are not and seem to be happy at the school).
No merit aid at Vassar. Also, I’m not sure where your son’s needle falls on “challenging but not overwhelming academics”, but Vassar is academically more intense than some/most of the other places on your list.
The problem I’m seeing here is that there are schools that still have fraternities which might be a better fit (for someone that wants nothing to do with them) than some schools that have banned them altogether. Example Swarthmore might be a better fit than Williams… Like @gardenstategal said take a look at Wesleyan over Middlebury (and possibly Amherst…).
There was a recent (and humorous) thread about lax bros that can maybe serve as guidance:
New College of Florida comes to mind. It’s in Sarasota and is often described at a “public honors college.” The COA is ca. $20K for instate, $40K for OOS, but all OOS students get a $15K merit award if they meet certain deadlines.
New College of Florida comes with the caveat that it’s very small even by LAC standards. NCF has ~300 male students; even if about 15% identify as gay/bi*, that’s only 45 guys on campus. Some of those will already be dating, not interested in dating, or not out, so the dating pool could be as small as a couple dozen men. Of course, there’s other colleges in the Tampa Bay area.
*Yale is one of the few colleges I know of that polls students regularly on this topic. Its percentage of LGBT students is undoubtedly at the higher end since a GLAAD survey in 2017 found that 3% of those aged 18-34 identify as gay/lesbian, and 6% identified as bisexual.