<p>I haven’t read this entire thread, but perhaps a good comparison would be that the town of Wellesley is more similar to the suburban town of Princeton, while the town of Northhampton is more similar to Cambridge. Both Princeton and Harvard’s towns sport equally wonderful schools in very different environments.</p>
<p>Disclaimer: I still root for Vassar. Oh yeah, I have a son!</p>
<p>twinmom: I love Vassar, too. You know that! But didn’t meet the requirements of this thread. My hermaphrodite comment was not meant as a diss. Plato thought this the highest form of evolution and that we’ve devolved from that so we look for our soul mates.</p>
<p>::myth steps off the podium and stops pontificating.::</p>
<p>I like that, twinmom – interesting observation!<br>
Mythmom – learn something new every day!</p>
<p>Oh Mythmom! No offense taken - you know that! My son views himself as an (almost) Seven Sisters alumnus, so I couldn’t resist throwing that in. Back to your regular programming …</p>
<p>damn. Brain cramp about Pembroke…where did I get that from?
I sit corrected.</p>
<p>Consolation, you reinforce the view of Wellesley-the-town: to have a good time, take a 45-minute shuttle ride to Boston.</p>
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<p>:D It’s true!</p>
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<p>Yup. I’ve never said anything different. If you want to have a good time off-campus–we had plenty of fun on-campus, including socializing with guys–that is precisely what you do. </p>
<p>So? </p>
<p>I’d rather be a free 30-45 minutes away from the enormous resources of Cambridge/Boston than have my sole option be walking into a a nice little college town. YMMV. Wellesley’s location and transportation make it easy to spend the afternoon in the MFA or catch a couple of indie films in Boston, and hang out with friends on Saturdays or catch a Red Sox game on Sunday or go to a Boston Symphony concert with no advance planning (other than buying tickets if required, of course). Unlike many of those speculating, I have been there and I have done it. Frequently. On the other hand, from the age of about 14 or 15 I thought nothing of taking the train into London or NYC to go to the theater or museums or whatever.</p>
<p>The one thing I haven’t seen in this thread is a discussion of the different college’s honor codes and the academic freedom it permits. I can’t speak to any school but Wellesley (I’m an alumna) but being able to self-schedule exams was a truly wonderful thing. I have not idea how it works today, but it was a glorious thing to be able to design a reading period and finals week, and it significantly lowered the stress of finals.</p>
<p>“The Ville” seems much more accessible to me today than it did approx. 25 years ago, but for those without cars (which was most in my day) it was easier AND more fun to get into Cambridge than distant parts of Wellesley. I did take a course at MIT my senior year, which has been a continuing good thing for me.</p>
<p>Things change in a generation, but I really loved my time at Wellesley. From you all I get a feeling of a big difference between Smith and MHC, but my thoughts then and now was “they’re both really far from civilization, but really near each other.” I grew up in a very large midwestern college town, so the smaller, New England version had absolutely no appeal.</p>
<p>A really small point, but I want to assure 2boysima (and anyone else who cares) that notwithstanding its history of restricted housing, Bryn Mawr-the-town today has plenty of Jews, Catholics, African-Americans, and anyone else with the money to afford living there. Since the 70s, roughly, there has been a huge migration of Philadelphia-region Jews from the traditional Jewish suburbs to the Main Line.</p>
<p>Okay, Consolation, so in lieu of Wellesley the town, doing anything in Boston imposes a two-hour time penalty…90 minutes, maybe, if you make connections perfectly…on top of whatever you’re doing there. Props to you if you could do that regularly while skating through college, but my D would not have been able to afford that kind of time penalty very often contra the ease of walking 5 minutes into NoHo. Her schedule was packed and there simply wasn’t much room for spending time in transit.</p>
<p>IJD, there are towns of 30K that are really far from civilization and towns of 30K that are hip and vibrant. NoHo is the latter…believe me, there are many small towns I’d die of boredom in and NoHo isn’t one of them.</p>
<p>FWIW here’s the impressions I drew, in the process of going through college selection with two daughters. Probably all wrong, you people will so note afterwards I’m sure.</p>
<p>Wellesley seemed to have a lot of “Ivy fellow-traveler” types. Meaning a somewhat noticable proportion of kids who were heading for pre-law, MBA, analyst for investment banking firm, etc. They seemed to have great departments in economics and politics.
Demographically it seemed to have an unusually high proportion of asian kids, close to 25%? Especially from Korea. Not sure what this means, just a curious thing I noticed.</p>
<p>D1 almost went to Wellesley, in the end decided that she fit better at another school, which had relatively more pre-phd types, and was coed.</p>
<p>The social scene at Wellesley did not positively impress her.The students she met, during two visits & overnight, did not seem that happy. She did not like the idea of so-called “****- truck” to go pursue MIT boys, or the more locally available Babson boys.
The town of Wellesley did not seem like it would be that useful to her. Boston was a trek, yet its presence seemed to drain the campus of vitality when she was there on a weekend.</p>
<p>Bryn Mawr seemed a lot smaller. People at Bryn Mawr and Haverford whined prominently about how much work they had. (actually Wellesley students did too, now that I recall). My wife had a colleague who was a Bryn Mawr alum and told D1 basically if you come here you will probably not have a social/ dating life. It didn’t seem like Bryn Mawr & Haverford student bodies were completely compatible types.</p>
<p>Being on the train line is a nice feature.</p>
<p>D2 was interested in English and especially dance, thought Barnard met her needs in these regards better than Wellesley or Bryn Mawr did.</p>
<p>Neither looked seriously at Smith or MHC, maybe they should have. A friend’s daughter attended Smith. loved it. Her guy friends from there went to U Mass. Those schools had good dance too. Smith got recruited by my Ibank, back when (as did Wellesley). So that option may be there, but my guess is smaller % of students there are into that than at Wellesley. D1 & D2 looked more at Wellesley & Barnard because they thought they matched closer with the student body entrance qualifications at these schools, very superficial I admit. Afterwards, on CC I learned there is some nuance about that, due to untraditional students at Smith. However those people are in the classrooms.</p>
<p>“Kenilworth or Lake Forest in IL”</p>
<p>I think that’s an apt comparison for both Bryn Mawr and Wellesley, and a significant down side to both schools in my book. IMHO the shuttle (I won’t repeat its all-but-official name) that goes between Wellesley and Cambridge is a much better system than using the train at BMC to get into Philly from BMC. That’s both because it’s much cheaper and because it runs late at night, which is exactly when it’s useful to students.</p>
<p>MD, access to high-level dance was an important criterion for D even though she had no intention of being a dance major (another thing which knocked NYU off the list) and Barnard scored a clear #1 in that regard. We didn’t visit her Safety, Skidmore, but on paper it was probably #2 with Smith #3 and Wellesley a distant #4, the last being an artifact of fewer levels and the dance classes being Activity classes as opposed to part of a Dance or Theater department.</p>
<p>The last train out to Bryn Mawr Saturday night leaves Center City Philadelphia around quarter to 2 am. That’s not so bad, service-wise.</p>
<p>That’s later than it used to be. Even so, in my experience, the party/concert/whatever usually wasn’t near the train station, so we had to leave the event well before the last train to make sure that we got there in time. Getting to/from Penn was a second train plus a walk. In contrast, the Wellesley bus leaves from Harvard Square and MIT, which is exactly where you’d go to find the party, so you can just walk right out to the bus when you’re ready to leave.</p>
<p>Mythmom posted some stats on the Seven Sisters from Princeton Reviews “lists.” Sounded like they might have been from memory or older. Also, you have to click on the “More” link to see them all - they hide some of the highest ones.</p>
<p>For example, Wellesley:</p>
<h1>2 Professors Get High Marks</h1>
<h1>3 Best Classroom Experience</h1>
<h1>8 Gay Community Accepted</h1>
<h1>8 Most Beautiful Campus</h1>
<h1>8 Stone-Cold Sober Schools</h1>
<h1>11 Most Accessible Professors</h1>
<h1>15 Scotch and Soda, Hold the Scotch</h1>
<h1>17 Dorms Like Palaces</h1>
<p>Also, it is on the “Top Ten Best Value Private Colleges” along with Amherst, Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Rice, Swarthmore, Wesleyan, Williams and Yale.</p>
<p>Someone else might want to list these for the other schools.</p>
<p>[Slightly more on Bryn Mawr transportation options] – If there are three or four people involved, and they’re going to or from Penn, a cab is a pretty viable option, too – it’s only about 6 miles away, probably less than a $20 fare. It’s interesting – Bryn Mawr is about the same distance from Center City Philadelphia as the University of Chicago is from the middle of the Loop.</p>
<p>Mount Holyoke College, according to Princeton Review’s rankings:</p>
<h1>12 Best College Library</h1>
<h1>13 Dorms Like Palaces</h1>
<h1>10 Gay Community Accepted</h1>
<h1>9 Lots of Race/Class Interaction</h1>
<h1>3 Most Beautiful Campus</h1>
<h1>6 Best Classroom Experience</h1>
<p>Also, listed as a Princeton Review Best Value college.</p>
<p>OK:</p>
<p>Smith College</p>
<h1>13 Best Career Services</h1>
<h1>1 Dorms Like Palaces</h1>
<h1>18 Gay Community Accepted</h1>
<h1>16 Most Politically Active Students</h1>
<h1>20 Easiest Campus to Get Around</h1>
<h1>7 Best Quality of Life</h1>
<p>Bryn Mawr</p>
<h1>7 Best Campus Food</h1>
<h1>6 Dorms Like Palaces</h1>
<h1>7 Nobody Plays Intramural Sports</h1>
<h1>15 Students Study the Most</h1>
<h1>11 Best Quality of Life</h1>
<p>Barnard</p>
<h1>2 Best Career Services</h1>
<h1>3 Great College Towns</h1>
<h1>18 Nobody Plays Intramural Sports</h1>
<h1>8 Best Quality of Life</h1>
<p>U Chicago is rightly criticized for being in a less than thrilling neighborhood for young people, where there aren’t many off-campus entertainments within walking distance. Regardless, its isolation from nightlife may get less attention because, as a coed school with a pretty even gender balance, the need to go to other campuses to socialize is a lot less pressing. (I’m speaking as a straight girl who spent years 18-20 in Hyde Park and 20-22 in Bryn Mawr. Then again, I love nerdy guys, so maybe UC coeds with different taste in men do feel they need to look off campus for good prospects.) </p>
<p>(Yes, I referred to myself as a girl and used the term “coeds,” which may be why this feminist didn’t find a home in the Seven Sisters 
.)</p>
<p><a href=“Yes,%20I%20referred%20to%20myself%20as%20a%20girl%20and%20used%20the%20term%20%22coeds,%22%20which%20may%20be%20why%20this%20feminist%20didn’t%20find%20a%20home%20in%20the%20Seven%20Sisters%20%20.”>quote</a>
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<p>You said it, not me! :D</p>
<p>When I left the Boston area for Hyde Park, my impression was that the latter was just like Cambridge, but with everything to do taken out! I’ve noticed in recent years that there seem to be more restaurants and so forth than there used to be. My favorite activities there were always browsing book stores and hanging out at Jimmy’s late at night, both of which are still available, I’d assume. I love the U of C, though, and somehow we found plenty to do.</p>
<p>I don’t know when the shuttle at W acquired that name. I find it very distasteful. It certainly was not called that in the mid 70s, and believe me, in that era–after the pill and before aids with plentiful pot and the drinking age at 18–there was plenty of such activity!</p>