<p>Is your family wealthy? Can they afford to pay the entire cost of your attendance at any of these colleges? Because if that’s not the case, then it’s hard to turn down the relatively large grant that Lafayette gave you.</p>
<p>But if that’s a moot point, I guess you should think about what sets these schools apart. All of them have great placement rates for graduate school and probably have good career services. All of them are going to be great for humanistic and social science fields, and will have small classes and discussions. All of them will have close faculty-student relationships; that’s the point of SLACs. But they do have some differences.</p>
<p>-Barnard is in the middle of a very large urban area, and both Bryn Mawr and Davidson are fairly close to large cities (Philadelphia and Charlotte). Lafayette, Oberlin, and Smith are a bit farther away from large cities - Lafayette is 1.5 hours from Philadelphia; Smith is about 1.5 hours from Boston (but about 50 minutes from Hartford, CT) and Oberlin is about 40 minutes from Cleveland. So do you want to be in or nearby a large city, or does that not really matter to you?</p>
<p>-Barnard, Smith, and Bryn Mawr are women’s colleges. Lafayette, Davidson, and Oberlin are co-ed. All three of the women’s colleges are in consortia or agreements with other co-ed institutions, though, so you can always take co-ed classes and attend co-ed parties and events. Still, though, a women’s college changes the experience. I went to a women’s college, absolutely loved it, and would choose it again. But you have to decide if that’s something that you really want for yourself.</p>
<p>-Due to their consortia and locations, Barnard, Smith, and Bryn Mawr also have the benefit of being attached to larger research universities (Columbia, UMass-Amherst, and Penn respectively). Barnard is right across the street and I think Smith is relatively close, too, while Bryn Mawr is more of a distance from Penn but might have a shuttle. This gives you opportunities like the ability to do independent studies or research with more research-focused faculty (especially important if you want to go to graduate school, although the professors at any of these LACs will be doing research), taking graduate-level classes, attending world-class seminars, and perhaps having access to departments and classes you won’t at a smaller school. Lafayette is not far from Lehigh University, which is also a research-oriented place, but I’m not sure what their relationship is.</p>
<p>-Out of the six, Lafayette probably has the least name recognition. Not sure if that’s important to you.</p>
<p>I’ve never been, but I’ve heard that both Smith and Oberlin have pretty artsy/liberal atmospheres.</p>