<p>BTW, at Simmons, she could do a domestic exchange (perhaps at Mills College in CA) for a semester (year?). That would be a great match, but it’s not East Coast. </p>
<p>There’s Howard, but other than that I don’t think of any of the other colleges here in DC as very liberal. There are some departments at GW and UMD that think of themselves as liberal, but no unis.</p>
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<p>Much (not all) of the northeast has relatively few members of any racial or ethnic minorities, similar to much (not all) of the midwest. That does not necessarily mean that the level of racial discrimination is higher or lower.</p>
<p>Within two hours of Brattleboro is going to be the tricky part, I think! I’m pretty familiar with that area since my college boyfriend went there, we live in Maine and looked at most of the schools on your list recently, and my D applied to many of them. Definitely look at Mount Holyoke. My D is a freshman there and loves it so much. She sounds like she was looking for the same things in a school as your D.</p>
<p>How about Bates in Maine? Might be a little bit too conservative, although I think it’s about the same as Skidmore. My D thought Connecticut College was too conservative/whitebread/mainstream, but it might be worth looking at if you’re doing a college tour in the area. My sense is that Simmons is more pre-professional and less of a traditional liberal arts experience, but others may correct me about that.</p>
<p>I highly recommend she apply to Bard’s IDP (Immediate decision plan) program. it has a bunch of advantages, including 1) it’s a really fun thing to do and a great way to get a really good feel for the campus 2) The admission rate is much higher than regular decision 3) You find out if you’re accepted within a week, and it’s non-binding. Yay!</p>
<p>FWIW my D applied to Mt Holyoke, Smith, Wellesley, Skidmore, Bard and Hampshire with a similar GPA. I’m happy to answer any specific questions you might have about our many visits, application experience, etc if you want.</p>
<p>Good luck!</p>
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<p>???</p>
<p>Really? I have never heard of that. Why would that be???</p>
<p>Sounds like you are on the right track. Whatever you do, visit the colleges. My sons crossed off places because of their visits. Some were crossed off before the presentations were made.</p>
<p>I will put in a plug for Clark University. Just recommended it to a friend’s child, who loves his first few weeks on campus. I went there ages ago, but can vouch for a strong alumni network, terrific collaborative environment, and excellent research opportunities for undergrads. For most people Worcester is the turn off, but I felt that the campus was pretty isolated from the town, so that was never an issue for me personally.</p>
<p>Thank you so much for your post. It does seem that our daughters are on the same page. My wife and I would like to know what your daughter and Inparents daughters liked the most about Mount Holyoke. My wife had a suspicion that of the seven sister schools Mount Holyoke would be the best fit.</p>
<p>My wife went there “ages ago” also. She loved the school and would have graduated from Clark if she did not have a death in the family and finished her degree back home. She has a soft spot for Worcester and “triple deckers”
To this day she remains close to several friends from Clark. She would love our daughter to go there and also suggested Clark to our son, but he wanted a more “counter-culture” school and that is why he is going to Marlboro and is very happy there after two weeks.</p>
<p>Although Brandeis might be a bit of a reach, they do sometimes embrace the non-traditional student especially one who demonstrates interest. I would recommend a visit to campus if possible or if not attend an info session in your area or if there rep visits your high school. My d attended Brandeis with higher stats than yours, had demonstrated interest in both an on-campus visit and an alumni interview and had a nice merit package although their merit offers have changed somewhat more recently so cannot speak to that. She was also accepted to Skidmore.</p>
<p>Well… both my daughter’s liked Mt. Holyoke, but they are quite different people, so what they liked was different. A list combing both their visits include:
- Really lovely campus – beautiful buildings, large trees, river near campus
- The students we met were serious about their academic pursuits. It seems like academics are a high priority for almost all the students on campus, and like my kids could find like minded, smart fellow students in their majors (Political Science for one kid, STEM interests for the other).
- My kids liked the large dorm rooms and nice living spaces, and the somewhat relaxed feeling of the single sex environment. No one jostling to impress the opposite sex. Less chance of freshman men throwing up in the halls.
- D1 liked that she could have take Finnish classes at U Mass - Amherst if she wanted to.
- D2 liked that there was sidewalk chalk about Sherlock all over campus when we visited.
- D1 liked that all the freshman read a common book before coming to campus in the fall, and the book that year (several years ago now) was Paul Farmer’s “Mountains Beyond Mountains”, which she had already read and loved.
- D1, who is interested in international relations, liked the diversity of the students she met on campus (quite a number of international students).
- D2 loved the science building. It is fairly new and airy, and they have sort of mosaics of neurons embedded in the floor of part of it.
She also loved the idea of being able to attend a school where her upper level math and science classes would be all women (she was getting tired of the gender imbalance in these classes at her high school, where she was one of only a few girls in those classes). - D2 liked that the Physics department got the 2012 APS award for Improving Undergraduate Physics Education.
- D1 liked some of the campus traditions they had. I honestly can’t remember the details of those, but I know she liked that part.
- My nephew’s wife (now in her early 30s) had attended MH, and she loved it. So that made my kids more willing to visit, and once they did, they liked what they saw.</p>
<p>Neither of them ended up attending, though. D1 didn’t get any merit aid from them (I think they didn’t offer as much as they do now). She ended up taking the merit aid offered by Dickinson and loved her time there, but she says if MH had been more affordable she thinks she would have gone there. D2 picked a STEM school, but MH was in the running right up until the end for her.</p>
<p>I’m confused, because Mount Holyoke offered to meet all demonstrated needs. </p>
<p>
College of the Atlantic is a nice school, but it’s not a place I’d send someone interested in political science unless they’re also strongly interested in marine ecology. How about Bates instead? Similar in population to Colby but perhaps a little less preppy.</p>
<p>Join us in the parents of 2015 students…<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/class-20xx-community/1086324-parents-of-the-hs-class-of-2015.html”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/class-20xx-community/1086324-parents-of-the-hs-class-of-2015.html</a></p>
<p>@LuxLake
My daughter liked many of the same things that intparent listed.</p>
<p>She fell totally in love with the campus: she said it looks like Hogwarts. The library reading room is this soaring gothic space with angels holding books carved into the rafters. At the beautiful gothic church building, the main space is completely non-denominational, and there is a side chapel which holds niches for a wide variety of religions and spiritual practices, from various Eastern religions to paganism and earth goddesses. She really liked that inclusiveness.</p>
<p>As intparent mentioned, the general vibe is one of very serious academics, but in a collaborative, supportive environment (rather than competitive or cut-throat as it can sometimes feel at some peer colleges.) The thing my daughter commented on the most was the level of engagement and passion she felt from the students. My daughter is the kind of kid who thrives on intense philosphical or academic conversations with her peers. She wants to be surrounded by people who are really passionate about something and she can learn about it from them, and who will respect her intense passions. At some of the colleges we visited, like Connecticut College, she came away feeling like the student body was just a lot more “meh”. Like many kids were just there because it was expected of them and didn’t really CARE that much about being there. At Mount Holyoke, she said it feels like everyone really wants to be there, and really wants to learn and be involved.</p>
<p>The atmosphere is VERY welcoming and supportive. At Accepted Students weekend, I met many families whose students were doing the rounds comparing MHC with other schools they’d gotten into, like Wellesley, Smith, Bryn Mawr, Skidmore, Amherst, etc. I just kept hearing again and again from people how the atmosphere at MHC was so wonderful, and how so many of the kids just felt like, “these are my people!” I think it’s something that stands out if you visit during school term and especially if you sit in on a couple of classes and stay overnight.</p>
<p>There is a lot of community/school spirit, but in a very different way than you expect at colleges typically. (My D was kind of anti-school-spirit at her high school, not into the sports scene, and definitely not interested in a college with Greek life… but she is really loving the Mount Holyoke spirit.) For example, each class has a color and mythological creature. Class of 2018 is the Red Pegasus. 2019 will be the Yellow Sphinx. At convocation they all wore their colors in the outdoor amphitheatre. It was beautiful. Other traditions: M&Cs (milk and cookies) every schoolnight there is a study break in the dorms with some snacks beginning with M and C. Mountain Day. On a random day in the fall chosen by the President, the belltower will ring announcing an unexpected break from classes for a day: outdoor activities culminate with being served ice cream at the top of the mountain.</p>
<p>The professors seem really super engaged and excited about teaching. They are very accessible. Here is an anecdote from my daughter’s experience: She had been reading about the professors and was really excited about one particular Bio professor who seemed to have a very similar passion for bio -from a naturalist/evolutionary/field observation viewpoint- as herself. She hoped to one day be able to take a class with him. She was thrilled when she got into his Bio 101 class. Then she found out he was also her freshman academic advisor. The first day of class, they hung out for a while after class discussing the evolution of Trilliums and her passion and theories about specific insects. They have already been talking about internships for the summer in her field. He gave her the keys to the locked biology lab rooms where the upperclassmen do their entomology research. She spends a lot of her free time in there, looking at slides of insects prepared by students in the 1800’s. Looking back on my own college experience, this just seems so wonderful and lucky. She has immediately connected with a professor who shares her passion, is more than willing to spend time with her, and is already helping her pursue her career path. WOW.</p>
<p>The dorms rooms are amazing! See my post on the Mount Holyoke forum :)</p>
<p>I think when intparent mentioned the financial aid issue, she was talking about merit aid, not need-based aid. Mount Holyoke did meet 100% of our need-based aid. The EFC that they calculated using their own institutional formula was in fact very close to the FAFSA EFC. The completely met our “need” with college grants, work study, and the federal subsidized loans. In our case, the Net Price Calculator was extremely close to the actual award, so you can get a good idea by running that.</p>
<p>wow! </p>
<p>Yeah, no kidding. I should have gone to Mt. Holyoke. :(</p>
<p>i had x-chromosome envy.</p>
<p>Muhlenberg and Ursinus come to mind. Maybe on the small side for her but both are very good schools, not big on Greek life, small time sports, very accepting cultures, big arts communities, generous with financial aid and good political science departments. Best of luck with your search! </p>
<p>Oh, I should also add that a major focus at MHC is “change the world.” International relations, polisci, etc are big. The Politics department is divided into 4 fields: political theory, comparative politics, American politics, international politics. I think the 3 most popular majors are Political Sci/government, Int’l Relations, and Biology…</p>
<p>They also just instituted a program where EVERY student gets funding for an internship (so they can take unpaid/low paid if they want) after their sophomore year.</p>
<p>There is a large international contingent (I think around 26%?) My daughter met many international women on the accepted students facebook page, and requested a girl from Uzbekistan, who she became friends with that way, as her roomate.</p>