<p>Rethink Smith. It’s an all-women’s college in the midst of a 5-college consortium that is co-educational. Northampton is a very hip city. Vibrant for women’s studies. Mt. Holyoke is in the same consortium, but between the two women’s colleges I think Smith is edgier and has Northampton, rather than South Hadley, as its venue. Both are fine colleges, but Smith sounds more like your daughter’s list of preferences for college town.</p>
<p>From Smith, cross-enroll each semester at some courses at Hampshire, UMass or Amherst College. While in the Town of Amherst, hop onto the 2-hour free bus to Boston (I think it’s still there, used to go 3 times daily. It would leave from UMass Student Center, or perhaps makes a stop in Northampton first.)</p>
<p>Oberlin gets many applicants who wished they lived somewhere else, and it’s evident from their list of other schools applied. She’d have to tangle with that bias and settle it down in her mind before she writes her application, which features a “Why Oberlin” supplement question that is key. Sometimes people visit Oberlin while in session. The entire situation - Oberlin’s phenomenal cultural resources, on site, and the students themselves – overtakes their prior assumptions about “midwest, cornfields” and all of that. The only way to know is to visit there. If you realize that everything you look for in X city might be right on campus there each weekend, then you understand Oberlin.
Then, IF she opens up to something West of the Appalachians, more cool/hip LAC places come to mind: Carleton, Grinnell and Kenyon, just to name a few.</p>
<p>Wesleyan makes sense for her listed criteria, as it has the commuter relationship to Boston and progressive student body. The chance to clang the ethnomusicology gong daily would get me there if I were doing it all over again.</p>
<p>Brown, if she could get in. Providence is an artsy city and in easy reach of Boston (less than an hour, good bus and train service between cities).</p>
<p>Brandeis has a keen sense of social justice, diverse enrolment and its own commuter bus into Boston (30 min.) The wisecrack about all future “lawyers and accountants” – outdated info, on-the-bias.</p>
<p>From Tufts, I’ve heard of students interested in international relations, doing domestic self-help projects, biking cross-country summertimes and so on. She might find her people there, but she has to be willing to overlook others who seem more conventional, too.</p>
<p>Finally – I don’t know what’s up about no New York State, but, Vassar College sounds just right, too, in terms of other criteria. What she might find there would be people who hail from Boston or New York areas, and could go home with them on some occasional weekends for a city-jumpstart. Gosh it’s just 30 minutes from the Massachusetts border. PRETEND it’s in Massachusetts. </p>
<p>See if you can get her to list what appeals to her about Boston (other than that it’s Boston) and break it down to individual appealing features of Boston. Those features might be replicated individually, elsewhere, in ways the college community itself provides (bookstores, heady atmosphere, progressive politics…) even when located suburban or rural. </p>
<p>My S-1 always loved NYC while in h.s., but waited to move there until he graduated, to make his career and adult life there. It has worked out just great for him. If she adores Boston, you might remind her that it will still be up in 4 years, to become her post-college destination.</p>