How can you assess future college workload?

Parent Cafe
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I agree with blossom 100%. It can be difficult to get past poor marketing. However, that’s all it is. We saw consistently poor marketing from a top 30 university. It’s a great institution with a consistent problem, but one that would have had no impact on my daughter once she was there as a student. She chose a school that had some older, “shabby” buildings. If every building were poorly maintained, I would have been concerned. Perhaps my daughter’s bar was low, but she really did not care about a few buildings here and there that were not ideal, including her dorm.

Also, she lucked out when it came to tour guides. Every tour guide we had was terrific. However, I watched a tour going on at the same time as ours at the school she ultimately chose. I guarantee she would have thought twice about the school had we been part of that tour. And yet, that tour guide was not representative of the school.

I realize you have a lot of moving parts in our search. Some items might need to fall away.

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@TheGFG BMC alum here, did most of my work at Hford, and we looked closely at Dickinson for my current athlete/senior, so let me add my perspective.

BMC teams are generally not going to be super competitive, and I suspect that the coach is not on a fast track recruiting mode, especially for a spring junior, when he/she still likely trying to reel in some of the RD kids for this year. Culturally, BMC is going to be a supportive community, and I wouldn’t worrying about the “writing intensive” focus. Granted, I graduated a long time ago, but my freshman year at BMC was much easier for me than my senior year at a demanding, reading and writing intensive, high school had been – a well-prepared student will be ready for BMC or other LAC. BMC, like Hford, is a collaborative, not competitive community. Personally, I do appreciate the structure at BMC – an administration and school focused on women’s education, with the opportunity to take a more co-ed academic path through the Bi-Co community.

Putting aside for a moment the worry about Hford recruiting, and those pitfalls, I would similarly recommend not worrying about your daughter’s challenges might intersect with the Hford Honors Code. The point of the Hford Honor Code is that the community is bound by a shared commitment to certain values – primarily tolerance and respect. So a student whose disability implicates social awkwardness should be embraced and welcomed, not cast off, and would not likely lead to censure for actions which were inadvertent rather than intentional.

Depending on where you are coming from, Dickinson is two hours west of Philly (BMC and Hford) and an hour west of F&M. We loved Dickinson, but ultimately my kid soured on it because of miscues from athletic recruiting. For what its worth, with sorority participation at both Dickinson and F&M around 30%, and F&M having the reputation as a work hard/play hard kind of place, it would be a good idea to get a handle on how greek life affects female students, especially athletes.

Was Conn Coll on the original list? As another school without greek life, that might be a good one to consider. Hang in there.

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Just to be clear, we are not being swayed by the Dickinson marketing. I mentioned it precisely because some of what seems very appealing may be more marketing than reality. For example, I took a good look at the departments and course offerings, and F&M has as much or more in classics and archaeology as Dickinson, despite the fact Dickinson has an archaeology major and some extra classics bells and whistles. At F&M she’d have to create her own interdisciplinary major or minor if she wants archaeology. Not a huge deal, but it adds some extra effort, paperwork, and a senior project when we have a kid for whom I worry about workload.

We’d prefer no Greek life. We visited Conn twice and had an 1 1/2 hr meeting with the coach. We felt Conn would have been a really, really nice fit for D in a lot of ways. It felt very comfortable and offers just what she needs. What both Conn and Haverford offer that would be helpful to a student like D is the ease of getting a single–at H all 4 years, and at Conn the last 3. A roommate could be great for her, but our general strategy is to look for ease and simplicity. The fewer variables out of our control the better. BUT, financially Conn comes in even higher than BM and is also 3 hours or so away. Sigh.

H, on paper, is perfect. I don’t think she can get in though.

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@TheGFG My words about marketing were referring to your second trip to BMC, since you mentioned shabbiness of some of the older buildings and a flippant tour guide.

Also, I think most LAC’s would advertise themselves as writing intensive, which seems appropriate. I wouldn’t be dissuaded by that, unless there is some specific evidence that the program is beyond other LAC’s as far as the writing component.

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Well, I agree with @blossom 98%—a shabby physical plant is a potential worry. If a college is letting maintenance go, financial issues are worth a closer look. Sometimes it’s a strategic decision (e.g., a full renovation of a building is scheduled for two years down the road, so it’s not worth rebuilding the facade in the meantime) or simple timing (e.g., some campuses, especially in harsh weather areas, look a bit worn come April), but sometimes it means a college is putting on a brave face but struggling.

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I think this question about homework workload is a very important one. It can vary a lot from school to school and from major to major. I know that the homework load question is not asked often because I ask about it at every single school we visit, and administrators often struggle to answer the question.

I look at the Best 380 colleges guide, often the words they choose hint at the level of work load. I get the best information from students in the major. The can often tell you how much time they study on a typical day, whether they are able to balance other activities, articulate whether they feel overwhelmed, or extremely stressed frequently. As I ask multiple people, I think I get a good perspective on it.

I hope more of you will ask these questions too. You will be surprised at how much the responses vary.

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Actually, it can be a huge deal to try to design an interdisciplinary major. Institutions are generally territorial and professors like to work with students within their own disciplines. The problem with a lot of interdisciplinary, “design your own major” programs is that the students don’t have an institutional home, and the professors of a given department would prefer to work with their own designated majors. Interdisciplinary majors don’t have the money, advising, or institutional support that the traditional majors have. The reality of an interdisciplinary major is often at odds with the dream. That is not to say it can’t work but the devil is in the details.

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It can also mean lower registration priority for courses where priority is reserved for those in the department’s regular major.