<p>Haverford has a lovely campus with lots of trees, old buildings, new buildings, cricket fields, D3 sports, a pond, just a lovely, leisurely, quiet campus that is ideal for a certain kind of person. It is small and quiet but is surrounded by a bustling suburban area with residences on one side, a couple of main thoroughfares on another, shops and gas stations–none of which you would know were there if they dropped you into this sylvan campus in the middle of the night. It’s on the Philadelphia area’s Main Line, so downtown philly is an easy train ride away. The area is wealthy philly suburb, a lot of old money and good high schools. It is a pretty active campus athletically, but it’s not like there are hiking trails nearby and Adirondack vistas to behold. Lots of kids find new sports to take up at Haverford, like fencing or cricket. There’s some interaction with nearby Bryn Mawr and Swarthmore Colleges, even UPenn, but it’s not like they’re next door. Still, students take classes at each others’ campuses. It’s a school with a Quaker tradition, and many students find that and the honor code attractive elements of their experience. Community service is a big part of that Quaker heritage, as is the idea of making policy decisions by consensus rather than decree. Students are drawn from all over the world, including many internationals with interesting family histories of political and sometimes violent strife. Professors are famous for allowing students to call them at home til late at night when they have a problem; I once had a crazy student call me at 1AM on a Monday. Many of the professors live on campus in college-provided housing; others live within a few miles of the school because the school subsidizes their mortgages. Or at least, it used to. I loved my two years teaching there, but it’s a place at which you should spend some time before deciding to attend. Like a lot of places, prospectives fall in love with the idea of the LAC and have to adjust their first year to the reality of it.</p>