<p>I guess I'm suffering from "pushing the submit button" blues! (Woulda, shoulda, coulda. I should set it to music!)</p>
<p>I helped D choose her list, and she's happy with it. When I was a kid I didn't have the opportunity to go away to college, and so my advice to her was somewhat limited by that. For instance, she has several colleges on her list that aren't in the best cities. Some of them are up and coming, like Pittsburgh, but some are facing hard times, like Poughkeepsie and Rochester. (She didn't want to be "in the middle of nowhere," so she avoided rural campuses, for better or worse.) And one of her schools is located in a nice-enough town, but it's supposed to be boring for students.</p>
<p>Now I'm wishing that a few more of her potential colleges were in places known to be great college towns, like Ann Arbor or Madison. </p>
<p>My question: Can you enjoy your college experience if the campus is located in a so-so town or city? How important is the surrounding area?</p>
<p>A friend of mine and her husband and their daughter, soon to graduate and just accepted at an Ivy MD/PhD program, were/are tremendously happy at Vassar. It's on my son's list too. The town isn't great, but the campus is incredible and NYC not that far away. The only problem my friend's D had was it took her about a year to find non-heavy-drinking friends to hang out with. I recommend some early EC activities to find like-minded students and to have other recreational activities that don't involve alcohol.</p>
<p>Vassar has tons of student activities on its beautiful <em>bubble</em> campus. The school has very happy, involved students. There are a few places that the kids walk to ... a diner, a sushi place, etc., though Poughkeepsie is certainly not a college town. My son and his friends are totally enjoying their college experience.</p>
<p>It's a mixed bag. If it's a great "college town", the distractions can prove to be a real problem. If there's not enough to do, it can lead to major boredom, OR can be a real incentive to immerse oneself into campus life. </p>
<p>D's friends are all over the map in terms of environments: big city/very urban, great college towns, rural but beautiful, etc. The key factor here is that it is the right environment for the kid involved. I guess it all goes back to the elusive but critical element of college selection: fit. My D would hate the rural environment and surely would transfer--she visited her friend recently and thought the campus was gorgeous, loved the people, but could never see herself there. Meanwhile, her friend has totally flourished and wouldn't do things differently in spite of the many options she had.</p>
<p>S on the other hand is probably in an environment that provides too many distractions, for HIM. We suspected this going in and last semester grades proved it to be the case. He chose this campus precisely for its distractions, and now they may be his undoing. Perhaps not the best fit. And even though we worried about it from the beginning, it was his choice to make. </p>
<p>I believe the environment has a major impact on the college experience. And the outcome is as individual as the student. Those kids who know themselves and choose accordingly will have an easier road to the "best experience". The rest will figure out a way to cope, and make more adjustments. Either way, it's all part of the process.</p>
<p>Good advice here from previous posters. I think it REALLY depends on the student's interests. My college was near Boston but in a rural area of Mass. It didn't matter to me because I really studied on weeknights anyway, and because I was in an acapella singing group we road tripped to the many colleges that were in the area......north to Dartmouth and as far south as Princeton. It was perfect for me, but some of the NYC students HATED it and left after freshman year. They'd been "clubbing" since they were 15 and were bored with no local action. It can be a Catch 22.....a place like Amherst has a cute town and the college exchange thing, but basically its pretty isolated. To one student that would be fine, but to another, stultifying.</p>
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She didn't want to be "in the middle of nowhere," so she avoided rural campuses, for better or worse.
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<p>Precisely my D's first inclination as well; she thought it would be so glamorous to go to school in the city. However, we live near Philly and she absolutely detests it. Knowing this, we bot came to the conclusion that she should look at some more rural campuses. Now she's decided that the campuses where she can see herself being more comfortable are the ones in small towns.</p>
<p>Gee, we live in a small surburban town...I wonder if there's a correlation???</p>
<p>In a so-so town, there may still be one or two popular college hangouts to make a break from being on campus. It is quite possible to enjoy college based on courses, dorm life and campus activities. At such places, the student community tends to be more cohesive and kids make their own fun. Where the town has too many attractions, you sometimes lose the sense of a college community. Also more isolated colleges often run bus trips to centers of cultural importance within a 4-6 hour radius. Some colleges also offer the chance to spend a semester away--either abroad or in Wash.DC or on another campus. The surrounding area may be the icing on the cake--but it's not the cake itself. But as curiouser says, you should know yourself and what your needs are for various sources of stimulation.</p>
<p>It really depends on the kid, and the experiences he has at the college. I know a family where the young man just hated his surroundings. Too far out in the boonies for him. Or so he said. But in any case, he did transfer to a city school, and did fine and was happy. Whether it was truly the environment that made if that unhappy or other things, the move solved that problem. But too often that is not the case. I have known kids who have blamed the environment who did not do well elsewhere. More kids like that, I think. It seems to me most kids adapt, especially if the other factors work out well. But there are kids who end up hating the college environment, too big, too small, too many frats, nothing to do on campus, not city enough, too much city. Hard to predict though who is going to go that extreme, and who will adapt just fine even though the environment wasn't what the student wanted.</p>
<p>Your daughter is happy with the schools she's applied to. Try very hard not to second guess those woulda shoulda's. All they will do is drive you (and your daughter) crazy. If she is not happy where she ends up (and the majority of kids are), she can transfer to someplace more bucolic. But I suspect she won't. Take a deep breath, and let the other options go.</p>
<p>Shy, protected D ended up with a choice between rural MA (S. Hadley) and big bad Portland. She chose Portland. I was a little nervous on her behalf but it's turning out well. She still hasn't mastered the transit system (never rode a bus in her life and is scared), but she's feeling her way. It helps to live in a really cool city.</p>