<p>I agree. Get list of 20 or so schools and maybe folks can give you feedback.</p>
<p>But really, it sounds like you are worried your child will be politically brainwashed. </p>
<p>@scholarme you raise several important points and I don’t disagree with you regarding the power of people in groups and the power of emotion to sway someone’s viewpoint. I don’t think you’re either an idiot or crazy, although I don’t share your concerns as a parent personally.</p>
<p>Based on my knowledge of persuasion and propaganda, I think there are some things you as a parent could do in order to prepare your child to withstand those pressures.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>You are correct that it is easier to persuade someone who hasn’t formed an opinion about something than it is to change someone’s mind. While I suspect your child may have more opinions on issues than you think s/he does, now would be a good time to introduce family discussions about issues of concern. Not only can you share your point of view, but it would be a golden opportunity to listen to your child and discover what they’re thinking about things. Certainly, your input into the formation of their opinion would be at least as valuable as that of a professor or peer!</p></li>
<li><p>There’s a persuasion theory called “inoculation,” which argues that resisting persuasion can work in a way that resembles the way vaccinations help us resist diseases. Just as a vaccination releases a small, easily fought portion of an illness into the body, so too could you “inoculate” your child against peer pressure. You could say, for instance, “When you go to college, I’m sure there will be parties where there’s lots of drinking and you’ll be tempted to turn away from our family’s policy against alcohol use. Here are some strategies that people in that situation have found useful…” Then, when/if that situation arises on campus, the child has the tools to cope more easily.</p></li>
<li><p>Many of your concerns seem to revolve around authority figures, be they professors or older students. This could be a good time to explore the nature of authority with your child (the Milgram electric shock studies are a classic beginning here) and think about ways to differentiate between “good” and “bad” authority, according to your worldview.</p></li>
<li><p>You may be interested to know that emotional appeals are less effective for intellectual or highly educated subjects. So your child may not be as prone to those as you fear!</p></li>
<li><p>Trust yourself. You’ve already had almost two decades to instill your values through both your words and your deeds. I’m betting your child is more ready to face the big, bad world than you think. (And probably a lot more ready to do so than you are to let her go!)</p></li>
<li><p>Your concern about changing majors indicates to me that there may be some differences of opinion between yourself and your child about appropriate fields of study. Of course you want the best for your child, and that includes career success. This is something you should initiate open and honest communication about immediately, and if there is a conflict, attempt to find a suitable compromise (maybe a double major?).</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Scholarme, I think you have a few fears all mixed together that it would be worth separating out.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Fear that your D is going to drop out/become indoctrinated by some cult-like group. Unlikely and there is no reason to single out politics as the cause. What you really seem to be worrying about here is whether or not your D will make bad choices at college - something, as others said, that is far likelier to happen as a result of alcohol or drugs than as a result of people pressuring her to be an activist. Unfortunately, the possibility of making bad choices is an inevitable consequence of independence, so there isn’t really any way to guard against that except by trying to instill her with values before she leaves. </p></li>
<li><p>Fear that your D will deviate from the path you anticipate for her. Again, this doesn’t have much to do with politics. Lots of kids change majors for lots of reasons. Often, that’s a good thing. In terms of the practicalities, there are plenty of things that a student can do with a humanities or social science major that will lead to stable, even lucrative careers. Usually, students don’t change majors on a whim, they do it because they’ve realized they don’t actually like or can’t hack it in their chosen field, and/ or they develop a passion for another. As long as students can define a reasonable career path compatible with their major, I wouldn’t worry.</p></li>
<li><p>Fear that your D will be subject to intense political pressure from peers and or faculty. Probably not, for reasons others have stated.</p></li>
<li><p>Fear that your D will engage in political activism. Again, probably not, but to the extent that it happens, possibly a good thing, just like any other extracurricular interest. Forget about the most sensitive political issues for a second - would it be so terrible if your daughter participated in a protest or circulated a petition calling for a wage increase for janitors on campus? What if she went to DC for a rally about income inequality, or became a member of College Democrats or College Republicans? Whether or not you agreed with her on these issues, they aren’t likely to become dangerous or exert a negative influence on her life.</p></li>
<li><p>Fear that your D will come home with politics and values different from yours. Hopefully you wouldn’t have a problem with your D adopting certain opinions and perspectives that you don’t share, and are concerned about more extreme changes. In my experience MOST students don’t become radically different in their general political outlook in college. They often shift further to the left, but you don’t usually have someone who came in wanting to be head of College Republicans winding up starting a chapter of Students for a Democratic Society. Most of the far-left activists entered school pretty liberal to begin with. </p></li>
<li><p>Fear that your D’s existing political leanings will lead to her discomfort on campus. On this one, I think your fears are still overblown, but potentially valid. If I were a conservative student, I would not choose to go to a campus known for its left-wing politics (as opposed to a college that is predominantly left wing, which is almost of of them). There’s exposing yourself to other opinions, and there is deliberately choosing to surround yourself with the people most unlike you in one important respect, and I see no reason to do the latter. There is enough information available in college guides and websites that you should be able to identify the schools particularly defined by a political bent, some of which have been mentioned on this thread already.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>As for the other schools, you’ll have plenty of students who may be left-leaning but not terribly involved or political, and often a vocal and politically engaged conservative minority. Among faculty, while the professors may well be overwhelmingly democratic, MOST will not make political issues the core or even a minor part of their instruction, and it would in fact be impractical to do so in plenty of cases. You can easily avoid those classes that are most likely to be politically charged if you so choose. No matter how liberal your other professors are, having a Victorian lit instructor who makes a crack about the Bush administration one day isn’t likely to derail your experience in the course. The idea that professors, no matter the subject, are routinely using their classrooms for lectures on hot-button political issues with tangential relationship to the subject at hand is not accurate, in my experience. </p>
<p>Sounds like the OP has been listening to too much Rush Limbaugh (and others of his ilk).</p>
<p>As LasMa expressed in post #98 ( YAY for having post numbers back,), don’t believe everything you hear on talk radio ( or Fox “News” - a recent study showed that over half of all statements made there are outright false, and a significant portion of others only partially true at best)</p>
<p>It is interesting to see how apparently similar threads (in theory) end up developing differently.</p>
<p>Compare the current one to this </p>
<p><a href=“How to find colleges without partying atmosphere and with predominantly serious students? - Parents Forum - College Confidential Forums”>How to find colleges without partying atmosphere and with predominantly serious students? - Parents Forum - College Confidential Forums;
<p>I wonder how the following threads would fare on CC</p>
<p>How to find a college that does NOT have </p>
<ol>
<li>Plenty of rich and entitled white kids</li>
<li>Plenty of grade grubbing Asians</li>
<li>Plenty of athletes </li>
<li>Plenty of brothers and sisters</li>
<li>hard grading</li>
<li>a pre-professional overtone. </li>
</ol>
<p>And, of course, my all time favorite which has been done ad nauseam on CC</p>
<p>How does one FIND a college with tons of real intellectuals! </p>
<p>In fact, had the OP written a similar post but with fewer fears about political indoctrination but with language intimating her child was a discrete intellectual who wanted to be with peers dedicated to the pursuit of intellectualism, she might have had a … lot of suggestions with the usual candidates a la Chicago, Swarthmore, etc. </p>
<p>Go figure! </p>
<p>
I still have no idea where OP’s “experience” (and hence, fear) is coming from. Has OP been spending a lot of time on college campuses, or perhaps just listening to radio rants about the corrupting influence of “Commie” professors? I also note that the tone of OP’s posts has veered away from concern about studies being neglected to concern about opinions being formed. How sad. I see OP as an extreme right winger clothed in the disguise of a normally concerned parent. Bailing on this thread because I know people with this mindset cannot be persuaded by rational argument and facts.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>No, she doesn’t. But the communist insurgency example tells us which direction she doesn’t want her D to go.</p>
<p>OP, here are schools where your D will get little if any exposure to the “wrong” ideas:</p>
<p><a href=“Best Conservative Colleges In America | The Best Schools”>http://www.thebestschools.org/rankings/20-best-conservative-colleges-america/</a></p>
<p><a href=“http://www.yaf.org/topconservativecolleges.ASPX”>http://www.yaf.org/topconservativecolleges.ASPX</a></p>
<p>
</p>
<p>And don’t you know that because of your … “experience?” Isn’t easy to dismiss the “experience” of others, especially when not making a particular effort to read the OP’s post critically, and then decreeing “how sad it is.” What if the OP had read a few things about the likes of Ward Churchill or Bill Ayers clones? </p>
<p>Again, this simply underscores the tendency of liking to invalidate the opinions and perhaps “fears” of others and jump into blatantly unwarranted conclusions. </p>
<p>Is there a leftist counterpart to a “an extreme right winger clothed in the disguise of a normally concerned parent?” How about a condescending blowhard who thinks her arguments are rational arguments and facts? See how easy it is to throw cheap ad hominems around. Sheesh! </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>While a tiny few students who are extremely naive or extremely sheltered/micromanaged by parents to the point they are excessive in uncritically taking what those in perceived authority state is the truth, that’s far from the norm for most US college students.</p>
<p>If anything, most US college students do tend to embody the “Question/Ignore Authority” IME. </p>
<p>As a consequence, any Prof who tends to be extremely high handed with his/her political opinions to the point of attempting to force-feed them on students tends to find such efforts backfires back on him/her. Most students will not only ignore or be more vehement in their opposition, they will also use teaching evaluations and more channels to complain. And if enough complaints establishing a pattern occurs, the Prof may find him/herself in front of the department chair/dean of college having to explain him/herself. </p>
<p>One Prof at my college ended up having this happen after having a long pattern of displaying favoritism and bias towards/against students going back at least a decade or more. End result was all work for his classes were graded by a committee of other Profs in his department, said committee monitored his classes on a regular basis, and students submitted work using an assigned numerical code not known to said biased Prof. He ended up retiring a few years after I graduated. </p>
<p>
Like ending up in a YouTube video, getting chastened by an activist blog for the other party, featured in a follow-up on Fox News, and then suspended for a semester. These days, it’s professionally dangerous to be radical in the classroom.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Wow! </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Darned right. Now, kiddle needs to go to college and be exposed to Ed Schultz, Randi Rhodes, Stephanie Miller …this will ensure a healthy exposure to a full spectrum of idiots.</p>
<p>Ed Schultz was finally cancelled wasn’t he? The TV show doesn’t count since no-one watches anyway.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Though not a full spectrum of musical genres. </p>
<p>Are you an '80s metal fan by any chance? :D</p>
<p><a href=“Randy Rhoads - Wikipedia”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randy_Rhodes</a></p>
<p>
The OP flummoxed me in his original post. Rutgers is not a hotbed of leftist activists, though like many colleges I am sure they have their noisy contingent. Later the OP says they want a range of views - well I am sure that you can get that at Rutgers. Even bastions of liberal thinking often have conservative professors like Harold Bloom at Yale. Every college my kids applied to had a Republican club.</p>
<p>Maybe it’s just me, but when I hear stories about sophisticated, wordly grad students sweet-talking naive, inexperienced freshman women, I’m more worried about the evening ending up in someone’s bed, not at a protest.</p>
<p>Carry on. 
</p>
<h1>134 What disappointed me about the news about Rutgers was not that the students had protested the choice of commencement speaker, who happened to be the first AA woman Sec of State, but that the school admin let themselves be swayed by the student protest. I expect admin & faculty to teach students actual tolerance and open-mindedness, not to be swayed by emotionalism and partisanship.</h1>
<p>Students are readily apprehensive of and typically rebel against easily identified and established authority figures, such as professors or government officials, but those who often have the most power to influence the students, usually older fellow students but sometimes outsiders, are not so identified and have the opportunity to bully and manipulate the unsophisticated and vulnerable young minds who are unsuspecting and do not have their guard up. </p>
<p>OP, are you trying to find a college where there is a variety of viewpoints, but where no one ever tries to persuade anyone? I doubt that such a thing exists. </p>
<p>Imo, perhaps the best place for OP’s kid is a college or uni where his/her student can live at home. That is about the only way this parent will be able to monitor the student and what the student is being exposed to. </p>