This is an excerpt of a longer series of posts about my kid’s college selection process. They can be found in the general college selection forum. This post describes our impressions of Occidental, which were mixed. My kid definitely preferred UPS, but I can see why others would have different reactions, as Oxy as a lot of great attributes.
When the process started, University of Puget Sound was not on Sasha’s list. Occidental and Macalester were the early front runners because they are co-educational liberal arts colleges, have excellent academic reputations, and are located in major cities.
Oxy has a lot to offer and impressed us in many ways, but overall our visit there was disappointing. Part of the problem was Oxy’s student culture. Oxy was the only college we visited where Sasha felt like Sasha would be at serious risk of not fitting in. Part of the problem was Los Angeles car culture. Sasha wants an urban environment where people can and do walk to fun destinations, and Oxy doesn’t really provide that. Eagle Rock is more like an ethnically and economically diverse suburb or, less charitably described, a nondescript expanse of sprawl where there are plenty of places to get your oil changed as well as a few scattered places where you can find a good omelet, burger or taco, or watch a game on TV.
Sasha came away thinking that Oxy was dominated by mainstream pre-professional students who were bright but not very friendly or interested in the arts. There were a few quirky and artsy kids at Oxy, but seemingly fewer than at the other colleges we visited. Each of the other colleges we visited seemed to have a larger group of students who were interested in music or other creative or artistic endeavors, and each of the colleges’ student center bulletin boards reflected an abundance of such activities on campus. The conversations among Oxy students did not seem very lively and the students did not seem especially nice to one another or to us. Except for the tour guides (who were very warm and funny and interested in theater, but who all seemed to come from the same sorority), not one Oxy student approached us or spoke with us at any length.
The Oxy students may not have been all that welcoming, but they certainly looked good. They tended to wear more fashionable clothes and have nicer haircuts than the students at the other colleges we visited. Many Oxy women also wore noticeably more makeup, although I would say that a few of the men at the other colleges wore more makeup than any of the Oxy men we saw. (We know a young woman, now enrolled at Skidmore, who had a similar reaction to ours, commenting that she was surprised by the number of female students who wore dresses to class.) We truly were impressed by Oxy’s racial diversity, but the college seemed rather homogeneous on one other type of diversity that few people discuss very much: body-type diversity. Most of the students (other than the ones from the sorority I mentioned) seemed very thin.
Los Angeles is supposed to have wonderful weather, but we were uncomfortably hot almost the whole time we were outdoors during our visit to Oxy, which was in March. The campus has very few shady spots. In addition, the area in East Los Angeles where Oxy is located is not much fun. It is possible to walk from campus to nice restaurants in Eagle Rock and Highland Park, but the walks are not pleasant. The auto body shops in those neighborhoods vastly outnumber the restaurants. Students without cars seem to feel stranded on Oxy’s campus.
Sasha will not have a car in college and was frustrated by Los Angeles car culture. We heard that many Oxy students without cars go months without leaving campus. The need to get into a car every time you want to do anything in Los Angeles—even in your own neighborhood—was a real turnoff. The drive between Venice Beach and Oxy took us slightly over an hour, and we don’t think the traffic was unusually heavy that day.
This is not to say that Oxy was all bad. We know recent alumni whom we respect very much and who speak very positively about their Oxy experiences. (Unlike Sasha, one of them strongly preferred Oxy to UPS.) Much of the campus is very pretty in a desert-climate kind of way, and some of the older buildings are truly beautiful. You can see California hills or the lights of Los Angeles in almost every direction. Some of the nearby restaurants are cheap and terrific. (We loved our breakfast at Auntie Em’s Kitchen, which attracts everyone from LAPD officers to Oxy students to guys who work in the auto body shops.) Pasadena is walkable, fun and interesting, and is only a 10 minute drive away. Of course, Los Angeles offers an incredible number of cultural and recreational diversions if you can get to them.
Oxy’s academics seem strong and interesting internship opportunities abound. Oxy students have lots of opportunities to work on independent research with professors. Also, it did appear that the political science students, at least, were very invested in what they were doing. The political science building was buzzing with activity. We also saw two creatively presented political demonstrations in the main quadrangle—one protesting the treatment of Palestinians by the Israeli government, the other protesting the treatment of African Americans by U.S. police officers. I never really reconciled in my own mind the fact that Oxy clearly has students who are passionate about political and social causes with the impression I got that many Oxy students seemed passionless and almost chilly on an interpersonal level. Maybe I just don’t “get” Los Angeles culture.
The sports teams we saw at Oxy could probably beat plenty of Division I teams on the East Coast. The last point might be a selling point for some people, but not for Sasha. Sasha is a reasonably good high school athlete, but there was no way Sasha could conceive of continuing to play a varsity sport at Oxy. (Interestingly, the athletes were far better at Oxy than at Beloit, but the crowd was bigger and far more enthusiastic at Beloit.)
Oxy seems to do a very good job recruiting students from varied socio-economic backgrounds. The student body included many minority students. And our group of visitors included many high school students from across the country, although Sasha did not “click” with most of them. The one visiting high school kid Sasha really liked was from suburban Minneapolis and said that she might not apply to Oxy, even though the academics were a good match, because, in her words, Oxy “lacks the quirk factor.” She said that, after visiting about a dozen liberal arts colleges from coast to coast, her first choice was Carleton, which was slightly frustrating to her because Carleton is very close to her home. (She wouldn’t apply to Macalester, she said, because it was just TOO close to her home.)
In sum, though it started out in first place, Oxy fell completely off Sasha’s list.