Importance of campus culture

Parent Cafe
1

<p>In my discussions with my overachieving friends who are also applying to college, I'll often bring up my understanding of the "campus culture." For example - Colgate leans more to the conservative side though is often mentioned with Wesleyan, Northeastern is a big party school as is BC, Princeton is preppy, etc. Obviously, a school isn't homogenous and there are people of all sorts that fall outside of this stereotype, but I, personally, still think that it's important to figure out if a large number of people at a school spend their days smoking blunts BEFORE I arrive on campus.</p>

<p>However, my friends will usually shoot me down on those points, saying that, "There'll be all kinds of people," etc. So how important is the general campus culture? Is it really even that big of a deal, outside of the extreme extremes? (Say, Brigham Young...)</p>

2

<p>Depends how big the campus is. If 80% of kids on a campus of 15,000 students regularly get blotto Fri, Sat & Mon night, that still leaves plenty of people to hang out with if you're among those who don't. That pool gets considerably smaller at some LAC of under 2,500 people.</p>

3

<p>It is really worth taking the time to visit and understand the campus culture. It is not ok that "80% of kids on a campus of 15,000 students regularly get blotto Fri, Sat & Mon night." Sure that does leave people who are not in that group, but they tend to be affected by the majority. Some examples might be the inability to use your dorm room, puke in the bathrooms, and a limited number of alternative activities available.</p>

4

<p>Fitting into the campus culture is very important. If a student feels more comfortable at a college there is a better chance they will do better (or at least get over the rocky ground more easily). That's why my D selected her college app list from places she had visited. It is going to be four years away from the emotional support structure.</p>

5

<p>Culture is very important to me, but there are some people who find it is not important. You have to ask yourself whether you want to be around a whole lot of people with whom you have little in common. Sure, you can find friends at a large school, but who wants to be in a place where those who have your outlook and values are fairly rare?</p>

6

<p>For some students, finding out whether there is a particular subculture present on a campus may be more important than the overall campus culture.</p>

<p>For example, if you are an religious Jew, knowing that there is a substantial and thriving religious Jewish community on the University of Maryland campus is probably more important to you than the fact that the school as a whole has a significant party-school reputation. </p>

<p>The same idea applies to other identifiable subcultures -- international, URM, GLBT, whatever. It's good to know in advance whether a particular school has a subgroup of people like you or whether you are going to be a lone wolf on campus.</p>

7

<p>There's usually something to reputation, but reputation is a very broad brush and does not give much of a sense of nuance or detail, and those can be important.</p>

<p>For example: My wife doesn't like preppies very much, and always looked down her nose at Princeton because when she visited there all she saw was preppies. Then, a few years ago, she was asked to lead a couple seminar sessions there for a course covering things she in which she is an expert. She loved the kids in the class, thought they were smart and well-prepared and passionate. And not too preppy at all. But if you go visit Princeton, it still looks like an A&F or J.Crew ad.</p>

<p>I don't know how you can really tell what a school's culture is like on a meaningful level, though. Visiting for a couple days will give you a powerful sense of something, but it may be a powerful sense of something atypical. My daughter has friends who visited Chicago and decided the "Where Fun Goes To Die" slogan was completely unjustified. Until they actually spent a few weeks there as students. (It's not, by the way, that kids at Chicago don't have fun. They just don't have as much of it as the kids at Penn State. And some of what passes for "fun" there might strike outsiders as a bunch of pretentious kids using a lot of big words for no particular reason.)</p>

<p>I think, in the end, you do two things: (1) talk to as many current or recent students as you can, asking open-ended questions and listening to the answers, and (2) assume that reputation is something of a self-fulfilling prophecy -- kids who don't like a school's reputation will tend not to go there, and kids who don't mind it (or like it) will.</p>

<p>EDIT: Oh, and by the way I suspect at the schools to which you've applied there will be a large number of kids smoking blunts. That's just the way it is.</p>

8

<p>Also -- Take a look at the current thread about USC. The only firm conclusion one could draw from it is that USC exists simultaneously in several similar but mutually exclusive dimensions (all of which have a football team). Different kids seem to be attending the school in different dimensions.</p>

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<p><a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=60542%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=60542&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>The above thread discusses the importance of campus culture and is a very worthwhile read.</p>

10

<p>Thank you for starting this great discussion.The rankings do not address this critical issue.Any comments on the dominant culture on the following schools would really help:
Colgate
Bucknell
Washington&Lee
Chicago
Notre Dame
Gettysburg
Susquehanna
Thanks</p>

11

<p>You will undoubtably get plenty of answers from people who claim to know the dominant culture at all of the schools you named. However, may I suggest that those opinions won't be worth much? What really matters is YOUR opinion, and how YOU feel when you visit and spend time at each school, and, of course, the fit after you attend. So instead of asking for opinions from strangers who do not know you, and may have only limited perspective on individual schools, I'd suggest you do the following:</p>

<ol>
<li>Start by thinking long and hard about who YOU are. What is your closest group of friends like in high school? What do you like and not like about that group? Are you looking for more of the same, or something different? What are the other groups in your high school - how do you feel about them? What identifies them or defines them? How would you describe the "dominant culture" in your high school - and how do you feel about it? Are you looking for something familiar or very different? If different, how?
If familiar, how? Think about what identifies the dominant culture in your high school, and use that as a guide for checking out colleges.</li>
</ol>

<p>Example: I had a client who hated the private high school she attended. She felt that the "dominant culture" revolved around superficial things, with students caring more about how they looked than who they were. She decided that she wanted a college where people weren't concerned with materialism, but cared more about helping others, community service, and politics. We developed a list of things she would look for at every school she visited to help see if she could find what she was looking for.</p>

<p>By the same token, I worked with another student who felt that no one in his high school took learning seriously. He hated being considered a "nerd." What mattered most to him was finding a "dominant culture" where it was OK to be smart and to be excited by learning. He had a completely different set of things to look for in determining whether the colleges he was considering had the right culture.</p>

<p>All of the above questions are the most important part of the process because what you need to do is figure out before hand, if possible, what "culture" you feel most comfortable in, or would be open to being in. It will also help when you visit if you have things to look for, pay attention to, questions to ask, etc.</p>

<p>Once you've done the above do the following: </p>

<ol>
<li>Go to each school's website and find the online version of the student newspaper. Read back issues.</li>
<li>See if each school has a livejournal.com community. If so, read the archives.</li>
</ol>

<p>For 1 and 2 - what do students seem to be most concerned about? How do they interact? What sense do you get about the students? (Important: individuals in a group are never exactly the same, so don't assume that everything you read applies to everyone)</p>

<ol>
<li>Go to the CC forum for each school and ask CURRENT students some specific questions about things you really want or don't want in a school. </li>
<li>Visit. Visit again. Do not just take the admissions tour and leave. Walk around campus by yourself (not with your parents), talk to students, notice how they respond to you. See if you can overnight in the dorms, and walk around at night to see what is going on. Eavesdrop alot. See how people dress, how they interact with each other, etc.. Also sit in on classes.</li>
<li>Make a list for each school of the things that struck you the most about your view of the campus culture. Trust your gut instinct, but remember there is absolutely NO school in the world that will be perfect, or right for everyone. Always come back to what matters most to you. (Although sometimes the order of importance will change as you go along)</li>
</ol>

<p>Use information you find on the internet as a datapoint, not a decision point. If you read something about a particular school's culture or social scene, don't immediately assume it is true, but do use what you've learned as a base for asking questions and paying better attention when you visit.</p>

<p>Again, trust your gut instinct. Sometimes it can be a very minor thing that gives you a pretty accurate sense of whether you could be happy at a particular place, sometimes it is glaringly obvious once you know what you are looking for!</p>

<p>One last comment, however: Be prepared for some surprises where ever you end up attending. This is not an exact science, and sometimes people change and what seems like a perfect fit at the beginning of senior year isn't by the start of freshman year. But if you keep track of who you are, and stay true to that as your compass, all will generally be well.</p>

<p>Good luck!</p>

12

<p>I wanted to add one more thing: It is true that at larger universities there will often be more diversity and variety. Some schools do have a "niche for everyone." But, even then it is important to have a sense of who you are, and what type of "niche" you want to find, and investigate to see if it truly exists.</p>

<p>And, for some students, the social/culture fit is superceded by other, more important wants or desires so there are some kids who don't give a fig about whether they'll "fit in" with the overall culture. </p>

<p>But the only one who can decide what does and doesn't matter for you is you.</p>

13

<p>
[quote]
Be prepared for some surprises where ever you end up attending

[/quote]
</p>

<p>I think this deserves repeating. My first two to enter college were the more "roll with the punches" types. My third is very rigid in his expectations of himself and others (including the institution)--has been much more difficult to adjust and see the silver lining. All will not be as you envisioned--life never is.</p>

14

<p>We found the Fiske and Insider's Guides really helpful in making an initial list. I helped my son by doing an initial screening using key words that he isolated as being important to him in a college culture. Things he wanted to avoid were Greek and sports emhasis. What he wanted to find was an unpretentious, off-beat, intellectual student body. We found 20, visited and narrowed it to 10. We could be wrong (time will tell), but we all felt we could tell a lot about fit from a one day visit (less so in the summer with fewer students and no classes to attend). My husband, son and I all had very similar reactions to every one of these schools, not as to their quality, but as to fit for him. I happen to believe social match is really important, particularly in the first year or two of college and particularly with sensitive, finely wired kids. My son has one friend who would probably be happy at any school that had the courses and sports he wanted and a few kids to play poker with. My kid could survive most college environments but will really thrive with the right match. JMO and he's still a HS senior so we don't have results yet, but I'm pretty sure he's picked 10 great fits.</p>

15

<p>carolyn: what a great post, with wonderful advice. I wish I'd seen it a year ago, when we were starting the college-selection process. Perhaps the advice could also come in handy in spring, when deciding among colleges.</p>

<p>My daughter did eliminate several schools because of "fit." One school she eliminated almost entirely based on the clothing the kids were wearing. The school was a great match in every other respect, but she could not see herself on that campus. Since she didn't realize this until she visited, she grew to really value those on-campus visits.</p>

16

<p>I think one of the important things to consider re the "there'll be all kinds of people" argument is your own personality - whether or not you're the type of person who doesn't particularly mind going against the grain of the general student population, and whether or not you're good at making lots of new friends and finding people that are similar to you. Some people are really good at making a niche for themselves and would be ok just about anywhere.</p>

<p>I wish I'd done a bit of a better job researching the culture aspects of the schools I looked at, but it just never occurred to me until I got here and if it occurred to anyone else I know, they didn't tell me. It's not necessarily about finding individual people to be friends with, IMO, but about the general atmosphere of the school as a whole.</p>

17

<p>BlahdeBlah,
I think you make an excellent point. Some people really don't mind going against the grain, others are looking for what one student I worked with called "my people." Knowing oneself is really key, but with all the pressure revolving around college applications these days, sometimes setting aside time to think about who you are and where you might be most comfortable gets lost in the shuffle of things.</p>

18

<p>sly</p>

<p>It's interesting to mr how many Vermonters I know who judge by the clothes they saw on campus--we did too. Some might call it superficial--and it is--but it's a part of the social fit.</p>

19

<p>Interesting replies. The "know thyself" thing BlahdeBlah and Carolyn bring up is very useful. I'm right now trying to think about different places that I've enjoyed myself, particularly camp settings. CTY comes up first in my mind, which has very warm, quirky, tradition-filled culture that includes cross-dressing days and geeky injokes. I'm wondering if that is a good meter stick for the kind of atmosphere I want in college, too.</p>

<p>I'm just shocked that some of my friends just do a tour and and don't bother to learn anything else about their top schools or don't think much of learning about culture at all. Perhaps they're more versatile. Good for them.</p>

20

<p>I think one of the interesting aspects to the college search is that it can be a self-exploring process, like a rite of passage. Every time my daughter eliminated or added a school, she (and we) learned something about what she likes and dislikes. She matured as she went through the process.</p>