<p>hi. i was accepted to both colleges and am trying to make a decision. i think johns hopkins has a bit more "prestige" and more oppourtunity, but seems to be full of the strangest people and less personal. smith is in a fantastic town and seems more comfortable. i was wondering if you guys had any opinions to help w/ this tough decision. thanks!</p>
<p>Well, I've been on record all over the boards for a couple of years that "prestige" is a sucker's pitch if a college either doesn't meet your needs or if you're not going to be happy there. Fwiw, my D was accepted to Wellesley (more "prestige") but chose Smith and has never looked back. Of course, she never looked back once she made the decision...I was the one who kept on analyzing, LOL.</p>
<p>Very different schools of course. If you are pre-med, I would definitely choose Smith - the weed-out rate at JHU is huge, and only about 30% of would-be premeds ever get there, whereas those weeded out would likely have turned into very fine doctors if they'd attended their local state university. For the average student, more research opportunities at Smith as well - no graduate students, who are getting PAID to embellish their professors' reputations.</p>
<p>Housing of course is much, much better at Smith. To my way of thinking, the best thing at JHU is its creative writing program. What do plan to study?</p>
<p>i'm not quite sure, but definately something in the humanities. on my app i put history, but that is pretty wishy-washy.</p>
<p>The creative writing program at JHU is great for grads only. I've known people who have gone there for undergrad writing and been very disappointed.</p>
<p>I would think that Smith could offer you just as much prestige and opportunity as JHU...but that might just be my perception.</p>
<p>As far as prestige...prabably about the same if not a little more. Opportunity is a different beast all together. Remember that Smith caters to
* undergrads specifically
* women only</p>
<p>And there is your opportunity knocking. Research opportunities for first and second years is almost unheard of at other colleges, but at Smith it is pretty much the norm if that's your thing. Smaller classes, no co-ed issues, great town...hmmmm...what's there to think about?</p>
<p>JHU offers more prestige among high school students because it is a national university, but, out in the world, JHU and Smith both carry a lot of prestige. JHU is known more for its sciences and math, and Smith more for its leaders. Yes, it's much harder to get into JHU than into Smith, primarily because Smith does not receive as many applications due to the unique type of experience it offers.</p>
<p>Here's one thing Carol Christ (Smith's president) said the other day that makes perfect sense, although it never occurred to me: At Smith, 100% of the student leadership roles are filled by women. That means that women have a much greater opportunity to rise to the top and to learn from it than they would at a co-educational institution.</p>
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At Smith, 100% of the student leadership roles are filled by women. That means that women have a much greater opportunity to rise to the top and to learn from it than they would at a co-educational institution.
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MWFN...that's the beauty of a college like Smith. I have read many books on the sub-standard way girls are treated in coed classrooms throughout high schools in the country. Read books such as "Reviving Ophelia:Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls" by Mary Pipher, and "Failing at Fairness: How Schools Cheat Girls" by Myra and David Sadker and you will get my gist. These books provide hard evidence of the discrimination women face from the first day of school. The Sadkers' book gives a very detailed view of how schools cheat girls by marginalizing their roles in the classrooms of America. The statistics regarding the perfromance of females at all-girl schools are impressive, and are of great importance, since co-ed institutions often seem to neglect girls to a greater degree.</p>
<p>The Sadkers show us how far women have come in the last century, in claiming their place in the classrooms of schools from elementary to graduate school both in front of the class, and behind the desk. They also show us how different that place is from the space filled by their male counterparts, and how sexism has seeped into every aspect of the female educational experience. The Sadkers studied the numbers ---counting everything from female faces and names in textbooks and among teachers/professors, to school budgets for athletics, to questions and kudos offered to girls by teachers in the classroom. These numbers show that girls attend schools where the bulk of a teacher's attention in the classroom is focused on boys, their studies are centered on men and their achievements, they are taught by men (secondary education and beyond) and the bulk of their schools' budgets (including special ed and athletics) are spent on the boys. It is no wonder that the hopes and dreams of young girls are diminished as they enter adolescence, with doctors settling for nursing degrees, and chemists turning to cooking! They found that in intellectually rigorous girls' schools, few incidents of sexism were uncovered. These schools focused on the intellectual growth, academic curiosity, independence and self-esteem of their female students. </p>
<p>This, IMHO, is what Smith does best. Do some research about females in schools, particularly in their adolescent years, and you will find that they receive quite a different education from their male counterparts. If you have a daughter planning on attending Smith or already attending, be very proud of what she has overcome to get there.</p>
<p>Oh, heck...let's start a new post with this one shall we??</p>
<p>I agree in part what you say, BJM8, especially since I had to live through all that myself; however, something has changed in the high school culture that has allowed girls to excel beyond the capabilities of their male classmates. I suspect it has to do with earlier maturity and the raised expectations of their teachers, although the full answer must be more complicated than that. If colleges across the nation acknowledge that female applicants are MORE qualified as a group than male ones, then something basic has changed in the educational system. Right now, it is much more difficult for women to get into elite colleges because co-educational ones want to keep the gender balance even, and so women compete against women instead of against the applicant pool as a whole. According to many, the low-end of the GPA/SAT spectrum of a school's stats belongs to the men while the top stats show what women must achieve to gain admission. Obviously, this is an over-simplified view of things, but the anecdotal evidence I've seen bears this out. The exceptions to the stricter standards for women are in the predominantly male universities, usually with reputations for hard-core science, that need a larger, qualified female student body. The women who get in to those schools don't have to be better, although they still must be impressive.</p>
<p>If this is the case, then women have outdone their male counterparts at least by senior year of high school.</p>
<p>I find it ironic that, in my time, it was also more difficult for women to get into college. The college I attended had recently gone co-ed and so allowed only one female slot for every three male slots. My application had to be much better than the majority of the ones from men. Of course, the numbers were not as staggering as they are now. Still, my daughter faced daunting odds.</p>
<p>Yes, she will be attending Smith in the fall. She had the choice of some great co-educational schools, but in the end, believed Smith offered the best and more diverse educational opportunities for her interests.</p>
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Right now, it is much more difficult for women to get into elite colleges because co-educational ones want to keep the gender balance even, and so women compete against women instead of against the applicant pool as a whole.
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MWFN...this is why Smith's admission rate seems to be higher than coed elite schools. The applicant pool at Smith and other women's colleges is small and highly self-selected. Women, possibly just like yours or my daughter, have a much more difficult time getting into elite coed schools. Not only are they competing with a 50-50 split of male to female, but then must also compete with athletes. Their potential of admission is cut in half before starting the process. </p>
<p>Too many young women in America act, think, and believe, not because it's their integral nature but rather because they've been pushed to it by messages from the media, Hollywood, teachers, parents, male classmates. I see this every day in my role as a Principal in a suburban middle school. For 17 years, I served as Principal in a very different setting; a very urban, inner-city school where girls were submerged by more pressing problems of poverty, gangs, street violence, drugs, falling-apart families, crime, and teachers who were past the point of caring or treating students with respect. I've seen it all in the past 26 years, and the education that girls get in comparison to boys is not equal, nor fair. The main thing that is necessary is for the educators to get educated themselves in what is going on; it seems all too likely that most of the teachers who are doing these things are not even aware of it. If useful strategies are taught to future teachers as to how to combat gender bias, schools in the future may be a great deal fairer of their treatment of all students. I tend to spend a good deal of time with first year teachers involving this very subject. It is imperative to me that they understand gender differences in their classroom, and that they understand their own biases when dealing with both sexes.</p>
<p>For more on this topic, go to the post "Why All- Women's Schools?"</p>
<p>I agree with you about Smith's high acceptance rate and the self-selecting applicant pool. I overheard one woman at Smith's Open Campus commenting glumly to her parents that it wasn't like it was hard to get into Smith. She thought her acceptance to another LAC meant more because it was more selective. If she hadn't been with her parents, I probably would have set her straight. Then again, maybe she was just searching for an excuse not to attend Smith and needed that statistic to justify her discomfort with the school.</p>
<p>The percentage of my daughter's graduating class that will be attending all women's colleges is astounding, especially since they attend a co-ed private school. Smith and Wellesley were equally selective; they each took only two applicants, although the two who got into Smith did not apply to Wellesley, and vice versa. Bryn Mawr accepted six and Mount Holyoke, four; these were cross-acceptances. So . . . on the surface it appears that these colleges aren't all that selective. And then you look at the women who applied to them. All of them got SATs in the 700s and high 600s; all of them take a heavy load of AP classes. (My daughter has even taken two classes, with As, at a top university in addition to her high school classes.) At least two of them (the ones that got into Smith) are varsity athletes. The mix includes class officers, proficiency in two foreign languages, community leadership positions, governor school participants, strong interest and participation in theater, music, and creative writing . . . I could go on. These are not mediocre young women. It may not be difficult to get into Smith if you are an achiever, but you can't get there if you are not. </p>
<p>Back to your comment about the educational problems in secondary and below education: I've had experience with both public school and private education, although both systems were strong and relatively affluent. (Surprisingly, the public school was more affluent than the private, although the private provided better education.) Inner city schools are a whole other problem, both for boys and girls. </p>
<p>You're also right about gender differences in learning and how the schools often fail to understand this. The best example I have is my daughter's public school experience (through ninth grade, in another state) with math. Her old school system used the University of Chicago math method called, at the lower levels, Everyday Mathematics. The math system was equitable until about fourth or fifth grade when the gender differences started kicking in. You see, the Chicago math method requires children to be in mixed gender study groups that help each other through the problems. If the group can't answer a question, then, and only then, are they allowed to ask the teacher. The girls were reluctant to ask the boys for help, although they were generous with giving it when the boys asked. The result was that the girls' questions never made it into the group and therefore to the teacher. The school was baffled why the girls, who had always been achieving to a level equal to the boys, suddenly tanked. Fortunately, it was a school system with parents who understood exactly what was going on, so they modified the program. Otherwise, no one, not even the teachers, would have known because they weren't privvy to the workings of the group.</p>
<p>MWFN...Ironically, I taught in an all-boys private school for the first seven years of my professional life. Needless to say, I had a rude awakening when i taught in my first coed public school. Probably why I feel the way I do today--lol. I think most teachers should have to retake sociology 101 for an introduction to social norms and groups; especially in today's educational world of group tasks and scoring. If nothing else in education, they have yet to get it right and keep it there. Ideas just keep getting different names and tags...and round and round we go!</p>