*I know all colleges are stressful to some extent. However, I’d like to know which of the following schools are the least stressful.
-Vanderbilt
-Stanford
-Rice
-Pomona
-Emory
-Brown
If you have any other school suggestions, I would definitely appreciate it!
Whether or not a given school is stressful is a totally subjective experience. You may experience stress where some don’t. Also, college provides a moderate amount of stress for most, but it is an invigorating level of stress if you really dig in.
I think YOU determine the stress level. Work hard, do your best and have fun. Even if lots of students are stressed, do you have to be stressed? I graduated from a top national university with a reputation as a stressful academic environment. I did really well and never felt stress. I just spent a weekend with college friends who are enormously successful. They had a blast and would have mocked the idea of being stressed. They did amazing and were never stressed. Choose that for yourself. Be a fun light for those stressed around you. Control what you can control, and make the best of the rest. Good luck, have fun, enjoy being young for gosh sakes.
It may matter what your academic and professional goals are. If they are highly competitive,like pre-med, your experience may be more stressful.
Well, at Brown you can take all your courses pass-fail.
A student I know who goes there says people work hard and think deeply but that the feel is still very mellow.
you probably want to go on the facebook pages or message boards of the schools to get an idea. I did this for the first time on f/b and was surprised at how stressful the students posts were around tests. On cc the best you’re going to get is anecdotal and most of it will be how great the college is :-).
First off, that’s a great list if you’re looking for academic excellence in a non-pressure cooker environment. Nice job. I do think many people “bring their stress with them” - I have a friend whose D is a basketcase of stress at Vassar this year and another who chose the same school exactly because people weren’t stressed out there. But I also think there are institutions that embrace the idea that students aren’t supposed to be relaxed or happy. You don’t have any of those on your list. I think your major and your cohort will have an influence on which of those is more/less of a high-stress environment. The engineers at Rice are likely more stressed than the english majors. Pre-meds anywhere live and breathe competition. Also, for you personally the location may make things more or less stressful - winter in Palo Alto or Pomona is easier on the body than winter in Providence and being an “out of state” student is always stressful - sometimes in a good way and sometimes not. But I think all of those schools are excellent choices and I am not sure ranking them will give you any more info than that.
Lower-stress schools that you may want to consider:
Haverford
Bryn Mawr
Vassar (on the whole despite @CaMom13 's anecdote)
Bard
Mt. Holyoke
Hampshire
UC Santa Cruz
Earlham
Beloit
I’m not sure but I get the feeling that also these schools may have generally lower stress levels –
And probably several others . . .
S1 and S2 found Vassar to be collaborative not competitive when they attended several years back. The small class sizes enhanced the collaborative environment.
The stereotype at Stanford is that students are stressed out but pretend not to be - duck syndrome.