Looking ahead - LACs vs. small universities

Parents Forum
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<p>"The reasons she is an outcast – just doesn’t fit in with the regular crowd – not interested in fashion, clothing brands, makeup, doesn’t care how she dresses, not interested in partying, clubbing, gossip, boys"</p>

<p>You are right to watch out for fit. Many of the colleges suggested so far have cultures that might not be fun for a non-preppy kid. </p>

<p>Be prepared, though, for lots of argument regarding culture on campuses. For some reason, a lot of parents here take offense when someone calls a school (e.g. Georgetown or Northwestern) preppy. Trust me, as someone now living in DC, whose spouse is a Northwestern alum and whose daughter will graduate from U Chicago in June, Gtwn and NWU are preppy and Chicago is not. This impacts kids in a number of ways that I won't go into here. </p>

<p>Regarding weather and other factors, just be patient. My D went through a lot of internal opinions between her starting point and ending point, and most other kids do too. Push her to look broadly. After all, it does not hurt to look. And seeing others will either confirm initial biases or open new doors. </p>

<p>UofC sounds like a fit for an individualistic kid into sports but not excessive partying. Oh yea, they also have great academics...Sports there is to some degree an individual thing, although they do have all Div III sports and quite a few kids attend games. But winning is not the end all. There are also a lot of club sports, like ultimate frisbee (my daughter's thing)</p>

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<p>us<em>uk</em>mom, have you thought about Swarthmore? Your daughter might be interested in reading about the Pterodactyl Hunt, and the group originally formed as SWIL, but recently reborn as "Psi Phi." And to address her other main interest, Swarthmore's women's teams range from decent to truly outstanding. Women's soccer won the ECAC's last fall and has gone to the conference championships two years running, just to pick one example. I don't know what your D's sport is, but the Centennial Conference, while not consistently NESCAC or Liberty level, is genuinely competitive in D3. (And the best of D3 is far better than you may be thinking.)</p>

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<p>Re preppiness: As a lifelong preppie, I can tell you that (a) "preppie" means different things to different people, and covers a lot more ground than many people imagine, (b) "preppie" means different things at Northwestern and Georgetown than at, say, DePauw university, or Choate, (c) there are tons of undergraduates at the University of Chicago who went to prep schools, and (d) yes, on any reasonable definition Northwestern and Georgetown are at the very least "preppier" than Chicago, even though Chicago may actually have a similar or higher percentage of prep school alumni.</p>

<p>It's important to recognize, however, that you can't exactly project from 9th grade to age 20 with any precision. People who are socially uncomfortable at 14 or 15 may be very different by the time they are 19 or 20 [raises hand], and people whose intellectual interests seem limited to A&F vs. J. Crew at 14 or 15 somehow manage to become intelligent, capable adults. Kids sort themselves out a lot when they go to college, but not with any huge degree of precision, and practically any decent college (by which I mean hundreds of them) is likely to have plenty of students who are enough like any other particular student to qualify as potential friends/colleagues.</p>

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<p>NewMassdad- I won't argue with your description of G'town and N'western as Preppy whereas Chicago is not. The point is- can a non-preppy kid find a home at G'town and N'western (and I'd argue yes, based on the crunchy/beatnik/vegan kids we know at both places who are thriving) and can a preppy kid love U Chicago (yes but only if the preppy kid is also a serious intellectual on the side.)</p>

<p>I think it's a mistake to pick schools on the basis of the "vibe" even if the reputation is well deserved. There are jocky kids at MIT who love it; there are artsy kids at Notre Dame who love it; there are Belles at Harvard hoping to get their MRS by age 22 who love it.... etc. Not every 18 year old needs to spend four years surrounded by their own archetype, and the bigger the school the less of a problem I think it is. You couldn't meet everyone at U Michigan in 40 years let alone 4; if the average kid has 5 close friends and another 15 buddies and 40 acquaintances who they'd be happy to spend a Sunday with.... do you really need more of a support system than that?</p>

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<p>us<em>uk</em>mom, our kids seems to have many things in common, although my D did develop interest towards boys in her junior year... The biggest difference here perhaps is that my D was (and still is) very social, but her circle of close friends could be described as "unpreppy". D's older teammate friend who was very much like your D (or mine in 9th grade) got accepted to a women's college, and she really bloomed there and found her circle of friends. That put women's colleges on our radar screen. From what I've heard, these schools really nurture their students. If cold winters do not scare your daughter, take a closer look at Smith, Mount Holyoke, Wellesley, Barnard and Bryn Mawr.
And if your D does not mind Eastern WA (no rain) and somewhat isolated location, Whitman College is a wonderful school.</p>

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<p>JHS, Blossom, I knew I'd get a rise out of the PC crowd.</p>

<p>Yes, kids can be happy at a campus where the dominant theme is not what the kid is. They can also be miserable because they feel socially isolated.</p>

<p>You seem to feel campus culture does not matter. Maybe it does not for you and your kids. But please respect the view that it does matter for others. For a lot of others. And this goes for many dimensions - partying, drinking, intellectual intensity, big time sports etc. One person's draw is someone else's turn off. </p>

<p>Why is this hard to accept?</p>

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<p>Sorry Newmassdad, you didn't get a rise out of me, and I'm not the least PC in any way shape or form.</p>

<p>I think culture is important. A secular Jew shouldn't attend Yeshiva University unless he or she is prepared for a lot of heavy duty discomfort or indoctrination. Ditto for a religious muslim at Oral Roberts; I wouldn't encourage a transgendered kid to attend BYU. But I hardly think a tag of "preppie" which means 14 things to 15 different people (having attended a prep school being only one of them....) should have a kid take a college off their radar without at least exploring it-- assuming the academic and location factors meet the kids screen.</p>

<p>I don't find "culture" hard to accept. I find the notion that a teenager (how old is the OP's kid anyway... 15?) can decide at this age what kind of friends they want to be surrounded by at age 21 or 22 laughable- especially if they've not visited the campuses in question.</p>

<p>Sorry I'm not part of the PC police here. We insisted that our kids pay close attention to campus culture when visiting and when making decisions... but were happy when they chose the colleges which were the strongest academic fit for them, with enough of "their people" to feel comfortable even if not the dominant culture on campus, and plenty of opportunity to be exposed to a wide variety of other "types" along the way. They even opened their minds a bit towards other people-- a trait which seems to be serving them quite well in the working world where your office mate-- or boss-- could easily be a "dumb jock" or a "partying frat boy". Nice to leave college having had positive experiences with all types of people without feeling the need to demonize.</p>

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<p>Hmmm. I didn't see any really PC responses. (I'm not very PC, myself. I'm basically a near-dead white male.) Blossom and I both substantially agreed with you. We were just making the point that general preppiness at a fine college doesn't necessarily equate to intellectual vacuity or a serious absence of other styles, that alterna-kids and preppies can actually be friends, and (in my case) that the OP's daughter is a little young to decide that she should rank colleges based on a popped-collar index.</p>

<p>Neither of my kids was willing even to consider Northwestern or Georgetown, mostly because of the preppiness issue. It worked out fine for them. Depending on the crowd, either of them could come across as somewhat preppy, though, and they have lots of preppy friends. They might not have liked Northwestern or Georgetown had they wound up there, but I don't think it would have been because the campus culture was too preppy. They just would have dressed a little differently. (Better.)</p>

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<p>As far as schools go, what about Carnegie Mellon? I think your D would find the disheveled awesome nerd arty type-- as that is the best way to describe one of my good friends who goes and loves it.</p>

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<p>^ ^ Carnegie Mellon is exactly what I was about to suggest. You get the artsy types and the techy types as well.</p>

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<p>I don't think it is realistic to expect any school to be full of kids like my D. Even if such schools exist, it may not be the healthiest environemnt. She just wants to have some kids like her, preferably in a mixed culture campus, have a group of friends she can be comfortable with. And I don't think of "preppy" in a negative way - it's just not her. By the way, I think a lot of girls on her team are preppy (whatever it really means, I'd rather say, mainstream), and she gets along with them fine - as long as there is a common interest, in this case, sport.
Unalove, I'm looking into Carnegie Mellon, it may be an option. I love Chicago's core though - I wish I was able to get such education! The quarter system is a little scary - it must be very intense, to have exams every few weeks.</p>

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<p>OP</p>

<p>We visited 20 campuses known for quirk and my son applied to 10 of them. PM me if you want more details.</p>

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<p>I want to make an observation about course offerings.</p>

<p>College is intended to teach students the tools for researching, analysizing, forming an argument, and communicating that argument. At the end of the day, it really doesn't matter whether a course is the on the behavior development of the fruit fly or the behavior development of the horse fly. The techniques being learned are the same.</p>

<p>While it may be impressive to have 100s of courses in the catalog, each one focusing on the development of a different kind of fly, that's not really necessary for an undergrad who will be taking 10 to 12 semester-courses in the major, six to eight of which are largely standardized topics, regardless of the school.</p>

<p>There are exceptions to this, including two biggies:</p>

<p>a) If you are child prodigy, already deep into college level courses in high school, then you need a university setting because you will be on to grad school courses before your undergrad years are complete. This is most frequently seen in national-level math whiz kids.</p>

<p>b) If you are the rare 17 year old who not only has a specialty picked out, but an obscure specialty. For example, if you already know that you want to specialize in 15th century Chinese History, then you better go to a university because few if any LACs are going to offer more than one course in 15th century Chinese history.</p>

<p>The vast majority of high school students don't fall into either of those categores. Their concerns should be not the course titles, but whether the professors can teach undergrads, the sizes of the classes, the quality of the discussion (if any), the interaction and feedback from the professor (if any) on written assignments, and so forth.</p>

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<p>I agree interesteddad</p>

<p>My son will take, at most, 32 courses in his 4 years. This will not scratch the surface of what's available at his tiny LAC in his areas of interest. He chose a school based on the qualities you mention in your last paragraph along with the "feel" of the schools.</p>

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<p>
[quote]
Academically, she always excelled in English/writing and foreign languages, but is gradually becoming more science-y. Because she is only a freshman, she hasn’t been exposed to a lot yet, but I can see developing interest in biology (at least where it touches on behavioral sciences and genetics).

[/quote]
</p>

<p>That, plus the strong artistic bent, is all the more reason for her to go to a smaller university rather than LAC. I'm not sufficiently familiar with all the schools to discuss all, but Brandeis and C-M sound like optimal choices to me. And the weather, while not balmy southern California, is tolerable and not as bad or dreary as oft-foggy London. Amd I wouldn't rule out a highly intellectual engineering school such as MIT or RPI, if she has the stats.</p>

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<p>Chicago offers outstanding biology opportunities to undergrads. Unlike every other university I know well (and that includes dozens) the Division of Biological Sciences covers the Medical School, grad students and undergrads. This means that the star med school prof may well teach undergrad classes too (which many do). And, the medical school sits on the edge of the rather compact main campus. In fact, the med school is a 5 minute leisurely walk from the most popular dorm.</p>

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<p>Why do you say that, dadofsam? What are the advantages of small universities over LACs in this case?</p>