<p>What I want most from a college is the environment. I want a school in which the students co-operate and share ideas, and professors who actively work with students. If a college is full of students who barely look at each other and spend their day scouring through library books and hammering math problems, that college is probably not for me.</p>
<p>I'm tired of my high school's super-competetive nature, and I want a different environment for where I go to college. Kids care so much about their grades that it gets ridiculous. I know that 2 of the top 5 students at my super competetive high school have cheated (asking upper-classmen for essay prompts for specific teachers, sharing information).</p>
<p>I was thinking about Washinton University in St. Louis. It's not too expensive, and I heard the food is quite good.</p>
<p>I also wouldn't mind a list of colleges that I SHOULDN'T apply to due to the colleges' competetive nature and emotional stress, such as Cornell.</p>
<p>oh youre the kid who won wake JV....grosss...haha sorry but my coach voted you down in that round and he was rather vehement :) and yes you have excellent stats...(<em>swears under breath</em>)</p>
<p>wait nevermind zag scholars...youre policy right? i was thinking LD</p>
<p>You obviously haven't gotten to know many students from your proposed list because they are filled with tons of crazy kids. I understand if you want to apply to a school with a prestigious name, but try to make your list a little less shallow. Because the schools you listed are very pedantic.</p>
<p>I would definitely suggest Rice. From the general consensus, it's very relax, and the students are very nice and helpful. It's also not very expensive compare to equally elite schools. =)</p>
<p>I actually heard Northwestern was pretty competetive, so maybe you should hold off on that one.</p>
<p>These are the schools that immediately came to my mind: Brown, Dartmouth, Pomona, WUSTL, Emory, Bowdoin, and Wesleyan. If I think of more I'll post them. :)</p>
<p>parent speaking here -- have you considered St. Johns College? You can get into just about any graduate program you want with a degree from St. Johns and it is a totally different type of school.</p>
<p>I think you would find the challenge invigorating and the atmosphere is non-competitive (they don't do grades). They have a campus in both Santa Fe and Annapolis.</p>
<p>i had those same criterium i choosing schools. i wound up at duke and found that it's been great for me. pomona should be high on your list (and it's gorgeous), brown, rice, williams (but i wouldn't say amherst), bc, georgetown but not sfs, emory, UVA (definitely!)</p>
<p>avoid: cornell, jhu, swarthmore, chicago -- honestly, i was also turned off from places like wellesley and harvard for being too superficially competitive (that's probably not the best phrase to use, but my dad was laughed at at a wellesley tour when he told another family that we had just toured boston college).</p>
<p>A lot of my friends at Northwestern say that while academics can be very stressful ("This school lacks easy classes" is what I was told multiple times), students generally aren't cutthroat competitive with each other.</p>