<p>I am senior looking into 4-year universities and i'm finding it really hard to find what i'm looking for. Anything you suggest will be GREATLY appreciated!</p>
<p>My GPA is 4.1. Unweighted i think it's 3.8. I scored a 2120 on the SAT: 770 math, 700 writing, 650 reading. I've taken several AP courses.</p>
<p>Basically, I want a school that is either in or has very near access to NATURE! Picture mountains, wooded areas, forests and rivers and lakes, etc. Some of the most popular activities amongst students should include hiking, biking, camping, kayaking, and so on. It would be great if the campus had greenery/a naturalish landscape. (if possible, with a historic, brick building type feel)
I would prefer the school either be in a small/medium collegetown/city or be close to a city (10 or 15 mins.) If the latter, a big city would be totally fine. But i want to avoid middle of nowhere with nothing around and also in the middle of a giant metropolis. </p>
<p>An important factor is that the school be at least moderately selective with strong, respectable academics. I want to be surrounded by intellectuals with engaged minds who care about academics and their education.
Other criteria include a student body that is: liberal, diverse, politically active, environmentally aware. (Just a side note: accepting, free-spirited students with the bohemian type lifestyle would be amazing. it's not a must have though, just a bonus)
Also, a school that offers Co-ops!</p>
<p>University of Colorado at Boulder is PERFECT except that is is not at all selective (86% admitted) and I've read that most students there don't really care about academics. The graduation rate is like, pretty low, 40% in 4 years or something.
Lewis and Clark is also perfect but it's so small!</p>
<p>PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE whatever suggestions you have, throw em out there. I NEED help desperately. Thank you so much!!</p>
<p>University of Virginia (14K undergrads) fits your wants to a T (believe it or not more liberal than conservative, but not Brown, UCB, or Columbia; not sure about Co-Ops). Raise your CR score 50 points and you have a good shot. Also, don’t sell UC short. It has a solid academic reputation and remember all those party students would make it easier for you to shine there. </p>
<p>Another idea U of Wisconsin. You would likely be in OOS with your grades and stats. Medium sized town, lots geared toward college students, and lakes and nature pretty close (but no mountains unlike UVA).</p>
<p>U. of Vermont but perhaps not as selective as you want.
Swarthmore? Haverford?
Do you need mountains?
Most ideas I come up with are not near cities, they are in small college towns in the country such as Bucknell or Amherst, Middlebury.</p>
<p>How much can you afford? What size school do you want?</p>
<p>Btw, at any state flagship there will be a great deal of people that truly care about academics. This is particularly pronounced in the West where, generally speaking, the flagship publics are generally seen as much better than the privates (excluding Stanford, Cal Tech, and for those in the “know”, Claremonts). That means that while quite a few people at CU-B will not be academically focused (partially accounting for its lowish 4 year grad rate) quite a few people will be. It’s just that the “I party on days ending in y” crowd is more visible</p>
<p>Some good outdoorsy schools with >3000 people are:
-University of Oregon
-Gonzaga University
-University of Puget Sound (only about 2,500 undergrads)
-University of Vermont
-University of Denver
-University of Washington
-Westminster College</p>
<p>Almost every school will have an outdoors club, and from my experiences, they’re usually fairly popular (even Columbia, the most urban school out there, has a fairly large hiking scene according to a friend that goes there)</p>
<p>Western Washington University overlooks Puget Sound, is near mountains, has a woodsy campus, very liberal, environmentally aware student body. Bellingham is not a large city, but not tiny either. About a two hour drive to Seattle, and an hour from the Canadian border, two hours from Vancouver B.C. About 11,000 students.</p>
<p>UC Santa Cruz seems to fit all your criteria. Lots of forest, nature, about an hour from San Francisco but Santa Cruz itself is a cute college town-type place, and somewhat selective.</p>
<p>Speaking of WWU, you might also want to consider the University of British Columbia, or University of Victoria. Vancouver is a fantastic city with a million things to do, and a huge amount of nature right outside of it, and Victoria is a small city with great public transit and other outdoorsy things outside of the city.</p>
<p>UC Santa Cruz probably meets your wish list the best, but it is expensive for out-of-state students (over $50,000 per year), and financial aid will be at least $22,000 per year short (the out-of-state additional tuition is that amount, and UC financial aid estimators won’t indicate more than in-state levels of financial aid).</p>
<p>Cal Poly SLO is in a nice place with access to the outdoors, and is significantly cheaper as a CSU, but don’t expect financial aid. Its students are also much more pre-professionally oriented, matching its strengths in more overtly pre-professional majors like engineering, architecture, and business.</p>
<p>By “co-ops”, do you mean student housing co-ops (see <a href=“http://nasco.coop/guide/[/url]”>http://nasco.coop/guide/</a> ) or co-op jobs and internships where a student takes a semester or quarter off of school gaining (paid) work experience (optional but common at many schools, particularly in engineering)?</p>
<p>I couldn’t agree more with whenhen – UBC is an obvious suggestion if you can afford it. At ~$33,000 per year, it’s quite a bit cheaper than most privates or out-of-state publics. Easy access to nature, an awesome city, and great academics…pretty hard to beat. Victoria is good and even cheaper (~$25K per year!), but it’s not as strong or selective. Simon Fraser is also well worth a look.</p>
<p>Check out UNC-Asheville. The campus is a few miles from downtown Asheville, which is a very artsy city with a strong liberal/bohemian vibe. The campus is on over 200 acres and includes a botanical garden. More importantly, there are so many recreational opportunities a short distance away, with the Blue Ridge Parkway and Great Smoky Mountain National Park close by. Students at UNC-A are into whitewater rafting and kayaking, hiking, mountain biking, rock climbing, and camping. The pre-orientation programs have included a wilderness experience, day hiking, and exploring the music, art, literature, and food (!) in the Asheville area.</p>
<p>UNC-Asheville is small (under 4,000 students) and accepts around 68-77% of applicants (I didn’t check to see which was more recent). That doesn’t sound particularly selective, but it tends to draw a self-selected group, including students who are not interested in Greek life (there are only two fraternities and two sororities) and who don’t care that there is no football team. There is an honors program, which includes special classes, social events, cultural events, and travel. Your scores would put you in the range to apply for that program. Tuition is around $20,000 for out of state students, and there are merit-based Laurels Scholarships that provide up to full tuition. The campus is beautiful – very nicely landscaped. The buildings are more modern, but they fit the surroundings.</p>
<p>I know two students who are there now. Both are quite intelligent and serious about their studies; one is brilliant. They had their choice of more highly-ranked schools, but they chose UNC-Asheville for fit (not financial reasons) and are very happy there.</p>
<p>Cornell U has just about everything you are looking for. Ithaca College is in the same small city, and would be a better choice for certain majors.</p>
<p>You can do co-ops from any institution if you are willing to arrange them yourself. Don’t let this be a limiting factor in your college hunt.</p>
<p>Whitman College! Ok, it’s small and I’m unsure what you want when you say co-ops, but all the other stuff is right on. The Outdoor Program (OP) is the most active organization on campus, easy access to biking, kayaking, backpacking, camping, skiing and rock climbing. No car needed, the OP provides transport. </p>
<p>Great academics and serious students; 94% returning freshman and 86% 4 year graduation rate.</p>
<p>The campus is really stunning: red brick buildings, the old gracefully integrated with the new; and a lovely creek meandering through the entire campus. The campus spills into downtown Walla Walla, a prosperous area of quant old buildings with good restaurants, coffee houses, clothing stores, grocery stores, etc. All you need within walking distance of campus.</p>
<p>The students are energetic and accepting and very environmentally conscious.</p>
<p>SUNY binghamton. It has a nature preserve on campus, the city of binghamton is 10 minutes away, 27-30 ACT IQR (competitive), 40% acceptance, outdoor activities are huge there (there is an official program of the school that organizes outdoor stuff called “outdoor pursuits” along with many additional outdoor student clubs and organizations, 66% 4yr grad rate, 14000 students (med-large), and it is in the middle of the NY appalacian mountains (in nature). As for co-ops, drexel and northeastern are the only 2 scools in the country with really stand out co-op programs. </p>
<p>Check out Colorado College.
It is set in a a mid-sized city (population ~400K) at the foot of the Rocky Mountains. Outdoor activities are very popular with CC students. The campus also is close to restaurants, shops, and other urban attractions. </p>
<p>The fall 2011 admit rate was ~26%. 70% of freshmen graduated in the top 10% of their HS classes. Average SATs were 661 CR, 660 M. The 4-year graduation rate is ~83%; the average freshman retention rate is 95%. All classes have less than 50 students.</p>
<p>Its undergraduate enrollment is about 2000 students (only slightly larger than Lewis & Clark’s). It operates on an unusual one-course-at-a-time “block plan” (you take the same number of courses as students at other schools do, but in series not in parallel.) This eliminates scheduling conflicts in arranging off-campus field work.</p>
<p>There is an inherent conflict between your desire for a large school and your desire for a school in which many (a majority? a plurality? a large segment?) of the student body participates in extended backcountry adventures. If you want a school where that describes a big chunk of the population, a smaller LAC is you’re best bet. On the other hand, even though MOST kids at Cornell do not regularly go winter-camping in the Adirondacks (for example), you will not have trouble finding ones who do.</p>
<p>So, if your key goal is a large, selective university, then it should be enough that there is an active subgroup into the kinds of activities you’re looking for, and that access to those activities is good. If you’re key goal is to be in the majority culture of a school while living the backcountry dream, then you need to consider strongly the small LACs that specialize in that atmosphere.</p>
<p>Funny, as I was reading the first half of your post I was thinking CU Boulder…
I wouldn’t be so quick to look past CU. While it doesn’t seem that selective, it attracts a lot of top students and is really a good school. Scholarships are usually quite competitive, particularly for OOS students. Also, though it has the party school reputation, there are many dedicated students there. It seems to meet the rest of your criteria, particularly the idea of a liberal college town.</p>
<p>Someone above recommended University of Denver. While DU wouldn’t be a bad choice, having lived in Colorado my whole life, I don’t think it would be as appealing to you. You could look into Colorado College though…</p>
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