One of my biggest priorities in the search process is finding schools with welcoming, compassionate atmospheres. So many rigorous schools have felt cold to me and have very cutthroat cultures - is there anywhere specifically known for being collaborative and kind? To narrow things down, I’m looking for a small-medium sized school in or near a city.
Clark in Worcester, Massachusetts that description
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I personally am a big fan of Jesuit schools for this reason. Cura personalis and all that.
What about a University of San Francisco or Fordham?
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Lots of people recommend the “colleges that change lives” schools as being educationally sound and are student friendly. Run the net price calculator for any school you’re interested in because prices are all over the place. Most of these schools offer merit.
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What’s your budget?
I agree that the Jesuit colleges are worth a look see. But some are very very costly. My kid is a Santa Clara University graduate. About 5000 undergrads, and she says a very very welcoming environment.
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What are you hoping to study? That will help people give you more targeted suggestions. My kid is… weird. And also wanted to avoid cold and/or cutthroat culture. So I understand your preference
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To some extent, your desired major may matter. If it needs highly competitive secondary admission, or is filled with students chasing more competitive post graduation goals, then there may be more incentive for cutthroat behavior.
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Goucher!
It isn’t small and it isn’t inexpensive but UC Davis has that vibe.
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Rice!
Look up rice oweek videos on YouTube. The way new owls are welcomed on campus is second to none. Truly collaborative. Students help each other everywhere, even when they apply for the same grant, internship, or job openings.
Depending on your major Beloit College.
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I’m interested in journalism/English, history, and sociology - I’m a big humanities and social sciences person.
Whitman is extremely nice.
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Whitman, University of Puget Sound, Carleton, St Olaf all fit the bill, but only Puget Sound is in a larger city. Maybe Macalester?
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Loyola New Orleans is a Jesuit school with about 3300 undergrads, some strong student reporting, and many report feeling a very warm, friendly vibe on the campus.
St. Olaf. Small school not near a city, but in a nice town and about 45 minutes from Minneapolis. My son was so impressed by all the things that work on an honor system at the school and how student-centered it was. It was the “kindest” school we saw. It oozed respect, even when there was disagreement.
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Was just going to say the same. Super welcoming and supportive. When they say the environment is collarborative they are not kidding! The residential college system give the students a home on campus.
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These are less likely to be majors requiring competitive secondary admission, and tend not to have a lot of pre-meds.
For journalism, consider the main student newspaper. Larger schools tend to have larger pools of potential staff, which can increase quality, but also mean more competition for the limited number of staff positions on it.
The niceness of the student body is at least somewhat an interest of my S24, although maybe to a more mild degree in his case. Based on our research I think there are potentially a lot of smaller and some medium-sized colleges that would work, but the problem is many are located in smaller towns or rural areas. Like, William and Mary struck us as having a very nice student culture, but Williamsburg is not exactly a modern city. Vassar is also making a great impression on my S24 (so far just online), but again Poughkeepsie probably isn’t quite the setting you are looking for. And so on.
But in terms of ones we have looked at in what I would call real cities . . .
Brown has this reputation and our visit suggested the same. I’d call it a medium-sized college, and the overall university is not too big, and it has a nice location in Providence.
Rochester also had a nice vibe when we visited–I think the students are serious about academics, but they seem really committed to being supportive and collaborative (they are big into their “Meliora”/“ever better” value system, and this seemed to be part of how they were interpreting those values these days). Again, medium-sized college/smaller university. The main (“river”) campus is somewhat set apart but it is a quick shuttle ride to downtown Rochester.
We haven’t visited Macalester yet, but it also has a very friendly reputation, and is a smaller school (normal-sized LAC) with a great location in Minneapolis-St Paul. Carleton and St Olaf have this reputation too (you might call it a “Minnesota Nice” thing, although that concept has its critics). But those are located in Northfield, what I would call a small satellite town, some an exurb.
Also haven’t visited here yet, but we are getting positive impressions on this subject of Haverford and Bryn Mawr (Haverford being directly relevant to my S24, although he is interested in Classics and they have a great collaboration with Bryn Mawr in that area). Just outside Philly on a train line.
These last couple we visited with positive takeaways in this area may seem a little odd, but bear with me–Yale and WUSTL. I think both of those colleges have their share of people looking at competitive professions and feeling pressure to excel in college, so these colleges are not necessarily 100% on point. But, I think if you are not on those tracks yourself (so not so much pre-med, pre-finance, or CS), then they can have a relatively friendly and collaborative vibe.
And a little more specifically, Yale has a residential college system which I think can help create a strong sense of community and support. WUSTL also puts a lot of resources into student life and has a different sort of residential college system in their “South 40” complex (which operates like a friendly small town of its own). Yale’s system is a four-year thing, WUSTL’s just for first and second years, but I think these systems can also help foster the sort of vibe at least my S24 is looking for.
And both have city locations–Yale is right in New Haven, which is an increasingly nice city, and WUSTL is in a cool area right next to an amazing city park, and a short train ride to downtown St Louis.
Finally, although we are not looking at it for regional preference reasons, from what I know Rice is on what I might call the same branch of the college family tree as Yale and WUSTL–residential college system, academically intense but also very supportive/collaborative, located in Houston.
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I don’t know what specific area of the country your looking at but for journalism you could look into Ohio University. It’s a midsized public university with an excellent journalism school. It’s very relaxed and I would call it very welcoming. The students who attend tend to talk about how much they love their school. Good luck in your search.
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