<p>Two lesser know LACs that have caught my eye. I'd appreciate any info on either</p>
<p>Hi, Cesky -</p>
<p>My son's a freshman at McDaniel. If you have specific questions, please post or private message me.</p>
<p>In general and very briefly, the college is a very nice liberal arts college with many offerings. Campus is lovely, great and quirky freshman seminar and january term courses, excellent academics and support, strong honors program, strong disability services, caring people, small classrooms, great library, good diversity, much construction and improvement in all areas (they want to have the best for the community), NCAA DIII athletics, great football field courtesy of the Baltimore Ravens who do their preseason training there, dorms average, food average (they have a nice grille and coffee shop), hometown is charming, 30 min to Baltimore, about 60 to Wash, DC.</p>
<p>McDaniel is a Loren Pope Colleges That Change Lives school. It also appears in the Rugg's college guidebook and several of its departments are highly recommended. It has been called a "hidden gem" by a number of insiders. It has a wonderful learning environment...and offers very good financial aid.</p>
<p>We'd be happy to help you in any way we can; please let us know your needs.</p>
<p>Guilford College is a quaker school. Generally, quaker schools offer very good academics (Earlham College and George Fox University, for example) in an environment that is not overly competitive. I don't have details about Guilford but I would google the quaker higher education organization.</p>
<p>My D1 has a number of friends at Guilford and every one loves it – but they are Quaker and they wanted/felt comfortable in that environment. It’s not for everyone. Generally, Quaker teens are very accepting of ALL kinds of people but not of people who are very conservative or not open-minded. (You should definitely look into Quaker beliefs and practices before you go there, although a minority of students are Quaker.) They tend to celebrate quirkiness and tend to be very supportive and affectionate. Sports may not be very central in the life of the school. My D1 kind of wishes she had gone there (but she’s at Bates and loves, loves, loves it – also pretty Quaker-ish). Though the academics are very good (see post above), I believe it is not competitive.</p>
<p>My son enrolled as a freshman at McDaniel in the fall of 2006. Worst experience of his life. Very toxic social and Greek atmosphere. Terrible food. Terrible dorms. Good academics. Our son was a top-notch, nationally ranked swimmer and #1 on McDaniel’s team by far, but had documented disabilities. Then head swim coach would not accommodate and ridiculed him. He was forced to withdraw from the team. The frat that pursued him dropped him the day before initiation because of his disabilities after stating that they would work with him to complete his pledge work. The timing was terrible because our son would have been forced to live in a dorm room within the frat’s block of rooms or go to the bottom of the list and get a total stranger and an awful room. Our son chose not to return his sophomore year, tranferring to a well-respected public university with a respectable 3.0/4.0 gpa, where he made dean’s list 5 semesters and was initiated into 3 honor societies. We reported all of the problem he experienced at McDaniel. Other students experienced similar problems, one also dumped by the same frat went on to UNC-Chapel Hill for undergraduate and just this past spring graduated from their law school. So, these were not troubled kids. These were kind-hearted achievers in a terrible, unregulated environment.</p>
<p>I would not recommend McDaniel College.</p>
<p>Guilford is a good school if you’re a strong writer who’s not good at math and interested in learning even though it may not come easily to you. Friendly and supportive.
McDaniel is a bit more competitive in atmosphere. </p>
<p>The story in 2 is exceptional and tells more about the student than about the college (seriously, the kid thought he was doing fine because he had about a C average on his midterms and I won’t go into what “sick for 2 weeks” without the nurse’s note for an Incomplete means in college parlance. I understand it was a shock for the parents though. :s)</p>