<p>Keep in mind that 1970 was a few years before I was born, 2+ decades before my HS graduating class and I were applying to colleges, and much may have changed since then.</p>
<p>I also attended a STEM-centered public magnet HS in NYC and while Kenyon was respected, it was mainly known for its English lit and humanities/social science programs. Those who planned on STEM majors were advised/preferred to apply elsewhere, especially those hoping to pursue medical careers or STEM PhDs.</p>
<p>OP - if you are looking for smaller MW Universities / or LACs with great STEM programs that attract the smartest students then these should be on your list:
Carleton
U of Chicago[ the UG college has only 4000 students]
Grinnell
Rice</p>
<p>You should also search for older threads written by a CC member- Curmudgeon- whose D also had tip top stats and grades, and was accepted at Yale [ in 2006, b4 they started offering generous FA for middle class families] , but chose to go to Rhodes instead- She was awarded one of their Full ride scholarships, had many opportunities to do research all 4 years and was accepted [ again] to Yale for med school. I think he may still post on the pre-med forums.</p>
<p>Kenyon has always been known for their English Lit/humanities program even in the 70’s. However, the college counselors at your HS did not know that it was also a great feeder school to medical schools.</p>
<p>I don’t think it is that they didn’t know about that so much as they felt students with pre-med aspirations given the stats they had were viable candidates for schools with stronger STEM programs.</p>
<p>Houston is the second largest seaport in the United States by tonnage of cargo, after New Orleans. Houston is just a few miles from, and for all practical purposes “on”, the Gulf of Mexico, an arm of the Atlantic Ocean. It is “on the coast”–no less than, say, Baltimore, which is on a smaller arm of the Atlantic Ocean known as the Chesapeake Bay. Perhaps Houston is not “coastal” to a provincial New York-California way of thinking in which distances are measured from LGA and LAX, but in verifiable geographical fact, Houston is a coastal city.</p>
<p>Historically, Houston has identified with the Southeast. More recently, it has tended to identify with the Southwest. It has never understood itself, nor has it ever been understood by others, to be part of the Midwest. That’s just a huge category mistake, any which way you cut it.</p>
<p>I have two friends who teach at Wooster in the English department. I can vouch for them being smart intellectuals (PhD’s from UVA, one was undergrad at Yale), but I have no idea what the student body is like, much less the sciences.</p>
<p>If you use LA and NYC as the coastal points of origin, that would basically mean any college between about Denver and Des Moines. It would eliminate many that have been suggested above.</p>
<p>This reminds me of why my Australian friends roll their eyes after Americans come to visit. They always say their guests arrive at their home in Queensland and say they are going to “see the country” in just a few days. Obviously, they have no idea of the size of that country either.</p>
<p>Californiaaa-- I was actually born in Iowa and lived in the Midwest until age 8. I don’t think I will love the cold and gloom but I think I’ll survive four years. (And it’s probably good for me to learn to live with various climates anyways. Almost like a study abroad, if you will.)</p>
<p>I know a lot of kids who attend some of the schools you’re looking at, and few are academic slouches We have a lot of professor kids in our town with tuition exchange to several excellent midwest LACs so they have the financial ability to choose the more individual attention of these LACs rather than the big state schools many other kids choose. Perhaps because of those kids, kids without that tuition benefit have come to know and appreciate those LACs and attend them in pretty big numbers too. </p>
<p>My kids have friends, and I have friends whose kids, attend Denison, Wooster, Wittenberg, Oberlin, DePauw, and a Kenyon or two so if you have specific “vibe” questions I may be able to help.</p>
<p>I’d rather have cold and gloomy than the swamp that is Houston in the summer. But I can recommend Rice without reservations, it was an amazing place for my nephew. That said, it’s not a coastal city, not even close. Downtown is a good 30 miles from the water. Baltimore has a harbor Houston does not. You can spend days in Houston and never see the water. Baltimore not so much. All that said, weather for me, is about the least important consideration in picking colleges. (And I do agree culturally Houston is southwest, not midwest.)</p>
<p>Yeah…like yours truly. It was truly an awesome experience to come back to campus after Spring Break to several inches of snow on the ground with more falling as we arrived. :)</p>
<p>Here in Minnesota it’s actually quite sunny in winter, not at all gloomy. Cold, yes, but definitely not gloomy. Gloomier places tend to be in moister climates–coastal Oregon and Washington, for example. Upstate New York and western Pennsylvania get very little sunshine in the winter. Same is true for areas just east and south of the lower Great Lakes, e.g., western Michigan, northern Ohio.</p>
<p>I’m looking at a list of U.S. cities (50,000+ population) with the least sunshine. The top 15 (least sunshine) are in Washington State, followed by Charleston, WV and Pittsburgh. Three cities in upstate New York, 2 in western Michigan, 1 in northern Ohio, and 2 in Oregon round out the top 25. The rest of the top 50 are all in northern Ohio (8), Oregon (7), upstate New York (5), Washington State (2), western Michigan (2), and western Pennsylvania (1).</p>
<p>Gloominess tends to quite localized, and mostly not in the Midwest.</p>
<p>Interesting. I was just in Sweden for an academic conference. It was cloudy and drizzly the entire time I was there, and it’s so far north that the sun was setting just after 3 pm. Talk about gloomy. But my Swedish hosts were lamenting that there wasn’t any snow yet. To a person, they agreed that snow brightens up the winter. Partly it’s just the effect it has on the light: daylight is so much brighter reflected off snow, as are streetlights, automobile lights, lights from houses and buildings. Snow brings cheer to a Northern climate. Gloominess is cold rain, damp chill, gray skies.</p>
Agreed, bclintonk. I also prefer a colder winter to one that hovers around freezing much of the time and produces a lot of ice. My family is from western New York and it seemed every winter brought at least one paralyzing ice storm. No thanks.</p>
<p>Those “paralyzingly snowstorms” are fun on college campuses. Back in the dark ages, when we had the first HUGE snowfall on the midwest, classes were canceled and a winter carnival began. Hot chocolate and cookies all day in the dining hall, and snow sculpture contests between dorms. I loved it!</p>
<p>DD went to college for four years in sunny Santa Clara. Then she did 2 years in the Peace Corps in an equatorial country. She was VERY happy to see snow when she got home last December…and she can ski about 10 minutes from our house!</p>
We have a lot of professor kids in our town with tuition exchange to several excellent midwest LACs so they have the financial ability to choose the more individual attention of these LACs rather than the big state schools many other kids choose. Perhaps because of those kids, kids without that tuition benefit have come to know and appreciate those LACs and attend them in pretty big numbers too. </p>