Need help finding a good "Ivy Fit" - any advice?

Parents Forum
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<p>My daughter attends American University. That might be a few notches on the selectivity scale below what your son is looking for. However, applicants who are in the range of admissions to most-selective schools are candidates for merit aid (lately, $20K) at American, which is nice, and there’s an honors dorm where freshmen in the honors program (and some upperclassmen) are grouped together. There are also a number of honors-sponsored programs and activities that bring them together. I understand that many upperclassmen move off-campus after sophomore, or even freshman, year, so at that point it might be harder to find the scrabble tournament on any given evening, but I’m hoping my daughter will have made her group of friends by then.</p>

<p>There certainly are parties and drinking at American, but because of her living situation (the architecture of the dorm, the dry campus, the concentration of kids on the “brainy/nerdy” end of things), she’s kept very busy and met lots of friends without much effort. Which is good, because going out and finding friends is not her long suit. </p>

<p>She also considered Brandeis, which seemed to offer a lot of different things besides parties.</p>

<p>I attended Harvard and had no problem finding things to do and people to do them with that didn’t involve crowded parties. I never set foot in a final club. I know things have changed quite a bit over the years, but it is hard for me to imagine that Harvard has changed so completely that it resembles an LAC in the middle of a cornfield with nothing to do but go to parties. I am surprised to hear Yale’s film societies are no more, but I suppose it makes sense. It used to be that if you wanted to see Casablanca, you had to find a showing of it somewhere…Nevertheless, I imagine there are still plenty of concerts, theatrical performances, etc., at Yale (as there are at Harvard) because every house/college sponsors these events and there are upwards of a dozen houses/colleges. It might also be that a school with a residential college system would be a good choice, because it does foster a smaller community, and when each college/house has its own dining hall (and everyone’s on full board), it seems like “sitting around drinking coffee” becomes a major social activity. (My favorite times were spent sitting around chatting with friends in my house dining hall.)</p>

<p>I really don’t know which of the most-selective schools offer a residential college system, or the decentralized, full-board dining program that I consider a signature feature of Harvard. But maybe those features contribute to the type of atmosphere you are looking for.</p>

<p>p.s. your PM inbox is full</p>

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<p>"I think the key is to be in a school near a city or large town, so that you have access to cultural activities off campus. "
-Not for everybody. Some people strongly prefer non-urban location in a middle of nowhere. One of them is my own kid. Now that she can compare, she confirmed that city life is definitely not for her. City life does not present additional opportunites for her, but only problems. However, her sibling is complete opposite. Got to evaluate your own preferences, likes and dislikes and consider them with great respect.</p>

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<p>“I think the key is to be in a school near a city or large town, so that you have access to cultural activities off campus.”</p>

<p>Except that every school on the Princeton review list IS near a city or large town…</p>

<p>Again, for the I don’t know how many times–there will be parties EVERYWHERE and there will be non-partiers at even the biggest party schools. To focus your college search on the amount of parties on campus is just silly. I attended a rural school, 2 hours from any real town, sure there were parties but there were also PLENTY of other things to do from concerts, to plays, to speakers, to sporting events. I seriously doubt the OP’s assertion that there was NEVER anything but frat parties on campus, ever.</p>

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<p>"To focus your college search on the amount of parties on campus is just silly. "</p>

<p>-Agree 100%.</p>

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<p>I think repeating stereotypes for campuses that one is unfamiliar with or hasn’t spent any time on is rather pointless.</p>

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<p>Not all LACs in the middle of cornfields have nothing to do but go to parties or have heavy drinking cultures. Oberlin certainly didn’t when I attended and from the sounds of it…seems to still be the case nowadays. We also had plenty of campus activities such as art exhibits, concerts, stage acts, political activism/protests on/off-campus*, etc. </p>

<p>If anything, HS kids who are heavy-partying/drinking types tended to avoid schools like Oberlin like the plague as it fits more with the “anti-partying school” stereotype. Especially when back in the mid-late-'90s, heavy drinking/partying was viewed disdainfully by the campus culture as “acting too bourgeois/establishment”. </p>

<p>And while weed/psychedelics were the vice of choice among some, they tend to be too stoned/tripped out/lazy to party in any sense of the word. </p>

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<li>When I attended, this was often joked as our equivalent of a Div. 1 sports/partying…including protesting the US Military’s School of the Americas’ history of training Latin American dictators & their staff by going on base for civil disobedience purposes.</li>
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<p>While I don’t have a problem with either alcohol or pot done in occasional moderation and in a safe environment (e.g., not combined with driving), I don’t see what’s so “preferable” or “better” about a campus where the drug of choice is pot versus one where the drug of choice is alcohol. Either way, as someone who doesn’t personally care for either of those things, they are equally unappealing.</p>

<p>And every picture you paint of Oberlin is so highly conformist – that if a student wanted to party w/ alcohol, he wouldn’t do so because “he would be regarded” a certain way. There’s nothing more conformist than constantly taking everyone else’s temperature to determine what your own actions should be, which is your dominant theme. Somehow, I think more highly of Oberlin students than that.</p>

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<p>It seems to me that the smaller a college is, the greater the risk is that it will have a dominant culture. You should be pretty sure it’s a good fit before you choose to go there. This is true whether the dominant culture relates to drinkiing, sports, politics, or anything else. Dartmouth is the smallest Ivy, but it still has over 4,000 undergrads. Haverford, by contrast, has about 1200. That’s a significant difference.</p>

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<p>Cobrat, if you were at Oberlin- oh, say graduated in 98- you could almost be one of those parents now worring about his or her hs freshman’s ideas for colleges. I mean, our personal experiences, not as parents, are a lifetime ago. </p>

<p>But, it is fun to remember. In college, I spent a lot of time hanging out at one state U- very frat oriented, a great school, still coveted. Days were at the library, I mostly split party hours between a frat where they’d have beers and watch Elvira/scary movies and the house that later got closed down for perpetual disobedience. (When I saw Animal House…) But, when I took D1 to see that school, frat row was like a ghost town, the houses all tidy. My memories are just that, times past. It also made me realize that the frats were at the edge of campus and that my memories were not everyone’s. Just a slice.</p>

<p>Was it Desk who said a D at American? DC is a great place, imo, for college- so much going on.</p>

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<p>IME, being on a campus where weed/psychedelics was greatly preferable to being around heavy partying drinkers as common on more mainstream campuses like BC/BU. </p>

<p>At least users of the former tend to mind their own business and stay out of other folks’ way when they’re going about their business…whether it’s sleeping enough to get up for the 8:30 am-9 am classes or not trying to pick fights with others. </p>

<p>That wasn’t the case with the heavy partying drinker undergrads I’ve seen in the Boston. Heck, I had to call/flag down cops on some of those undergrads because they were trying to pick fights with random passerby and acting in a threatening manner in my friend’s neighborhood…which wasn’t too far from BU. </p>

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<p>Part of it is self-selection among most students and part of it was conformity that tended to be harshly enforced against those who weren’t towing the orthodox line. I know it all to well from being one of those heterodox rebellious types on campus. Then again, it didn’t take very much to be regarded as the latter back then. However, I did hear that Oberlin’s campus culture has greatly mellowed out in that regard since I graduated. Graduates just a few years after me seemed far less political and radical…which they confirmed themselves.</p>

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<p>Stereotypes exist for a reason. I also know grads from all of them. I went to U Chicago and yes it had fewer parties than my other alma mater. Its quirky reputation is also true, although exaggerated. </p>

<p>Most people commenting haven’t gone to any of the universities they are discussing, so why hone in on me? What better advice would you have for the OP? </p>

<p>I am eager to hear your constructive advice for the OP about the Ivies-hopefully, you attended at least a few of the Ivies for you to be knowledgeable enough to discuss.</p>

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<p>Oh, I agree completely, and I don’t think I implied that they were all like that. But I believe that the the experience that the OP is looking to avoid is the remote, small, drinking-predominant school that could be described as an LAC in the middle of a cornfield.</p>

<p>(By the way, a kibbutz in the middle of the desert turns out to be fairly similar, minus the academics. My daughter was not very happy living somewhere where there was nothing to do in the evening, and no way to get anywhere that offered something to do! She probably would have minded a lot less if she liked getting drunk, or at the very least, being around people who were drunk.)</p>

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<p>Stereotypes are sometimes no more than one person’s opinions. And, often oversimplifying. Consider the number of kids at a school, the variey of backgrounds and interests.</p>

<p>We’re agreeing they party at Harvard, right?</p>

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<p>And if my “stereotypes” are also based off alumni’s firsthand experiences? If you can’t use personal experiences, then nobody in this thread can help the OP, which is arguably what is happening anyway.</p>

<p>They even have parties at MIT and Caltech, but the reputation of those schools is that they have the most intense workload and the highest portion of truly brilliant people. Most people study all the time even though they have parties. Harvard is not by any means on the level of MIT or Caltech, but reputation wise is the most intense Ivy.</p>

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<p>I think there are cultural differences among the Ivy schools, and I think they might matter to some people. Understanding exactly what they are, though, isn’t easy, because there are people at all the schools who don’t fit those stereotypes at all. I think all you can do is absorb as much info as possible by talking to people, reading the school-specific forums on CC, and visiting, if possible. You should probably discount impressions that are more than a decade old, because things change.</p>

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<p>Brian, you couldn’t have experienced everything at Chicago or the other. You had, as I did when I hung out at that frat school, a slice. Eg, you may know plenty of rich kids at Penn- or have been told by an alum there are many. Is that representative?</p>

<p>And, no, we were discussing this with OP, sharing our experiences and opinions. She’ll have some legwork to do, to make her own impressions of fit. Cornell is not all nice kids but depressed. Brown is not all stoners. Harvard is not all studyrats, Columbia has some kids lost in the city and not taking advantage of the culture, Yale isn’t all sexist-- whatever.</p>

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<p>That is very correct observation. The fact is no advice can help a person to choose good matching school. It takes much more, mauch deeper research. Several visits, talking to current students, overnights, staying with potential sport team, several info sessions, walking around campus, visiting halls, dorms, various colleges, lots of observation, listenning and analysing how it will all fit with your personality and wide range of current and possible future interests and goals. Nobody can do it for you. To use any single criteria in selection is not a right approach at all.</p>

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<p>Some do. From what I’ve seen, however, it is almost always done off-campus…whether in off-campus apartments, colleges known for great parties like MIT/BU, or the party/clubby areas of Boston. </p>

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<p>Harvard being the most intense Ivy? </p>

<p>Boy, my Harvard alum HS classmate friends and colleagues will be having many belly laughs over that one.</p>

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<p>None of the Ivies are in the full sense of the word intense like MIT or Caltech and grade inflation is rampant, but reputation wise is the most intense of the group.</p>

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<p>I and others may not have attended the ivies, but many of us have friends who went there and/or made our own campus visits. Obviously, very few of us attended more than one undergrad institution.</p>