re#57:
“Finally - I would take the size of school into account. Acceptance and inclusion is one thing. The size of the dating pool is another.”
I was thinking the same thing. From this perspective, OP might be better served at a larger school, and/or a school with ready access to a decent-sized city.
Where to start? First, I’m a Reed graduate. Reed is lefty, but it’s also a college with a strong academic, intellectual ethos. You can be anything politically there. And you can definitely be gay. It’s one of the most gay friendly colleges that I know of. It would likely be an admissions “match” for the OP’s son. Small classes, based in many cases on what Reed calls the “conference” system and every place else calls “seminars.” The workload is extremely demanding, but the OP’s son can handle it, and would likely find the level of debate and discussion (the “intellectual” atmosphere) to his liking. My son applied and was accepted to Reed also.
An indirect measure of Reed’s intellectuality is that a very large percentage of graduates go on to earn PhD’s. You might look at this source to find other colleges with this characteristic:. It helps to identify colleges that have a strong academic, intellectual program: https://www.reed.edu/ir/phd.html and https://www.reed.edu/ir/phdrank.html.
Second, my son attended UChicago. His stats were similar to your son’s. His first rule was that he wanted a college where it is “safe to be a thinker.” Chicago fits that to a T. He majored in economics, which involves heavy-duty applied math and statistics. He all-but-minored in political science. One doesn’t have to major in math to get a strong applied math exposure. If your son attended Chicago he’d have a chance to enjoy courses in many majors with outstanding faculty (in social sciences, biological sciences, and other fields). Chicago is not especially “competitive” in the sense that the OP’s son might think of it. There’s a strong culture of open inquiry and hard work, not dog-eat-dog competition and grade grubbing. My son abhors intellectual “poseurs,” and that’s one reason he chose UChicago. It doesn’t hurt to be gay at Chicago. After all, Nate Silver attended and he is gay.
Yes, Chicago is a big city, but that was one reason why my son chose to attend Chicago. He made it a point to get well off campus at least once a week, weather to attend major league sporting events (baseball in particular) or to enjoy some of the other venues in the city. Public transportation is very good, and so it’s not difficult (or expensive) to get around.
Third, I agree with your son’s thinking about Williams. My son was admitted there but really didn’t like Williams or Williamstown when he visited. Too tiny. Too isolated. Too jocky. Academics would have been strong but the isolation and smallness of the place would have bothered him. In contrast, when he visited a friend at Amherst, which has similar academic strength, he found the atmosphere to be more diverse, in part because Amherst the town was much larger and it also had a large contingent of students from UMass-Amherst. My son didn’t apply to Amherst, but would likely have enjoyed attending.
I have a brother-in-law who attended Colby; also a former student of mine attended as well. It’s a good school but academically a grade below Reed, Chicago, Amherst, and Williams. But in Maine I think your son might like Bowdoin and could give that a look.
In the Philadelphia area, Haverford has a very good academic reputation and is not a dog-eat-dog atmosphere. On the other hand, Swarthmore has a stronger academic reputation but is also harder to get into and is highly competitive (I am told).
I think Oberlin, Grinnell, and Carleton are also very much worth looking at. Of those colleges, my son was admitted to Carleton, but never visited it. He didn’t apply to Oberlin or Grinnell.
I can perhaps provide more information if you have any questions of me.
I know Chicago has already come up several times, but as an alum my experience was definitely of a collaborative, NOT competitive environment. It can be an intense place, but the student body as a whole is definitely nice, definitely collaborative. And while it’s of course an urban environment, there is a traditional campus feel, with a big quad and many leafy trees. I’d continue to encourage him to at least visit, since it fits so much of what he wants.
And for any of these places with reputations for heavy workloads and serious academic environments (eg, Swarthmore, Reed), note that this does not necessarily mean competitive. What does he hate about his school? Is it the stress of the workload? Or is it competition with peers? These are completely different things. IME, students at some of these schools are the least competitive, because they are more excited about ideas and learning than grades (an overgeneralization, to be sure).
Oh, and consider Kalamazoo College–I don’t think it’s been mentioned yet. I visited friends there a couple of times and recall describing the students I met there as being like “all my favorite people at Chicago.” Very nice, smart, intellectual kids. Everyone writes a thesis–I visited right after my friends had all turned theirs in, and I was so impressed with what they told me they’d written about. I know nothing about their statistics department, but one of my friends majored in Political Science and liked it a lot (that friend also happens to be gay). Cold weather, easier to get into than many of the schools named, and I’d expect some degree of political balance given that it draws heavily from Michigan and nearby states.
My D1, who had a profile along the lines of OP’s son, was scared away from Chicago, and also Swarthmore, because of workload reputations. She didn’t want to work that hard. I guess in a sense it’s good to know yourself, a little. And she was happy with the work/play balance at her school. But there were tradeoffs.
There is no free lunch, IMO. If OP wants to be with a bunch of people who more fully share OP’s academic profile - which I would recommend- then unfortunately that is, for better or worse, often accompanied by higher level academic demands.
Note that competitive environments in colleges can depend on majors and post-graduation goals.
For example, if the college has lots of pre-med and pre-law students, that can give it a more competitive or grade-grubbing feel, at least in those courses and majors where such students are most commonly found (probably not the ones that OP’s son is looking at, except perhaps pre-law students in political science). If specific majors have competitive admission after enrolling at the college, that can increase the competitiveness in the prerequisite courses for those majors.
In high schools, an obsession with class rank, often stimulated by the importance placed on class rank by popular colleges among those high school students, can create a competitive or cutthroat environment.
Wow, our kids are very similar… who knows, maybe they will become friends in the future! Thanks for your comments, it gave us more details about some schools we are considering.
Monydad, thank you so much for this suggestion, I just showed it to my kid and he got so excited, he wants to email the program to get more information… and it’s now thinking about bigger schools!
Your post was so informative, thank you! And I couldn’t agree with you more about the limitations of a small college in a small rural town (and likely located in a more conservative area)… I do worry about this a lot and hope he does choose a school close to a bigger city at least.
As someone far above said, Northwestern is not urban. The campus is surrounded by the lake, a residential area and a suburban downtown with quick access to Chicago. It feels like a classic college campus and there’s no shortage of nature with the lake. D loved it but ended up deciding on a major that’s not available there.
Like @OHMomof2, I am a proponent of Amherst. Amherst has a math major with some stats courses. I’ve sent you a PM about the school but my sense is that it is inclusive with respect to LGBTQ folks. Students there can take classes at UMass Amherst (a short bus ride away) so when he is ready for graduate courses, they should be there.
I’d also suggest looking at Williams. Williams has a Stats major. I know one of the profs in that group – very well trained and great educator. It is a little bit out in the middle of nowhere but it is beautiful.
Dartmouth has a Math and Social Science major. It has a beautiful campus and is not very big. However, it is probably as preppy as it gets – don’t know about LGBTQ. Stanford is also in the wrong part of the world and is a larger school (albeit on a beautiful campus) but Stanford has a strong stats department (maybe top-ranked in the world), very strong social social science departments, and the buzz of the tech world, which values data science very highly. Like many of the other schools that have been mentioned, it is pretty hard to get into, but is a special place.
Note D1 was not otherwise interested in Northwestern, because of presence of sports and fraternities.
The thing she was missing is that at a bigger school there is room for many different “types”. Most people are not in fraternities. One finds one’s own group. I tried to point this out with respect to my own alma mater but she would have none of it, at the time. Now she attends a university where the place basically shuts down for football games, and has no problem with it. Because it is so large, there is plenty there for her to do what she wants, regardless of what some others there are doing. Too bad she didn’t recognize this when applying to undergrad.
She would have been much more a U Chicago “type” save for her laziness as I posted above. I think she would have liked it there.
@mackinaw Thanks for describing your experiences at Reed. I am sure it’s a very good school, but it does have a few things my son does not like at all, it’s known as having very intense/competitive kids (and a reputation of lots of drinking/drugs, not sure how truthful this is), it’s far away (he prefers east/upper mid-west) and its the weather is “hot” (meaning no snow). He is not interested at all so I won’t push it, there are many other good options to consider.
I love Chicago and that would be my first choice, not only the school but also the city. We will visit UChicago and NW as well, and hopefully he will be more open to an urban/suburban bigger school. Since he likes Nate Silver so much, I think UChicago has a chance haha, but I will say that even I heard many times its students are very “intense”… He doesn’t mind a rigorous program, but he DOES mind when kids are competing with each other all the time. He just wants to make friends with kids who are smart and like to talk about intellectual things, something that didn’t happen in his HS since all kids are SOOOOO obsessed with class rank, who has more ECs, getting into HYP/top 20 schools, etc.
Admittedly I’m a bit of a fangirl, but Grinnell sounds as if it would be right up his alley.
It hits all of the following marks:
Also, though it certainly trends to the left politically, there are a mix of kids, no one overwhelming type, and it seems overall tolerant of varying perspectives.
Re: Dartmouth
Be aware that Dartmouth has a very high percentage of students participating in fraternities and sororities. http://www.collegedata.com/cs/data/college/college_pg05_tmpl.jhtml?schoolId=403 suggests 62% of both women and men participate (and note that joining is not allowed for frosh, so that the percentage is even higher among students eligible to participate).
One of my fellow NYC Science magnet HS classmates majored in math at Oberlin and loved it.
She’s now a HS math teacher at another NYC public HS which is an academic peer of our HS. She’s now been there for 12+ years.
I can speak a bit about Oberlin’s politics department as I was a minor who took several intermediate-advanced courses there. One of their strengths was in comparative politics which was the concentration of my politics minor while there (US and Chinese politics along with extensive study of Fascist and some study of Marxist/Leninist/Maoist ideologies and their development in their respective societies).
Out of curiosity, is your son attending TJSST? Just curious as your description of your S’s high school sounds very much like the description of TJSST from several alums and very similar to my own NYC public magnet(Stuyvesant HS).
I have a Nate Silver too! He is more interested in applying big data to sports rather than politics. But he wanted a larger school with a Div A football team (to watch not play) in a warm climate (went to Vanderbilt), so I’m afraid I can’t help you! But I love that your son values nice so much! He sounds more like my Nate Silver’s brother. Little brother goes to Skidmore, which would be a safety for your son. My son had decent grades and scores in high school but is finding Skidmore easier. (He is majoring in physics and maybe geology.) But the students are nice, there are no frats, and there are sports but not all of them. His best friend is transgender and feels comfortable there.
P.S. Chicago also has Steve Levitt of Freakonomics. Not the same as Nate Silver but an out of the box thinker.
Portland has snow. And ice. And bad drivers who do not understand ice and snow and many hills which make driving on the ice and snow difficult.
I do think the issue with your son’s stipulations is the size and wanting to live in a rural location. Many of the schools he is focusing on are 1500-2500 students. They are going to have to limit the offerings, but that can be helped if there are other schools nearby in a consortium. Otherwise, he’s going to have to learn to like those same 40 kids in his classes, because they will be the same 40-60 all the time. The loud mouthed ones, the quiet ones, the liberal ones, the conservatives. If he doesn’t want them knowing his opinions, no where to hide. In law school the sections usually have about 70-85 people in them, and you go from class to class with this group for a year. Geez, you are SO sick of them by the end of that year (especially the ones who have opinions about EVERYTHING and cannot help themselves and must contribute those opinions to every class).
I think, and it sounds like you agree, that the next size up schools will offer more, the 5000-10,000 size schools. There are quite a few of the Catholic schools in this size range, and many would offer the balance of liberal and conservative views, a few sports, no or limited greek life, parties but tamed parties. Many are in urban areas. Villanova, Loyola-Maryland, Georgetown, Holy Cross, Notre Dame. They will be accepting of his views but he also needs to be respectful of others too. They look like colleges too, set back onto a ‘campus’.
But he seems to know what he wants. I think that’s great as I had to push and nudge and schedule my kids to even start looking at schools. Let him drive the bus.
OP’s son will not like Georgetown’s campus.
Do people think Tufts would be a possibility?
@shawbridge Amherst has a statistics major as well as a math major. And UMass has tons more courses in both.