My junior D apparently hates hills. We visited University Iowa and she would not even consider it because of the hills on campus. She has a 4.0, top of her class (not formally ranked but for sure top 10%), 31 ACT, state qualifier and captain of her sport. Wisconsin resident–but she really wants to leave Wisconsin/Minnesota for college. Unfortunately, we have to chase merit money–so while Grinnell seems perfect for her, it will probably be unaffordable for us. Eckerd works best so far. I’ve eliminated Sewanee, Iowa, West Virginia, Lehigh, Lafayette already because of hills.
Here is a list of other places we are considering–would love to know if any of these are super hilly.There can be hills or mountains nearby, you just can’t climb a lot of hills going from classes to dorms etc. She also doesn’t really want frats or generally conservative schools.
Truman State, SUNY Geneseo, Denison, Ohio University, Otterbein, Southwestern, Montana, Kansas, South Carolina, Alabama, Juniata, Bradley, Missouri, UCONN, Luther, Augustana in Illinois, UNCA.
Why hills? Does she struggle climbing them? Is this one of those silly things that students get fixated on for a few weeks or months and forget, or is it likely to be a longstanding issue?
Does she not want the existence of Greek life at all? Because that seems less important to me than whether or not Greek life dominates the entire social scene or is a significant part of student life. Also, there are a lot of public universities on your list, but unless these public universities are explicit about having big merit scholarships (like Alabama) their best aid will go to their own state’s students.
Yes, Geneseo is one of the ones I’m most worried about for her. She did a summer program at Mac and didn’t like campus–and really close to grandparents, so not “away” enough for her. Good to know about Denison–she didn’t like the “preppy” sound of Denison anyway, but if also hilly, will get rid of it.
I’ve run the NPCs on all these schools and they all (hopefully) should be affordable for her–we are looking for under 30K (lower is obviously better). I just ran Dickinson, and it is not affordable for us. Sigh.
I have no clue why she is so anti-hill. She is in great shape, and we live in a hilly town where she climbs a hill every day to go to school. (Maybe that is the problem?) To me, this just seems lazy. But if she won’t consider a school, I am not going to force her to go. There are enough other places that will do instead.
As far a Greek life, she will consider a school with Greek organizations, but it is not something she especially wants. I have kept Alabama and South Carolina on her list for now, even though they are certainly places with Greek presence.
My suggestion is to find schools that interest her and then go to [US Topo](MyTopo Map Store: Waterproof Maps Shipped in 24 Hours) to see the elevation changes on or near campus. Unless she plans on commuting via bike (hardly necessary for a LAC) the no hills thing is one of the weirdest requests I’ve ever seen on CC.
Yeah I’d wait a bit before taking this too seriosly. You definitely don’t want to force her to apply anywhere but I feel like this is something she may forget about soon and there’s still plenty of time. Also I think hills are great for bike riding so I don’t see why they would be a negative if she was riding to class. It seems like Alabama and South Carolina are very conservative places as well as having Greek life.
I agree it is weird. We are trying to figure out a few trips while students are still around this spring and are considering going to Geneseo which is what inspired my post. I have looked at some of the topo maps, but hard to know whether some of the hills actually have to be walked or not until you are on campus.
WSU has some fairly significant merit aid, though it is competitive, and being in Wichita, Kansas, I can assure you that there are no big hills. One part of the campus is slightly sloped, but seriously, the highest thing I could see in Wichita was an air traffic control tower.
check out Willamette in Oregon. There’s a little Greek life but not much, and the campus is pretty flat. Also cute. It’s a smaller school, around 2500, but another CTCL school like Juniata.
Hendrix is a great LAC is Arkansas. No hills and no greek life. Rollins (FL) is another excellent LAC with nary a bump. It has greeks, but they don’t dominate the social life.
If you’re looking at Eckerd, look at New College of Florida, also. My son goes there, from out-of-state, for no more than our state colleges cost, before any need-based aid. There are no hills, although there are bike ramps and stairs crossing Tamiami Trail. Sarasota is pretty flat (as is most of coastal Florida). Goucher, in Baltimore, might offer some merit aid, too, and you wouldn’t encounter a lot of hills there, either.
Gettysburg, Rollins and Rice are too pricey for us. Oberlin probably too expensive–will check. Goucher is on my list. NCF too small. Apparently she is picky!