Curious if anyone has/ had considered both Oxy and Willamette, and what you saw as pros/cons to each.
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My daughter is planning to apply to both, but hasn’t visited either of them, so it’s hard to list specific pros and cons at this point. They both sound wonderful. But some might say the weather in Salem is a con. Or that being located in Los Angeles is a con (while lots of people might say being located in LA is a pro). Oxy might be more prestigious? Willamette might be too small? Might get better merit aid at Willamette?
What programs are you interested in at both?
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My daughter has been accepted early action to Willamette. It is a top contender, but we haven’t visited yet. Planning a trip mid February during a school break.
We visited Occidental last summer. My daughter loved it and is applying regular decision.
Right now, they both are about equal in terms of my daughter’s likes/dislikes. @Ally86 summed up the pros and cons quite well.
We are in Southern California. I would selfishly prefer my daughter stayed closer, but she wants to escape the hot dry weather and quite likes the idea of colder rainier weather.
Occidental may have more ethnic diversity and prestige, but Willamette comes across as providing a more personalized experience.
Los Angeles has everything you could want, but that means dealing with L.A’s horrid traffic. Salem seems to have the urban vibe but in a comfy way and provides easy access to Portland using public transport.
Willamette’s merit scholarships make it a much better financial fit for our family, so in the end it may come to that factor when making a decision.
Willamette was a school we looked at after checking out Lewis & Clark and Reed. It was the biggest surprise of all colleges we visited, as we all loved it. It has a lovely campus, lush, green, well maintained, directly across from the state legislature and my S is very interested in interning, etc. Though Salem is a small city, the campus is right downtown so can walk to bubble tea, Starbucks, food, shops, a movie, and is an easy 45-minute drive or train ride to Portland. The tour guide was great, the professors we met were great, and they followed up with personal notes. Our school college advisor said she’s had kids with transformative experiences at Willamette. I think it is the school he felt most sad about saying no to, as he was admitted at his ED school in DC (American). They offered amazing merit aid as well, and if he wasn’t as in love with going to DC, would have been a strong contender. He liked it more than Lewis & Clark, Reed, Macalester, and others. Hope you have a good visit!
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Thank you so much for sharing your family’s experience. I am looking forward to our trip. Did you happen to use any of the public transportation options to and from Salem or did you rent a car?
I responded to the old Whitman v Willamette v Oxy thread, but realized this is more current and copied my response below. My daughter was less impressed with Willamette, but hasn’t seen Oxy:
We visited Whitman and Willamette and my kid very much preferred Whitman.
Whitman is a few blocks from charming downtown Walla Walla. The shops, etc., cater to the winery/tourism visitors, so not all are budget-friendly for students, however. And Walla Walla is certainly remote. But the campus is beautiful and the students we met were welcoming, down-to-earth, and smart. Because Whitman doesn’t have any graduate programs, it very much feels like a classic LAC, whereas Willamette is a bit of a hybrid and seemed to be a mix of traditional liberal arts-oriented students and pre-professional types.
Willamette is situated between the Capitol building, courthouse, and hospital. While convenient for internships, there is also a significant population of transients near the courthouse and hospital. My kid said she’d feel a lot safer going for a run at Whitman compared to Willamette. The people we met were a bit quirkier and varied than the Whitman students and my kid was a little less certain of finding like-minded friends.
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The magic of a temperate climate, imo, isn’t the rain. Being rained upon is fun for about a minute, and that’s if it’s warm; when it’s cold, rain completely sucks. You just want to get inside and get warm.
The magic of the temperate climate is those wonderful fall and spring days in the 50s-70s, when the leaves are turning and the buds are sprouting… when you’re happy to be cooling off from summer sweat, or warming up from winter frostbite. That’s the magic: the welcome change.
And… snow can be beautiful. As long as ut isn’t blowing in your face. Wind makes all the difference between a nice winter day and a crappy one.
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My daughter lived in the Mid Atlantic region during her childhood so she is not completely unfamiliar with the realities of weather. In fact, that’s one of the reasons why she is considering going out of state, she misses the seasons and the weather. Too much monotony in Southern California.
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Thank you for pointing out the homeless presence. I don’t think that is surprising. Los Angeles has more than their fair share so I don’t think that is a differentiator with Occidental. Whitman sounds amazing, but their remote and isolated location after a flight is a no go for my daughter. Willamette’s quirkier and more varied student population is a definite plus for my kid.
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What a delightful post. Tells a lot about what the college experience might be at Willamette, which really is what matters over the course of 4 years. This is a great example of how crunching numbers to develop a raking list misses so much of what matters, which is the quality of the educational experience. Thank you for posting this. I learned some important things from it.
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Just thought I would add that, although my daughter preferred Whitman over Willamette, she also liked Willamette better than Lewis & Clark or Reed.
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Kids are weird. D22 thought Lewis and Clark felt like an isolated prep school and didn’t want to get out of the car when we drove by Willamette. It seemed very blah and non urban. On the other hand she really liked UO and Eugene. She likes college football and spirit, and the downtown (although it didn’t seem very big city to me!) She loved Occidental— LA and big-time social justice values. No big-time sports. You never know.
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@Southoftheriver , I think it is all about the “vibe” and apparently, as parents, our vibe-detecting skills are seriously lacking. 
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We live in the Pacific NW so had our car. But we’ve taken the train to and from Portland at different times from our city for weekend trips, and it is easy and they even have an Amtrak app now. My S was excited that his friends could ride the train to Salem and be walking distance from campus if he’d gone there.
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My S didn’t like the feel at Reed at all. I think I read a post on CC that made me laugh out loud with a dark humor remark about the spot to jump from with the morose feel. L & C was gorgeous campus to and nice people, but absolutely no where to walk to for a bubble tea or even a Big Gulp if so inclined. Totally residential area. We know people who loved it though.
Agree Willamette is underwhelming from a car, nothing to see, it is not a “drive through” campus. The edges of campus are low rise buildings and parking. You have to get out and walk 100-200 yards and suddenly there are quads with a picturesque river running through it, public art, clock towers, a grove of towering Sequoias, fountains, and friendly students. It was a big surprise.
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Totally agree on Willamette- from the side of campus you can’t really tell. It is a very very small campus, but it doesn’t feel that small when on the tour (or maybe they do a good strategic job on the tour of making it feel bigger!). Overall their admissions staff REALLY had their act together- so so polished (the screens in the admissions office with rotating profiles of students, all the guides had official shirts and business cards— some might find it offputting but we liked that they had their act together). More than anything though we loved that at the end of the tour, we chatted with three students who work in admissions and I could see my son being good friends with all of them. It was a really nice feel.
My son actually liked Reed- he thought it felt like Hogwarts- particularly the upstairs room they took us into for the info session. I just read SO SO much about the pressure and the kind of superiority vibe they have. And as I think about the few people I know who went to Reed, all of them (granted it’s a small sample) are super super smart. And they know it. And they always let you know that they know it. Reed was actually the only school my son liked that I somewhat actively dissuaded him from applying to (mainly out of parental worry that the pressure would be too much for him and he’d either drop out or worse).
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