One-line descriptions of each LAC culture from enrolled student

Parents Forum
1

<p>Request: If you or your child is enrolled in college, please post a one or two line description of its dominant social culture. Make sure that you say what your college is.</p>

<p>We can't possibly visit all the schools we should, and, just like the Zagat surveys, multiple inputs are often much more accurate than one, even when that one is my own.</p>

<p>For example, although we have visited a grand total of three schools (U.Wisc, Northwestern, U.Chicago), junior daughter and I wondered whether our impressions were justified in such fleeting visits.</p>

<p>Northwestern: pre-professional</p>

<p>Wisc: Anything you wanted it to be </p>

<p>Chicago:Calm and quiet. </p>

<p>The kids from my daughter's high school regard Chicago as true to its stereotype--introverted and socially maladroit. I am hoping this is not true, although where a reputation has persisted for so many decades, it probably becomes self-fulfilling. There is a fancy statistical term for this, but I have no idea what that is.</p>

<p>Thanks very much.</p>

2

<p>I'd also be interested in hearing views of parents who currently work in colleges.</p>

<p>I would love to hear comments from enrolled students or parents with enrolled students or parents who happen to work at the following colleges: Emory, Rhodes, Davidson, Earlham, Brandeis, University of Florida, Beloit.</p>

3

<p>The University of Chicago is where fun goes to die :)</p>

4

<p>Sara, I thought that was Villa -no-fun.</p>

5

<p>Would also like to hear if your college has been unjustly stereotyped and you have a different take on it...</p>

6

<p>I have yet to read a college stereotype that I thought was unjustified. Sometimes overly simplistic, but there's almost always truth behind the stereotype.</p>

<p>For example, my daughter's school is stereotyped as a place where everybody works "hard" and doesn't party "much". Well, that's true. The average student does work harder and doesn't party (i.e. get stinking drunk) as often as at schools where the average student doesn't work particularly hard and gets drunk a lot.</p>

<p>It's not the stereotype that is unjustified. Evaluation of the stereotype is in the eye of the beholder. To some students, working "hard" and not getting drunk as "often" may be positive attributes. To others, they would clearly be big negatives.</p>

7

<p>Davidson--work hard, play hard, respect yourself and others, and enjoy the weather</p>

8

<p>Pomona-tight knit supportive community,friendly student body,humble but talented student body, tons of work but great social life</p>

9

<p>Franklin & Marshall--- play hard work later.... very cliquish</p>

10

<p>My son just finished his freshman year at Davidson. Mattmom has it right, work hard play hard and respect yourself and others would be the motto. I need to add that my husband, who is a pilot, flew him up after his last final ( Sunday afternoon) to be with us for Mother's Day. I'm still choked up. Davidson hasn't changed him he is still the great guy I se4nt him he is just more confident and fulfilled.</p>

11

<p>how about georgetown?</p>

12

<p>I work at Lynchburg College, in Lynchburg VA. It's a LAC with lots of community service activities - good for the average student - not overly intellectual. In addition to the usual LAC-type majors, Lynchburg also offers business, nursing, athletic training/sports medicine, and education. There is some partying, but it has become less raucous since all housing became on-campus. The campus is beautiful, and there is a lot of new construction. Some merit aid available, too. Lynchburg is NOT suitable for high achieving students, but for those with SAT scores around 1000, Lynchburg could be a good bet. Some sports (Div. III) are strong: men's and women's lacrosse, men's and women's soccer, baseball, basketball, track & field. The faculty provide a nurturing environment, and I like working here!</p>

13

<p>Interesteddad-</p>

<p>What school are you referring to in your post? We are naming names here!</p>

<p>Thanks so much.</p>

14

<p>Brown University is my alma mater. A friend (who is the H of a Brown pal) described it as "5000 extroverts," and though that is just a <em>phrase</em> it says a lot.</p>

15

<p>
[quote]
What school are you referring to in your post?

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Swarthmore College.</p>

<p>I have been trying to come up with a one line description of the campus culture, but have been having a difficult time.</p>

<p>The students are intelligent, hard-working, diverse, non-preppie, accepting, unpretentious, humorous, opinionated, socially-conscious, internally-motivated, independent, and a bit geeky. The campus culture is academically-focused with a strong community and a high degree of self-governance, a somewhat below average percentage of heavy drinkers, and very multicultural. If you can't picture yourself actually saying, "I really love my courses this semester", I wouldn't consider Swarthmore.</p>

16

<p>Makes me wish d had applied to Swarthmore. Well there's always d #2.</p>

17

<p>interested dad:</p>

<p>"Swat = happy, moderate, quirky intellectuals"</p>

<p>Hey this could be fun. Post a paragraph on your school and the rest of us can take a stab at a line.</p>

18

<p>Two recent grads from the UChicago forum. (<a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=49348&page=8&pp=20%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=49348&page=8&pp=20&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p>

<p>BY hanna1: hi I graduate from uofc ast spring... There is very, very much a social life at chicago, I went out at least three nights a week, the entire time I was there, and was not alone, I would say that at least half of any given class, are very social, and it seemed like the kids younger than me were even more social than my class. There are frats, there are house parties, there is down town. The original poster is totally wrong if he is leading you to believe that he is "normal" for spending all his time at the reg.</p>

<p>By chicagograd: At Chicago, I majored in biology, played a varsity sport, took some time off to work in the real world, and am now heading off to a top 20 medical school in the fall. The Chicago name is, in my opinion, very very well respected for applying to grad school. At my Harvard intervew, my interviewer called it a phenomenal institution. Word of advice: Be yourself at Chicago and explore everything and anything, including the city. If there is anything that Chicago doesn't like, its pretentiousness.</p>

19

<p>The problem I'm having with the one-liners is that they gloss over the core elements of what makes one campus culture different than another.</p>

<p>In many ways, I think the stereotypes do a better job of communicating the core character of a school. For example, the stereotype of Swat is that kids work all the time and never have any fun. While that is an exaggeration, at least it does communicate two of the three or four defining characteristics of the school:</p>

<p>a) if you don't enjoy being engaged in your academics, it's the wrong school. As my D puts it, you just can't go into these seminars with eight kids not having done the reading.</p>

<p>b) if you are looking for the heaviest drinking scene, it's the wrong school as the heavy party crowd makes up a clear minority of the students.</p>

<p>c) I think the third defining characteristic is that the school has an inordinately strong sense of community with relatively minimal de facto segregation into cliques or fractionalized groups on campus -- by class year, by ethnicity, by interest, by socio-economic background. This is only tangentially covered in the stereotype if you include "diversity" in the stereotype of Swat, which many people do.</p>

<p>So, all things considered, I think the crude stereotypes do a pretty good job of helping students self-select appropriate schools. If the crude stereotype is "preppie", or "jock" or "party school" or "work hard/play hard" or "geeky" or "intellectual" or "tree-hugger", it's a pretty good bet that those really are defining characteristics of a school. My attitude is that it is a good thing when the crude stereotype causes kids to look elsewhere if they don't fit.</p>

<p>As I look at comparable colleges, the two issues that pop up time and time again are presidents seeking to address a problematic drinking scene and a polarization of the campus into groups (be they ethnic, jock/non-jock, drinker/non-drinker, frat/GDI). One reason these two issues are not perceived as problems at Swat is because the crude stereotypes drives those kids elsewhere. So, I think the self-selection by stereotype is a positive element in reinforcing a campus culture.</p>

20

<p>Sometimes, however, stereotypes can become unrepresentative caricatures. I believe this is what happens when the grain of truth gets exaggerated beyond representation; that is, the critical feature, say valuing intellectualism and good argument, is superseded by a reputation for absolutely no fun, or withdrawn, cloistered students. While the crude stereotypes may drive away the extreme party-goers from Swat and UChicago, others may also be driven away who would otherwise love those schools.</p>