<p>I don't know what you find wrong with it, but here's the place to air your complaint:</p>
<p>While I am very pleased with the quality of education I received at Rutgers in the 1960s, I made a mistake by going to a single sex school (it was male only then), and going to school too close to home. Graduate school at Chapel Hill was a substanially better experience from a social point of view, afterall I found my wife there. Chapel Hill was also a great place to enjoy the events of the late 60s and early 70s. Calmer than Madison. Just exotic enough. </p>
<p>During my son's application process I fell in love with Middlebury based on the pictures on their website. It was too far North and too isolated for him. I couldn't even get him to visit. His view was : "Let's see, I hate the cold so do I want LA or Vermont?"</p>
<p>I'm echoing (echoing, echoing, echoing,...) tsdad's comments about going to an almost single sex school in the late 60's (Ga. Tech). Great (hard) school, with Monday through Saturday classes, but you had to find your own social life. When I first started grad school at a coed school, I wondered how people concentrated on studies.</p>
<p>Anyway, when my son was interested in astrophysics (before all the media stuff), I discovered Rice. To me, that seemed to be the perfect combination of size, location, etc.</p>
<p>My undergrad was in physics. If I were doing it again, I'd go to Rice!</p>
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<p>Some of us made the best of life by attending the colleges (graduate and undergraduate) that we did, even if they were not dream schools, but the best or only choices we had at the time. As others have stated, choices "back then" were often based on economics and location.<</p>
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<p>That's exactly what DH and I did, and while we want to give our daughter space to make her own mistakes, we also are trying to get her to balance practical with learning for learning's sake, in other words take every advantage of the opportunity she worked for and we're paying for. Yes, we've said "We're not paying $40K for nursing school!", and what we mean is look beyond the practical, pure career preparation. She can be too practical, part of that oldest child thing.</p>
<p>OKay, the single sex thing made me post...</p>
<p>Tiny all girls boarding school circa early 70's. I go to see the Dean about colleges and she (literally) pulls out her "top shelf" and tells me that I WILL apply to the Seven Sisters. I (semi)politely told her that I would be applying ONLY to schools with more men than women, including MIT (she told me I had no hope) because they had sent me (female with high math PSAT) a card! </p>
<p>First choice was Williams which was newly coed and felt like a bigger boarding school. I was wait listed and had to go to MIT instead. Best thing that ever happened to me. In spite of physics and chemistry, if I were 17 I would do it again in a heartbeat- if they would have me!</p>
<p>digmedia-
As you'll note on pg 2 of this thread, I went through similar issues-- a school that was still mostly single sex (female), afraid to apply to a school that was newly coed in the opposite direction. My s. was accepted at Ga Tech, but chose Rice, and I love it for him (physics/engineering major) and I'd have enjoyed it myself, if it was in the 70's the way it is now.</p>
<p>Great question and a great string ...</p>
<p>If I were looking now, at 45, where would I apply (assuming the same academic interests I had at 18)?</p>
<p>I would still be looking for architecture, engineering, math, and computer science. After looking at schools I would know I want to be in a college town and not a big city. I would want to be able to run track/cross country for the school. I was the first person on either side of my family to go to a school other than a state school and we were naive ... so we focussed only on name schools (IVYies or virtual IVYies) ... with what I know now (from CC) I would also add some LACs to my list.</p>
<p>What would be my dream school? I know first choice from the bigger school still rings true (Cornell) ... I loved it then and I'm sure I still would love it. However, until I visit LACs with my oldest I can not really judge how my favorite LAC would compare to Cornell ... at this point I just do not know enough about the LACs to make that judgement. My guess at this point is that LACs are enough of a draw that it is 50/50 I would pick a LAC over Cornell (which as much as I love Cornell is quite a statement)</p>
<p>As an English major who graduated from UC Santa Barbara 19 years ago, I had a great time. But now I wish I'd gone to a place that offered more personal attention and was more intellectually rigorous (we thought it was tough lugging our Shakespeare down to the beach and trying not to drift off to the lull of the waves and warm breezes). I would probably choose a place like Kenyon or Brown (though I've never visited). I also think an all-girls school would have done wonders for me and helped push me intellectually, though at 18 you would have had to drag me there...</p>
<p>"For me, my only choice was the City University of New York." Sgiovinc1, I begged my parents to let me to go CCNY! But they said my only two choices were Barnard and Brooklyn. I guess they didn't want me to go that far North....</p>
<p>I'm still wishing that Smith or Wellesly had gone co-ed so that I could have applied. Both have fantastic locations and excellent reputations.</p>
<p>Maybe by the time MY kids apply to college....</p>
<p>Maybe some of your kids will be girls and can apply to Smith and Wellesley anyway.</p>
<p>searchingavalon..that is funny!!! I guess everything is truly relative.</p>
<p>My parents basically drew a 3-hour circle around NYC and said I could go anywhere within the circle (exceptions were made for Washington, DC and for Cornell - they figured that Cornell MUST be within 3 hours, since it was in New York State....) I chose to go to the very edge of the circle, with a goal of totally escaping the city, city kids, and the politics of the day. Ended up at Williams, the hardest (much more difficult than HYP) and most unlikely school for a Jewish kid from New York to get into in those days. Managed the first two, not the third. Did very, very well, but wouldn't do it again.</p>
<p>When I was at Williams, it was still all Y chromosomes. Funny thing is, the addition of XXs hasn't changed its character that much (though definitely improved it.) Smith, which remained all double Xs, was much like Williams in those days, just for females, but has changed its character much, much more over the past 30 years.</p>
<p>mini, when did you become a Quaker?</p>
<p>Roughly 30 years ago, give or take - took awhile! and it is a long story.</p>
<p>My parents basically drew a 3-hour circle around NYC and said I could go anywhere within the circle (exceptions were made for Washington, DC and for Cornell - they figured that Cornell MUST be within 3 hours, since it was in New York State....) </p>
<p>Agreed with most parents on why they ended up at their schools the way they did back in the '70's.</p>
<p>My grandfather sat me down, the summer before my senior year, and said the exact same thing as he told three of his children when they applied in the '80's:</p>
<p>"You know about the Golden Triangle? <em>me, shaking my head</em> Imagine a line drawn from Chicago to Boston to Washington DC <em>me, nodding seriously</em> You are allowed to apply anywhere in that triangle, nothing outside of it- that includes Florida."</p>
<p>My mom and her siblings confirmed this. They said that it didn't really bother them that much although my mom wished that she could have been allowed to explore a bit more. </p>
<p>Interestingly, all of my schools that I applied were within the Triangle! (Except for Stanford, but you have to make an exception for that for its prestige!) Yay, grandpa.</p>
<p>Mom of 2 Inca, I was studying Shakespeare at UCSB a decade before you were. Great place to go to school...horrible place to have to study. More attention, more rigor are desirable indeed. My D going to Smith sorta brought out the Tigger in me: "So <em>this</em> is what Tiggers like!"</p>
<p>momof2inca, I realize you have 2 kids and you live IN California, but how many others believe that you are the mother of 2 south american indians dating back to 1200 - 1500 AD ? :D</p>
<p>I keep reading it, "Mom of two Inca(s) "</p>
<p>Apparently, many, many others believe that, NJers! It was an innocent mistake, I swear. I signed up for Momof2inCA on the old board, but the caps didn't go through, and thus I'm now the ancient mom of two restless Peruvian natives. Why I didn't think to change it when we switched to the new board, which does capitalize screen names, I don't know. I'm not the smart one in our family. :) </p>
<p>TheDad, a fellow Gaucho! (Funny, my dad, class of '62, and I always thought that was the lamest mascot, but now S might be a Maroon! Whatever that is.) Were you an English major, too? </p>
<p>Yeah, it's true about the rigor thing. I'm sure it exists at UCSB, maybe on certain floors of the library and in the famed physics labs, but not places I frequented. I didn't realize it at the time, though. I used to get really defensive after graduating when people said "oh, that's a party school." I would argue with them that it wasn't. That I had worked really hard, pulled <em>many</em> all-nighters, etc... Then I started researching colleges for my kids and realized, yeah, pretty much a party school. Especially if you define partying loosely to include surfing, beach volleyball, frisbee, biking downtown to State Street, hiking to Red Rock, and strolling Del Playa in flip flops and Vaurnet sunglasses. Throw in living in a sorority house and yeah... But it doesn't have to include alcohol or other substances to feel like a party at Santa Barbara... the air itself is intoxicating and pretty much negates the effects of whatever studying does occur (at least it did for me). Maybe there really is something to going to school in a cold climate. Less opportunities to procrastinate when it's 40 degrees outside? Still, it was a lovely, lovely time. And people were always in a pretty darn good mood.</p>
<p>Went to Auburn University at a time when females had curfews and were not alllowed to live off campus unless they were either married or 21! And men outmumbered women about 7 to 1...It was my second choice...affordable and not too far away...parents could afford one year...got loans for the rest...I wanted to go away to a southern school and have the whole rah rah atmosphere (pretty shallow,huh?) - studied education because there was minimal math requirement! (Never have taught one day, by the way) </p>
<p>My dad only went thru 8th grade and I have never seen him prouder than he was at my graduation - my brother also finished college three years later, but unfortunately my dad didn't live to see it...Daddy's mantra was "get your education...no one can take it from you"...</p>
<p>Not sure where I'd go now...somewhere to study forensics, I think, or possibly psychology.</p>