My child goes to Hamilton which is in an isolated area on upstate NY near Utica. She loves it. She wanted to a campus where everything was focused on the school for 4 years. She spends summers and vacations near a big city with a lot of distractions and wanted to immerse herself into college. Everything on campus is well attended and supported because everyone is so focused on school activities.
My D is at Bates in Maine. It is in a large town/small city, but it’s pretty woodsy and outdoorsy. The five hour drive seems to be faster every time. I don’t think she minds being in Maine, but socially, she finds the small campus is still very high schoolish. At least so far.
My son goes to Grinnell and loves it, but will not be coming home for any Thanksgivings. He is thinking about doing Grinnell in London next yr and it will be a shorter trip from the east coast to London then Iowa. He flew back to Iowa after fall break and it took 19 hrs (flight delays, cancelations and very few direct flights), driving would have been 14 1/2 hrs.
I do think about how hard it is to get home. A close friend’s son goes to JMU and it is a long car ride home to the NYC area. I would prefer a 3 hour drive or a direct flight. But she will go where she chooses, and I will deal with it:)
When you are farther away, you won’t see them in person as much. (duh!).
So you might not see them during fall break…may have to wait until Thanksgiving.
Based on the Parents of 2015er, I can see some of the parent who really encouraged looking a colleges all over the country regretting it when it is tough for their kids to come home.
But if the kid is really pushing for it, and you think they can handle it and you can afford the travelling, then go for it
Sometimes not even Thanksgiving–since my home was in CA and I went to college in rural western MA, I didn’t go home for Thanksgiving as the expense and travel time just wasn’t worth it. I spent the holiday on campus or at friends’ homes (I had very memorable vacations in Manhattan and on Long Island with good friends and their families, and it was really eye-opening to experience family lifestyles completely unlike my own!).
It would be hard to find a place more isolated than the gray fortress on the Hudson known as the United States Military Academy. Not only is it alone on a jutting piece of land surrounded by forest and river, it is gated by armed guards. No casual strolling or surprise visits or easy passage in or out. But, technology is oblivious to these physical limitations, so we enjoy easy communication with our son via e-mail and phone. He even gets to come home once in a while. I certainly would not worry about the “remoteness” of Middlebury. You will be able to have as much contact with your young adult as s/he will allow.
If I had my way, I would be THRILLED if my son were at Middlebury.
Lake Jr. attends a college which family and friends describe as “the middle of nowhere.” The college was a good fit and he loves it. But as I have said here on CC before, the place is a major bear to get to. The place has its charms but I did not find anything funny about arriving late at the, ahem, “airport” sprinting out to the curb to call a cab, only to find that there was absolutely NO WIRELESS PHONE service (and literally only one taxi company). My wireless carrier, much to my shock, had no service in the area, despite there being a major national tourist destination nearby. I told that story so many times during Freshman Orientation that I couldn’t laugh anymore. Haven’t been back since but I keep tabs on the whippersnapper by phone calls and through his campus internet radio show.
One of the benefits of isolated schools is that most make study abroad (or in Washington, etc.) opportunities abundant. They realize that there are experiences students cannot have in the middle of nowhere. Not to say that many urban schools aren’t also accommodating on this front,of course, but it’s also a reminder that at least from a student perspective, it’s not either/or.
For the parent, it can be tough when a student is in an isolated school because getting in and out can be a real hassle. My son was in an isolated school in western Pennsylvania and I really hated it – things came up that required him to come home a few times but that was pretty much impossible without access to a car, so I had to drive all the way there to get him, and the weather was really atrocious (driving in western pa in a whiteout, not good). The closest airport was two hours away. They had a bus at Thanksgiving and Christmas but that was it – no way to leave at other times. Then when we need some community services outside the college for him, the choices were extremely limited.
He transferred to a school in a small city and that is much better because there are a few buses every day that he can catch and use to get out of town and much more in terms of community services. I feel much better knowing that he can get home if he needs to without my having to take a day off work.
Personally, as a student, I went to a SLAC similar to Middlebury my first year and transferred out, to a school in a city. The academics were terrific, but I never really connected to the student population and the isolation was unbearable.
Nephew attended an isolated elite college. He hated it by mid-sophomore year. He wanted very much to transfer, but changing schools would have affected his financial aid/scholarships, and reluctantly he stayed. Did a semester abroad which ended up being the highlight of his college experience, he does not remember his undergraduate experience with a lot of fondness.
D went to Dartmouth and loved it – despite having reservations about the location. I think one of the earlier posts on this thread had a very good point in noting the deep connections that alumni of isolated schools have with each other. Transportation was really the only issue, compounded by us living on the other side of the country, but it’s all do-able. We learned how to Skype, but mainly kept in touch by texts & email, since those were easier to deal with the time difference.
D attends an LAC in upstate NY, about 30-40 miles north of Albany, so isolated by NYC standards but maybe not so much from other perspectives. Our biggest issue was transportation. The school had assured us that they ran shuttles for school breaks and that both the trains and busses were convenient but that just isn’t so. Every single time she came home her first year it was a pain. The busses and trains took 8-10 hours ( for a trip that can be done in 4.5 - 5 w/no traffic) if in fact they ran at all. We had one bus cancelled while she sat in the bus station trying to get home for a family wedding ~ thanks Peter Pan 
Getting to the bus and train station cost $60 each time, so the RT expense was over a $100 each trip. She had a car at home for around town but it just wasn’t reliable enough for the 250 mile trip back and forth to school. She now has a new car and will be taking the trip for the first time by herself at Thanksgiving (a family member followed her up at the beginning of the year).
Not everyone has a positive experience. Neither my D nor my S ended up liking how isolated their small liberal arts schools are, though the education in both is top notch. Nothing against the schools at all. In fact, during recruiting, they both said outright their school wasn’t for everyone.
Honestly, this is very individual, especially as you grow and change over the 4 years. Usually the problem is not freshman year, when everything is new and interesting, but later.
Without going over positives (people have covered them), some negatives to small relatively isolated LACs are:
- it is very hard to get up and go--anywhere. If you own a car you can drive somewhere, but it's usually somewhere rural. Physically it can feel confining. If you like to unwind in nature - hiking, skiing - the schools are much less confining. If you unwind by getting out, going clubbing, eating/shopping out, experiencing life outside of the small college environment, the school can feel very confining.
- You are more dependent on your campus for your social life, and this can be great if you click with a group of friends, but bad if you change, or outgrow them, or want to expand somewhere.
- Yes, it's true you can communicate via phones but it's not the same.
I agree with NEPatsGirls about transportation. Just something to budget. Each time my S or D wanted to come home, RT expense was at least $150 and it took forever. Sometimes my D missed campus bus sign up. My S rents a car now each time because the process took so long otherwise, and that costs $200 RT excluding gas, tolls.
Parents who have kids who have gone to such schools, what’s it been like?
My D attends Cornell College in very small town Mt. Vernon, IA. My husband and I attended there as well, and although it is still small town, technology has made that a non-issue. I send care packages via amazon; she shops for books and supplies the same way. She did not have a car the first year and was quite happy staying on campus.
She has loved her experience.
If you had your way, would they have still gone?
Any challenges were well worth the education. I know the school, so I know what kind of education she is getting. My son was also just accepted there, and we hope he decides to attend.
Do you feel like the isolation has impeded your communication with your child?
We are able to call, text, or facetime. The impedement to communciation has been my daughter finally finding her place in school and not having the time to contact me!
I basically didn’t bother coming home until the end of semester as the combination of maxed out courseload, part-time work around campus, EC/social activities, and expense meant it wasn’t worth coming home.
That and Thanksgiving fell so close to finals that I felt it was best to stay up on campus, attend Thanksgiving dinner at a Prof’s house/with classmates, and come home to enjoy the winter break.
Some of those social activities included road trips to different college campuses to visit HS friends in the early to mid part of the semesters.
Granted, part of my positive experiences with being on a rural/suburban campus was because I grew up in NYC and I attended a HS where the overwhelming urge was to get out of the city to experience a different environment provided we got full/nearly full FA as most of us felt like major urban cities…been there done that.
That and the campus cultures of some private colleges…notably Columbia and NYU were such that expenses for activities like eating out and clubbing were on the exorbitant side for most of us at the time whereas that wasn’t as much the case with campuses outside major urban areas.
Still felt the cost was quite high when I attended grad classes at one of those campuses despite the fact I was in a much better position to afford those prices after college.
I’ve written about it before, but this hits on one of the most overlooked benefits of a small rural college experience–socioeconomic differences are less visible, less unavoidable. I was dog broke in college, work-study, the whole thing, but my wealthier classmates weren’t eating out in Michelin star restaurants or clubbing–those just weren’t available–they were drinking nasty keg beer alongside me. I’m sure they had nicer vacations, and many of them had cars, but I wasn’t “left out” because I was a scholarship kid, even though the full-pay kids came from some serious, serious family bucks. I didn’t really understand it at the time, but in retrospect it was a huge plus.
This is really two questions. Isolation of the campus and how hard it is to come home.
I went to a small college in the middle of nowhere, literally, but the drive home was only 3 hours. There was also a train or bus.
In contrast, for D1, getting from our New England metro area to one of those Midwest colleges, would have meant TSA, flight to Chicago, transfer flight to that city, 45 min bus ride to town, then something to campus. Probably even harder to get home, considering getting back to that state airport in time to make it all work.
So look at the real transpo situation.
If a campus is active enough- and Midd, Dart, Williams, Hamilton. Skidmore, Bates, etc, are, you don’t always need the off campus diversions. It can be nice to be near a take-out restaurant or coffee shop, but it isn’t always vital to be.
Also, one great thing about the close-knit friendships formed on such campuses, especially if the campus culture was one which fosters a strong ethic of helping those with less is that when there were expensive activities involved, many of the upper/upper-middle class students were more than happy to spot more financially constrained students…whether temporarily or even insistently refusing to accept repayment.
Benefited a bit from that as a FA/scholarship student and nearly a decade after college have had the opportunity to return the favor as some older college classmates who spotted me in undergrad were hit hard by the 2008 recession and needed serious financial help.
I can’t think of an expensive activity during our time on campus. Ok, we went to a big concert in DC and tickets were maybe $12. Occasionally, we went our for dinner or for a middle of the night breakfast at the all-night diner.
Granted, that was back then. But my daughters didn’t have any de rigeur expensive things going on, either. Their wealthy friends might travel with their families during a break, but I don’t consider that a peer (group) activity. Their friends were not running off to shop in boutiques on college weekends (there doesn’t tend to be an avenue of boutiques or Sephora around isolated campuses) or hang with IB types at chi chi happy hours. Instead, there were on-campus concerts and events. (Prospective applicants can check the school’s calendar.)
Of course those things may be available in large, not-isolated cities. And of course my kids knew others with cars. But isolated, by it’s nature,means not much to spend on besides those occasional dinners or take-out.