<p>^^Please be logical. Do you care to clarify your thinking? </p>
<p>Do you realize: you just leapt from a quoted sentence about student demographics to your thumbs-down review of the architecture? Is there any connection?</p>
<p>Brandeis architecture is often described in terms of a lot of close-together buildings and not enough land. Lots of new construction. It feels tight for those who love green fields or ivy.</p>
<p>if you want to ONLY judge a school and the place you'll spend your life for four years based upon campus aesthetics, then don't pick Brandeis. </p>
<p>however, i would hope that nobody interested in coming to Brandeis anyway would be that unbelievably shallow. i truly have never been happier than i am now as a Brandeis student. yes, the campus is dreary but it's only because when Brandeis was first founded and through its formative years it didn't enjoy an endowment large enough to spend money on its physical plant. however, now, under the leadership of President Reinharz we are fortunate to have an endowment large enough to support a total enhancement of the campus.</p>
<p>I'll throw in a pitch for NEU. There is a decent Jewish population, dining hall has a kosher area....total student pop is about 15K, good engineering program.</p>
<p>CMU. nice looking Temples close to the college. About 10K students total undergrad-grad students. Suburban. Well known engineering school. Enough Jewish students where S roomed with jews (3 and 2 years) and are his best friends. (triple occupancy dorm rooms) He also roomed with an Indian for 2 years, and went to this gentleman's cousin's wedding in India as a honored guest. (DS had an microsoft internship in India and had a project in the city of the wedding)</p>
<p>The only reason I mentioned Brandeis' campus was because even though it might have fit the OP's needs for a college with a decent jewish population, there are some elements to the Brandeis that would be a turn off. So I gave the OP a heads up that yes, one of Brandeis' major flaws is its campus; so it's important to keep that in mind. Brandeis is a great school, it's all about priorities.
And caring about campus asthetics doesn't make one shallow. After all, you will be living there for four (or more) years. Would you buy a house if you hated how it looked, both inside and out, even if it was in an ideal location with a good price?->Probably not without a serious amount of thinking, and even then, I can imagine a good amount of people turning it down.</p>
<p>might also want to look at University of Rochester.</p>
<p>Are we to be a nation of minorities and majorities that distinquish clans and affilations? We are finishing perhaps 16 years of political and religious partinship in the US. Enough. </p>
<p>Perhaps a school and student body that doesn't care?
It was a one-eyed, one-horned, flyin' purple people eater.</p>
<p>Brandeis' campus is all right, though admittedly it's a hodgepodge of styles.</p>
<p>However, I would not recommend putting the campus look of any college high, or even midway. on the list of factors affecting choice.</p>
<p>Once a student settles into a school, the campus becomes "home" with or without great aesthetics. The buildings, the lawns, the trees or lack of them, etc., become part of the student's environment for four years (if not more) and when graduation time comes certain spots will have found a warm place in the student's heart, irrespective of logic or aesthetics. I went to a college with some pretty weird buldings (most campuses have at least one), including one castle-like structure, and they didn't bother me a bit. They were just part of the neighborhood.</p>
<p>Thanks for all the great advice and input.</p>
<p>Paying3tuitions- Thanks for taking the time to write so much about UB. I think my son will apply and take a look. From reading hte UB thread, it seems as though students are on the North and South campus. Dorms on both and take buses back and forth. Is North-uptown and South campus- downtown?</p>
<p>Jewishness- not a major concern but i want my son to feel comfortable. Hillel is good if he chooses to participate and especially if there is a low percentage of students on campus. It is nice to know others that share in or celebrate the same holidays. (I went to a Big 10 univ. with a jewish population of about 6%. Of my large group of close friends, both male and female, I was the only Jew. Didn't impact me except major holidays when I was the only one to attend services on campus with a bunch of strangers and my friends didn't have a clue to the holidays. I'd like my kids to blend in and feel comfortable.</p>
<p>CMU would be great but sons stats are not appropriate.
NEU- son does not want a city.
Brandeis- No engineering program</p>
<p>Anyone have any knowledge of URI, Delaware, Maryland, New Hampshire, V-tech. Any opinions on how he would do at any of these?</p>
<p>Thanks for your continued input. All suggestions welcome.</p>
<p>diversity matters.</p>
<p>I just got back from dropping off my kid at SUNY Buffalo (going to be an RA this year), and have a few additional comments. I posted a college-visit review that you might find helpful. I did a cut & past of comments by paying3tuitions, with a few additional comments in brackets. </p>
<p>"I see that all the undergraduates are at the north campus, while the south campus involves some of the graduate schools, hospitals, and particularly the medical and dental graduate students. Roswell Cancer Research and the Erie County Medical centers are all downtown, so the med and dental schools are there." </p>
<p>[The South Campus also has the school of architecture, the school of nuclear technology, and will be the new home of the school of pharmacy in a year or two. The long-term plan is to establish a medical campus downtown. A new Engineering Building is under construction on the North Campus near the bookstore.]</p>
<p>"In other words, undergrad dorms are NOT divided between uptown and downtown. Undergrads live and study uptown."</p>
<p>[Correct - most freshmen end up in the Ellicott complex on the North Campus. Some freshmen do get assigned to the dorms on South Campus. Since the South Campus adjoins little stores, a movie theatre and has a subway downtown, some students prefer to live on South Campus anyway even though most of them will have classes on North Campus.].</p>
<p>"As an undergrad, everyone he'd be involved in, and classes, would be on the north campus (Amherst). A train and trolley system link the two campii. Just please check the website to make sure the engineering is also in the north campus, and if so, you're really all set."</p>
<p>[There is no train or trolley system - there are only buses, which run fairly frequently. The new engineering building on North Campus might eliminate that issue for your kid anyway.]</p>
<p>"It has big brick buildings, green fields and green between the buildings if that's what is a real campus. I'd say the criticism that the brick building architecture is very plain and undistinguished is accurate."</p>
<p>[The academic buiildings on North Campus are located on the "spine" in the center of the campus, with dorms on the outside of the ring. It's flat and the few trees are pretty stunted from the wind and cold. Not a real pretty campus, but it clearly has a lot of room to expand (consistent with the plan for significant growth that was announced last year). On the other hand, the academic buildings on North Campus are connected with tunnels and bridges which are very convenient in the winters. If the campus looks unusually quiet for the number of students, it's because the students are walking around inside instead of on sidewalks.] </p>
<p>"It's not a sidewalk campus. Ringing the uptown campus in Amherst are many medium size and small suburban malls, the kind where you drive in and park right in front of some dozen small stores. It's quite accessible to students. I go often to the nearest movie house there, which is a Dipson theater with 2 films showing, but then there are carsful of UBuff students 3 miles away at the cineplex, too." </p>
<p>[My kid said there is a bus shuttle to the mall twice a week. Parking is free but restricted for freshmen, if you want to have a car. A car isn't necessary, but it's nice if you want to do a Barnes & Noble or grocery store run since the little malls, restaurants, Wal-Mart, groceries etc. are nearby but too far to walk.]</p>
<p>"I've heard that the north campus shuttle heads for the south campus without stopping to let passengers on or off, which might be due to the inbetween neighborhoods that have severe poverty and some crime. But the studnets speed through the neighborhoods on buses that don't interact with those neighborhoods except to hurtle through them without stopping." </p>
<p>[There is no trolley. The in-between residential neighborhoods aren't poor or very dangerous, although the South Campus does border on an area of apartments and rental houses servicing the university, which does have higher crime rates. The buses that go between campuses don't stop in the neighborhoods since they are campus buses only. There is now at least one apartment complex with its own shuttle (Sweetwater).]</p>
<p>As I dropped my kid off, I commented on the fact that I was disappointed with the appearance of the campus and that the dorms looked somewhat beat up. My kid told me that he absolutely loves SUNY Buffalo, and that one of the things he likes about it is that it's unpretentious. He said he can wear jeans, sweatpants or even PJ bottoms to class, and no one cares. He said he's having a great time, has made some really great friends, and mentioned the Speaker's Program and some of the other opportunities that he had last year as a freshman. Needless to say, the cost is also great and my kid got generous merit aid. His advisor has been very helpful, and he's had no problem getting any of the classes that he needs for his major. </p>
<p>He said that he didn't find the 300-student freshman science classes to be particularly difficult as long as he did the work (he took bio, chem and calculus both semesters). He did mention that the engineering kids were assigned projects very quickly, and that he thought it looked like one of the tougher majors.</p>
<p>Wow Neon, great info.</p>
<p>Definitely worth an application. Do you know the projected date of completion of the Engineering building? In the end, the college choice will be my sons as he has to like a school and it has to "fit" him. (Helping try to find those schools as he really has no clue to any of them other than his brothers college.)</p>
<p>Found this on the UB site:</p>
<p>"UB Engineering's New Building
Scheduled for Completion in 2011</p>
<p>UB Engineering is excited about its new building which is scheduled for ground-breaking in 2009 and for ribbon-cutting in 2011.</p>
<p>As a new home to both Computer Science and Engineering and Electrical Engineering, the facility will greatly expand our faculty, laboratory and academic teaching spaces and in so doing greatly extend the scope and quality of UB Engineering's cutting-edge research programs and educational activities."</p>