Pros and Cons of Middlebury College

Colleges and Universities A-Z Middlebury College
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I speak from my experience of attending Midd’s diversity fly-in.

PROS
• Beautiful campus and scenery overall.
• Very friendly students, professors, and staff. I randomly walked into a professor’s office and had an hour long conversation about linguistic neo-colonialism.
• Great curriculum, especially in language and science.
• Students have lots of freedom to advocate for themselves and others.
• If you love winter sports, it’s your heaven! I sat next to a ski and snowboard instructor on my flight back who used to coach Mid kids. Heard very great things from her on how the college went out of its way to support students.
• Coming from southern California, I really appreciate its liberal spirits.

CONS
• The food! It badly needs more diversity and flavours. I ate at all of their dining halls, at most it’s decent (but then I’m quite picky). Cross-contamination, though, is a very big deal. You can also cook for yourself and friends if you are fortunate enough to live in one of the college’s “themed houses”.
• This one is not necessarily about the college itself, but I would like to see more students in the library. Maybe most prefer the comfort of their rooms, but the fancy main library and the science library are rather empty.
• Isolated location. Much is said and explained in other posts.
• Small dorm rooms. Mostly suffered by first-years, I was told.

If you’re into language or studying abroad, please give Midd another extra plus on whatever comparison you’re making. Lots of other LACs send their students who decide to study abroad to Midd programs and schools around the globe. Midd is the only institution in the world that offers the Doctor of Modern Languages degree.

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@suzyQ7 , just saw your comment on my December post.

As @OldbatesieDoc so kindly and accurately reminds us, to each his own!

Thankfully, I guess, Middkids are not like “most people.” :slight_smile:

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Our son, now a freshman, loves Midd. We expected him to like it (especially given the price…) but for him it exceeds expectations. Granted it’s not for everyone, though: Middlebury is a small town and Burlington is no NYC–if you want a city experience, it’s not likely not for you.

After talking with a friend whose kids are deciding among various schools I asked him what he most appreciates about Midd and here are his 3 top items:

  1. The food! Our family is mostly vegetarian and he’s been very happy with the options. The milk is amazing, he says, and lots of fresh food. Also, he likes that his id gets him into any meals, no calculating how much he has left on his card. This does indeed make a difference socially, as someone else wrote; one night he went to dinner first with one group of friends, and then to a different hall with others, just to hang out. He says weekend food choices aren’t always as good as weekdays, though.
  1. a close knit community--he feels known, which is what he wanted. my take is that the school really tries to organize things so that students meet each other and professors, and that there is a lot of planning that encourages what seems like spontaneous or lucky interactions.
  2. lots of smart kids and so lots of good discussions. intellectually, the place is stimulating.

Good luck to all making their choices!

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