Quick East Coast College tour trip. Need input

At 6 pm the traffic has shifted. 2 and a half hours. Amherst to Providence. 91 South to Turnpike to 146. It will just be variable though expected in certain places and again I might just be very unlucky to have hit bad traffic. Though the Mass turnpike is filling up.

Two recommendations for restaurants in downtown Providence: Birch and Oberlin. Both are near the Trinity Rep Theater. My D is an MFA acting student at Brown and we go to see her shows. Birch and Oberlin are small plate restaurants with excellent offerings and interesting drinks. We usually go before or after a performance. We have never stayed overnight because we only live 64 miles away. When D went for an admitted student weekend she stayed at The Biltmore.

@Mastadon I do regret mentioning it actually and that I didn’t care for the Prov to Amherst drive. Taylor might be smarter or more politically savvy not to mention it.

@ThankYouforHelp Yes. Going through Belchertown usually turns out faster than going to Chicopee and North from there which adds an extra half hour. I’d be surprised if OPs navigation directs her differently.

Geoff’s Superlative Sandwiches near the Brown campus is really good. Two for one on Tuesdays.

Was the only thing I liked about Brown and Providence.

@ThankYouforHelp It is 70 miles (if you are lucky to have no traffic on 146) or 90 miles if you have to take 95 495 to the turnpike to Palmer. At Palmer, you either go north through Belchertown to Amherst about 20 miles or a half hour travel. Or you continue to Chicopee about 18 miles, 25 minutes and then travel from Chicopee to Amherst another half hour (20-25 miles). Unless you know a better route, OPs GPS will take her through Belchertown.

@northwesty Knead Donuts is really popular too. https://www.yelp.com/biz/knead-doughnuts-providence My friends who work at Brown might be obsessed with them.

The local schools with the most application overlap with Brown are:
Tufts, Wesleyan and Amherst.

Brown has 6300 undergrads
Tufts has 5300 undergrads
Wesleyan has 3900 undergrads
Amherst has 1800 undergrads

Amherst is the most rural and Tufts is the most urban - Tufts also owns a lodge in the White Mountains of New Hampshire and a 12th century priory in the French Alps. Tufts and Brown are closest geographically. About an hour apart (with no traffic).

All are academically liberal but different. Brown and Amherst have eliminated the breadth requirement associated with a traditional liberal arts curriculum in order to increase flexibility while Tufts and Wesleyan have added “experimental colleges” in order to increase flexibility. Tufts has core language/culture requirement in order to impart a global perspective and empathy for other cultures.

All are politically liberal with Wesleyan and Tufts being more politically active.

They all have liberal cultures, but each is a little different. Wesleyan and Tufts tend to exhibit less of a social hierarchy.
The cultures tend to reflect their respective religious upbringing. Amherst was founded by Congregationalists via a split from Williams. Brown was founded by northern Baptists. Tufts by Universalists. Wesleyan by Methodists. Harvard started out as Puritan/Congregationalists but when it was taken over by more liberal Unitarians, the core Congregationalists split to form Yale. The Universalists were the most liberal but ran out of money and merged with the Unitarians to form the Unitarian/Universalist church around 1960. Tufts is a top feeder school for the Peace Corps and more focused on community service.

Brown is the most selective. Amherst and Tufts are a little less so and Wesleyan the least selective, but all have holistic admissions and are selective enough that admission decisions will appear random. They must all be considered reaches.

Hard to tell which is the best fit.

You can visit all four with the same driving distance as Brown/Wesleyan/Amherst by flying into Providence and out of Boston (or vice/versa).

Brown is in the single digits. Amherst, Tufts and Wesleyan are within 2 pct points of each other.

In terms of number of applicants, it’s

Tufts - 20, 233

Wesleyan - 12, 453 and

Amherst - 8,406

in that order.

Actually, those were Class of 2020 numbers. For Class of 2021 it was:
In terms of number of applicants, it’s

Tufts - 21,101

Wesleyan - 12,453 and

Amherst - 9,200

in that order.

Conn College could be a safety for this applicant. It’s admit rate is 38% versus Tufts which is 14%. CC is not a bad fit for Brown lovers.

If you were going to work your way around from Providence to Boston or the other way. You should consider adding in some safer schools in Boston like Northeastern, BC or BU.

@circuitrider Actually you are right. Both Amherst and Tufts now have the same 14% admit rate.

Conn cares a lot about interest and if you visit be prepared to interview.

I wouldn’t count on it as a safety especially if the student is high stats (Tufts Syndrome might apply more to Conn than to Tufts these days…).

What about Clark? Right between Boston and Amherst. That might be a safety it’s a “college that changes lives” and has a LEAP Scholar program that looks very cool (and is at least full tuition). My D liked it, I didn’t (mainly the neighborhood was a turn-off to me).

@OHMomof2 Would Conn College be a low match assuming she is a competitive Brown candidate?

Clark is in Worcester which is a bit of run down place IMO. Some of the WPI students have trouble finding good off campus housing.

Wesleyan, Trinity, Connecticut College

@citymama9 Excellent point with Trinity if your going to Wesleyan, you’d be right near there.

I think my girl would think Knead Donuts near Brown is worth the freshmen/women 15 @gearmom

@Mastadon We need to take a closer look at Tufts. Thanks for the suggestions

@gearmom hard to say. Conn seems to have its own admissions criteria that are hard to predict to me. It doesn’t care that it is heavily female - seems to want that, actually. Admit rate for men is lower than that for women which is the complete opposite of almost every other LAC (and many Us) where men frequently have an advantage. When you visit you do the info session, tour and then interview. That’s optional but…really not.

We did visits on a trip very similar to what OP is asking about (we did BU, NEU, Conn, Amherst and Clark, not in that order). My D was WL by Conn, where she was well over the 75% mark for scores. She visited…but did not interview. I too had it in mind as a safer alternative to her first choice (which was Amherst, where she is now). She chose Conn over Wes or Trinity because of the location and the lack of Greek life.

D didn’t apply to Clark in the end. It doesn’t meet full need (so LEAP would have been the only way she’d have gone) and the area was just depressing to me. Not dangerous, just…kind of dead. But the campus itself at Clark was lovely.

@OHMomof2 Wow. Surprising about the Conn WL versus Amherst admit. Guess you never know and an interview is worth the effort. But good for her getting into Amherst.