<p>I'm a prospective student who'd like to get some opinions on what people think of the intellectual atmospheres of these colleges:</p>
<p>UChicago
Reed
Macalester
New College of Florida
Marlboro</p>
<p>Please note that I'm looking for the intellectual drive of the student body, not necessarily the academic rigor. One of the descriptions that most turns me off from a college is when the student body is described as "focused," because from what I can tell that often means a lot of pre-professionals sticking to their class textbooks. I want deep intellectual engaging conversation outside of the classroom among my peers. The five colleges I've listed seem to be known for just that, but feel free to object to that claim or recommend other schools you find equally or more intellectual.</p>
<p>I used to be more interested in NCF, but apparently they’re really big on LSD there (at their “dance parties”), and professors smoke weed with their students. Otherwise, it’s a very intellectual school, and students go to top grad schools.</p>
<p>The students I met while visiting Macalester struck me as very intellectual and intelligent, but not so driven that all they talked about was their class schedules. They’re a very liberal bunch (didn’t bother me), but they seemed enthusiastic, friendly, and academically oriented to me.</p>
<p>Marlboro grad here (History/Asian Studies, Dec 2009)</p>
<p>It’s hit or miss, sort of. Any upperclassman will know his or her stuff (or they’ll drop out with two weeks left, I know quite a few) but I also know a lot who refuse to talk shop outside of tutorial. I was one of them - I’d happily discuss the issues surrounding high modernism a la James C. Scott or the Rosenham experiments and its influence on psychiatric care, but I would adamantly refuse to discuss anything about anything in my plan (British colonialism in the Far East and how it inspired nationalism as a reaction). You’ll get deep, intellectually engaging conversations, but at the same time, plan is so mind-numbingly tiring that sometimes, we just want to drink a beer and stare at the stars.</p>
<p>The freshmen and sophomore classes are a lot more hit-or-miss but you can usually tell who’ll be dropping out and who won’t. Unfortunately, I have to say that by the time I left, a lot of the students are too damn serious about their academics and constantly violates the rule of “do not talk plan to upperclassmen”. There are more vocal cliques - I can’t remember the art kids talking about their work all that much but the Philosophy/Development kids talked about it all the god damn time. Overall though, if you want a deep, intellectual conversation, you’ll get it, as long as you don’t strike up a conversation with an upperclassman first about his or her plan.</p>
<p>We had some real idiots on campus too, but that goes without saying holds true for every school. It’s a bit more pronounced in a small school, that’s all.</p>