@Much2learn I dunno. Is it still 1983?
New Haven and Hyde Park are both much nicer and far safer than they used to be. I would not walk several blocks southeast from the UChicago Law School while waiving a handful of 20s, nor would I walk several blocks northwest from Yale’s campus doing the same, but that’s not the same as pretending that the kids at those schools are living in a fortified bunker.
For a few more photos – with a ranking of campus quads – you can read through this article:
This article says the U of Chicago Police Dept has 140 officers with full police authority. Some might say, “See how safe it is? You have a small army there to protect you.” Others might say , “Why do they need that many officers?”
https://www.chicagomaroon.com/2012/05/25/a-brief-history-of-the-ucpd/
@merc81 some nice pictures in that link, but the accompanying text is nonsense. It looks as though it was written in a foreign language and then run through google translate by someone who knew nothing of American colleges and glanced at the university website for 2 minutes without understanding what he was reading before writing each entry.
For example: the very first entry is for the University of Michigan. There is a main quad at Michigan - its called the Diag. The article doesn’t mention it, and the other quadrangles it is talking about don’t exist (the article confuses a basic dorms for quads. Moreover, the picture shown is of the law school, not the Diag. And the text is hilarious babble.
One of the best lines: “The campus has large sloping hills that go uphill and downhill.” heheh
@ThankYouforHelp : Yes, it would seem that it would be only in an Escher drawing that hills would not have that quality.
Due to the large police force, UChicago actually has one the safer campuses among the schools we looked at.
How about ‘Rank the top 20 campuses by school quality’ ?
Without restricting oneself to the “top 20” national universities, here are some very good LACs and universities I visited that I found aesthetically pleasing (those with asterisks denote my favorite campuses):
Amherst College
Bard College
Bryn Mawr College *
Colgate University *
College of William and Mary
Cornell University *
Dartmouth College *
Duke University
Emory University
Hamilton College
Harvard University
Indiana University-Bloomington *
Kenyon College *
Northwestern University
Pennsylvania State University-University Park
Princeton University *
Rhodes College
Rice University
Stanford University *
Swarthmore College *
Union College
University of Chicago
University of Michigan-Ann Arbor
University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
University of Notre Dame *
University of Virginia *
University of Washington-Seattle *
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Vanderbilt University
Vassar College
Washington and Lee University
Washington University-St Louis
Wellesley College *
Yale University *
I like @Alexandre 's list – no first, no last, appreciative of a wide range of stonework, architectural styles (except maybe modern, though Gehry appears) and scales and inclusive of schools that may be aesthetically challenged in some ways, but still apparently subjectively appealing overall.
Of the original list, I’d say:
1st Tier: Princeton, Yale, Stanford
2nd Tier: Dartmouth, Chicago, Berkeley, Duke, Rice, Notre Dame, Cornell, Vanderbilt
3nd Tier: Harvard, Columbia, MIT, Caltech, Penn, Georgetown, Emory, Hopkins
Haven’t seen: Northwestern, WashU
I’ve seen a number of others not on the original list that are very nice, including: Cambridge (UK), Oxford (UK), West Point, William and Mary, Indiana, Virginia, Sewanee, Middlebury, Washington and Lee, Kenyon, Mount Holyoke, Vassar, Wellesley, University of Richmond, Bryn Mawr, Swarthmore
Others not quite at that level: UCLA, UNC, Williams, Union, Haverford, US Naval Academy, Wesleyan, Penn State, Sweet Briar, Kansas
I have to disagree. Stanford is pretty boring.
I don’t see anything special about Harvard.
I haven’t been to Stanford lately, but have seen several well made video campus tours. The campus looks gorgeous and very well kept, but the Spanish architecture with its red tile roofs made it feel more like a hotel or resort than an educational institution.
I guess I’m too used to the Georgian, neo classical and neo Gothic styles of other campuses to wrap my head around Stanford’s style.
Are most West coast campus architectures like Stanford or is Stanford an exception?
Most West coast colleges do have that classic mission style.
Many, especially the Catholic colleges like Santa Clara and San Diego are more consistent in style and have more stunning landscape architecture than Stanford.
My son, who attended WUSTL, which has very consistent architecture (all stone from the same quarry) mentioned once that he thought the over-all Stanford campus was aesthetically “jarring” because of the wide variety of styles throughout the campus.
Part of it is personal taste, of course
I like Collegiate Gothic, so I like Yale and Chicago. I don’t like colonial, so Dartmouth and Johns Hopkins leave me cold. California mission style is pretty good in my eyes, so Stanford falls in between. I’m not too concerned that an entire campus be consistent, but some people are concerned about that. And so on
Speaking of “jarring,” not all Spanish-style college architecture is in California, near Mexico, or in a location with a large Hispanic influence. I always found the red tile roofs and Spanish look of the University of Detroit’s campus to be stunningly incongruous.
I’ve only seen 8 of those 20 in my lifetime, but Princeton is my favorite campus and town
One of the things I’ve found is the time of year and weather play a role when you visit a school. I think one of the reasons Stanford often rates so high is that the weather is nice when many people visit. In contrast, a cold, gray day when everything on a campus is slushy and muddy puts a damper on the visit.
If someone hasn’t seen a campus in 20-30 years, that needs to be said up front, because there has been a sea change in some cities and campuses during that time, especially along the East Coast. New Haven has been through difficult times, and still has issues, but it’s so much better than it was. But that could have been said about Philadelphia and UPenn and Columbia and NYC during the same period. Chicago is lagging behind these cities in terms of becoming safer, but it is happening. Currently NYC is the safest of the bunch, statistically speaking, ranking among the top 10 in the world with Singapore and Tokyo. Columbia’s campus is so well maintained that they replace the grass (all of it) every year, rolling out new sod each year, and one tour guide explained the outrageous expense for this to me thusly (I’m paraphrasing): “As part of the contract of Ghostbusters being allowed to film there, they agreed to support grounds maintenance. No one thought that the movie would do well, but then it went on to become one of the most loved films of all time.” I sincerely doubt that the tour guide is correct about this. But that’s what he said. Buildings are also kept up nicely IMO. The Central campus does have access points as someone said, but the campus is much larger than that central area. The central area allows it to feel like a community where people gather in the sun and play frisby.
Stanford= super boring, even profs who live there find that it gets boring very quickly.
Princeton= pretty at first, and also super boring, as someone who’s spent a lot of time there and as per several profs who have lived there. And socially competitive as in who has the nicest stuff, that sort of hyper-sensitive competitiveness, so much so that a few I’ve known have gladly given up tenure there to find other places to live. The whole town looks like it was decorated by Laura Ashley
Yale = nice looking but once you discover that the “aging” of the buildings was done intentionally to look old, cracks in windows purposefully made and then “repaired” and “repaired” bricks in sides of buildings, it loses luster IMO. And it’s not done well by New Haven, being the major employer and engine of the economy and not helping much with revitalizing the town it relies on, unlike Penn’s plan to revitalize its surrounding area. But it is the prettiest of the Ivies IMHO
Penn= nice enough but not very memorable but Philly is fun and has great food
Dartmouth= pretty, quaint even, white New England clapboardy, but really really really small and remote. If you don’t like to ski, it’s not the place for you. Unless you drink heavily at the frats. Prob from boredom.
Brown = haven’t seen it
Cornell= pretty, great town, great food, great outdoors and scenery, plenty to do, but cold and remote
Harvard= if it wasn’t Harvard I don’t think people would gush over its looks
What are you kidding me this makes no sense. Emory’s campus is one of the best in America and should be up there. WashU’s campus is gorgeous too.
@merc81 From the link you posted:
That reviewer must have mistaken BU for another college.