<p>Thanks, Berkeley rocks!!!!</p>
<p>Atu23, Michigan's campus is impressive (the medical school and hosptials are stunning, the Law quad and Rakham are beautiful, the Diag is nice, North Campus is, as you would put it, green and open etc...), but it is not pretty. I would never list Michigan as a gorgeous campus. Neither are Cal or Columbia. I would say all three of those schools are impressive but they aren't gorgeous or beautiful.</p>
<p>Mount Holyoke looks really pretty in the pictures</p>
<p>alexandre, how do you distinguish impressive with beautiful, then? I mean, will you then agree on listing Wake Forest or Chicago (as the urban option)?</p>
<p>To me, impressive means a campus with nice, well kept buildings, clean pathways, large, state-of-the-art facilities, etc... For example, Michigan has the largest university clock tower in the US, the largest football stadium in the US and an incedible hospital. A gorgeous campus is one that has beautiful landscaping and natural beauty (lakes, oceans, mountains etc...) mixed in with impressive architecture.</p>
<p>"cynthiaR, how did you find the actual campus of Bowdoin and the town of Swarthmore?"</p>
<p>Bowdoin's campus: pretty in a sort of typical-pretty LAC campus way. Lots of grass and trees and nice buildings, but nothing special. This doesn't really fit, but I had lunch there, and the food was AMAZING, it kind of overshadowed the rest of the visit for me :-)
Town of Swarthmore: I didn't really explore the town too much. It seemed like a nice suburban area. I was a little surprised it wasn't more crowded and congested, being so close to Philly, but it wasn't bad at all. I have a cousin who lives in Philadelphia, so I spent more time there.</p>
<p>There have been several threads about this topic in the past. It always seems to come down to the same 10 schools showing up in each list:</p>
<p>Virginia
William & Mary
Dartmouth
Colgate
Bucknell
Middlebury
Swarthmore
Kenyon
Stanford
Cornell</p>
<p>alexandre, sounds fair then, so I guess Colgate will very well be a gorgeous campus in that sense. Thanks to the people who suggested it, I saw the pictures yesterday and it really looks like out of this world</p>
<p>What about Duke and Yale? Their architecture and chapels share many similarities. Both campuses are stunning as well.</p>
<p>
[quote]
cynthiaR, how did you find the actual campus of Bowdoin and the town of Swarthmore?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Jamie: The "town" of Swarthmore is a little hard to describe to a west coaster because it is so "east coast".</p>
<p>It is actually not a "town" in any conventional sense. In the 1860s when Swarthmore was founded, it was farmland outside Philadelphia with train tracks and a few big old farm houses. By the 1920's or 30's, Philadelphia had grown outwards to engulf the area and the land around Swarthmore was built up with nice, mostly two-story houses. Now, of course, metro Phila is 5 million people and the true suburbs are much further out. The Village of Swarthmore is an incredibly nice litte close-in residential neighborhood of expensive older homes surrounding the college. Although it's completely different in style, it's a similar kind of neighborhood to the area around Atherton, Menlo Park, Palo Alto in the Bay Area -- a lot of quirky old houses that sell for a ton of money. Very heavily wooded, massive old trees. Really nice.</p>
<p>But, a half mile from campus (walking distance), you pop out on to a major commercial strip along the Baltimore Pike -- a big mall, Starbucks, Target, Best Buy, restaurantes, etc. Very typical of the older east coast cities -- busy commercial streets with gorgeous old tree-lined neighborhoods tucked in just around the corner. Once you are in Swarthmore, you would have no clue that a mall and a "miracle mile" is within walking distance.</p>
<p>Here's the Yahoo Satellite image that makes it easy to see. The green area in the middle of the photo is the campus. The mall is directly to the north and the road the mall is on is lined with shopping centers.</p>
<p>Five miles south of Swarthmore is the city of Chester along the Delaware river, which is pretty hard-core urban "rough neighborhood"/industrial. Again, not unlike Palo Alto where you don't have to drive too far to go from ritzy to industrial.</p>
<p>Eleven miles to the center of downtown Philadelphia - the Liberty Bell, etc.</p>
<p>CynthiaR and interesteddad-Thanks to you both for your responses! I especially enjoyed your views on the food Cynthia, and interestedad's comparison of Swarthmore to the area around Menlo Park, etc. (indeed, this did manage to give a "westcoaster" a bit better image :) )</p>
<p>The Menlo Park analogy is probably not 100% accurate because Swarthmore is not the ultra-ritziest neighborhood in Phila. Those neighborhoods would be along the "Main Line" surrounding Bryn Mawr and Haverford, northwest of downtown. Similar heavily-wooded old neighborhoods, but much larger "mansion" style homes with huge lawns, etc. </p>
<p>Swarthmore has a few of those along the main road adjacent to the campus, but most of the town was built as more modest homes -- three/four bedrooms, smaller two-story houses from the late 1800s and early 1900s. If I recall, there are areas around Atherton and Menlo Park that were originally built with fairly modest homes.</p>
<p>One of the most striking things about the southeast PA region is the widespread use of gray stone as the building material for older houses instead of brick or wood.</p>
<p>You can add Princeton and Duke to the above list, but to some the campuses are interchangeable.</p>
<p>CSUMB is built on old military land with old barracks scattered around, but the new campus buildings are beautiful. The campus is actually really nice. CSUMB is a great school, but it is a growing school. It's only 10 years old.</p>
<p>Boston College, hands down (yes I'm biased):</p>
<p>Towering gothic architecture on a hill overlooking Chestnut Hill reservoir, plus rolling hills, fields and forests they just acquired last year. </p>
<p>Combined with a subway stop on campus and the city of Boston beyond, I'd say No Contest.</p>
<p>Sure, here are a few shots of the new BC "campus" which is actually just land they bought adjacent to the old (gothic) campus:</p>
<p>As for the T (Boston's trolley/subway): it costs $1.25 to get anywhere on the system. The B-line which stops on campus is actually one of the slower lines, so a better option is the D-line (5 min walk from upper campus or take the BC shuttle from lower campus)</p>
<p>Ok, bcheightsman, bc deserves to make the list!!!!</p>
<p>what about Indiana Univ - bllomington.... I believe that is impressive , gorgeous and simply put BREATHTAKING.
As far as duke goes all I know is the area around the campus is extremely unsafe and is really filthy.... so that hampers its ranking to a fair extent.</p>
<p>hey guys, is it true that New Haven is also filthy and unsafe? I've nothing against Yale, but that's what people say</p>
<p>I have to say, I'm a bit partial to Columbia's campus; but I spent some time on the Emory University campus and it is very nice, and for a surprise on the list, despite it's small size, Valdosta State University in southern GA is very nice--all the buildings are very Spanish in architecture and it has big willow trees with Spanish moss.</p>