MOST DEFINITELY! Even Irvine doesn’t have the beach party mentality and they are only 5 miles from the coast. Many aren’t swimmable.
This reminds me of something my daughter relayed to me about one of her dorm mates at the beginning of a term. My daughter, from Southern California (SoCal) was sitting in her dorm room with her two roommates, from Northern California (NorCal), and they were talking.
In walks a girl, from two doors down, with a swimsuit on. The 3 roommates assumed the girl was going to the pool, until the girl asked:
“How do I get to the beach? When I asked my roommate, she just laughed. Why wont she tell me how to get there?”
So “Mary” explained: “The nearest beaches are in San Francisco, but no one swims there. You have to take a train into SF and drive out to the beach.”
The girl was in disbelief and said:
“NUH-UH!!” This is a California school! It’s SUPPOSED to be near a beach! That’s part of the reason I came here!"
She was from OOS. Apparently, Geography is not taught well in the High Schools. She thought they were kidding and she asked my SoCal daughter, “For real! How do I get there?” My daughter told her that she hadn’t yet traveled to the coast from Davis.
(Yes, NY is HUGE!! My eldest daughter attended SUNY Buffalo. )
On the topic Skidmore in NY - Skidmore is closer to my daughter’s college in Vermont than it is to NYC. It is actually as quick to drive to Boston from Skidmore as to NYC.
Except that I would have described it as being as LONG a drive. It’s about 3 hours north of NYC, about 3 hrs west of Boston. And the fact is, a 16 yr old college student with neither a driver’s license nor a car, probably would be staying on campus.
People fly into Albany International Airport, about 40 minutes away. Skidmore is in Saratoga Spring, which has a population of 28,000, in a county of 230,000.
On the other hand, UVA is in Charlottesville, a city of 47,000, in a county of 110,000 and a metro of 230,000. The closest international airport to UVA is about an hour and 40 minutes away in Richmond.
It is easier for an international student to get to Skidmore than to get to UVA, and I think that Charlottesville does not have a vastly larger number of things to do and places to go for a 16 year old than does Saratoga Springs.
Unc has just changed access to its CS major in order to limit the number of students. The system seems a bit murky and seems to depend on whether you manage to take certain classes that will be capped meaning luck would play a role on top of hard work and talent. Go ask questions on the unc board perhaps.
A discussion of those changes appears here too:
Skidmore is in Saratoga Springs, a wonderful town with spas, restaurants, races, movie theaters, etc. I agree it’s similar to a classic New England Town in Vermont. That’s the school I’d pick if I were you.
