<p>We have a little dilemma here, I hope someone can relate or help.</p>
<p>We were going over The List and trying to figure out when/how to get to remaining schools and my daughter decided that she can't see herself at ones that are really small in the middle of nowhere even though there are things she really likes about these schools. </p>
<p>So we look at her list and try to substitute (still have sporty and spirited for instance) but it is not so easy.</p>
<p>Wants:</p>
<p>Sporty, spirited, friendly, artsy.</p>
<p>Not huge </p>
<p>Drinking on weekends is not the primary social activity</p>
<p>East, mid-west, south, mid-atlantic, north </p>
<p>Nearby large town or city, but not in the middle of large city</p>
<p>She is casual, creative, social, but not edgey, not intense. </p>
<p>Any suggestions? </p>
<p>List we were working off of:</p>
<p>Rice
William and Mary (daughter's favorite, so we'll see how the aid comes out)
Michigan ?
Williams
Dartmouth
in-state public
Holy Cross
Villanova
Conn College
U Richmond
Colgate
Carleton
Kenyon</p>
<p>Bard College- more artsy than sporty, near NYC but not in it.
Which in-state public would that be, if you don't mind the question? Some are more arts-friendly than others.</p>
<p>If Williams and Dartmouth, then Amherst (very similar, but much less isolated).</p>
<p>If Carelton and Kenyon, then Oberlin (similar distance from Cleveland vs. Minneapolis, slightly more artsy and less sportsy than Carleton, but very similar, much nearer a city than Kenyon).</p>
<p>If Colgate, then Hamilton (neither one is near anything other than each other, though).</p>
<p>Ithaca College, Bucknell, Franklin & Marshall, Goucher, Bates.</p>
<p>If Michigan isn't huge, what is? Mexico City?</p>
<p>Someone told you Villanova was "artsy"? I guess so . . . if deciding what shoes to wear with that outfit is an art.</p>
<p>She can probably strike Colgate from the list. It is friendly, sporty, and spirited, but it is smack dab in the middle of nowhere and has a strong drinking culture.</p>
<p>What about Northwestern, Wash U, Vanderbilt, and Tufts? All mid-sized schools near cities.</p>
<p>Let me clarify: that WAS the list. Now, we probably need to delete Colgate, Kenyon, probably Williams, etc. Looking for similar schools that are not isolated, not a huge frat or drinking culture.</p>
<p>Hamilton is smaller than Colgate and similar location, not so sporty, and Oberlin is small, more artsy than sporty -- so probably not those. Bucknell, sporty not artsy, small town.
Really hard to find a small-medium school with both sporty/artsy atmosphere. </p>
<p>UMich...yes, bigger than the others, she has relatives near and likes the town and school spirit. But likely won't get enough aid to go, even if admitted, so a long shot anyway.</p>
<p>JHS-- Villanova. Sporty, spirited, location and size ok, possible aid. I know it is not artsy, but the artsy ones aren't so sporty either. Maybe Williams, but then we're back to small and isolated. </p>
<p>Even Northwestern, Wash U, Vanderbilt, Tufts: A lot of mid size ones seem sort of preprofessional not so spirited, may be just my impression.</p>
<p>NJm, state school is her admission and financial safety, so that at least stays put on the list.</p>
<p>I'd suggest she look at Drew in Madison, NJ. It's got one of the top rated theater programs in the country, and is very arts friendly. The campus is absolutely gorgeous. Also, it's on a commuter line less than an hour to NYC. (It's free to students one week per semester; $15 RT otherwise.)</p>
<p>Wheaton (near Boston) is probably also worth a look.</p>
<p>Some of the other schools on your list are decidedly in the middle of nowhere, so you need to do a bit more geo research. (BTW I have to disagree with NJmom...Bard is in the middle of nowhere and FAR from NYC.) Others are extremely competitive (e.g., Williams).</p>
<p>I think you would find those "mid-sized ones" to be plenty spirited. That's certainly the impression I get. The daughter of one set of friends goes to WashU, and that's the aspect she likes most. I don't know about artsy, but when my artsy daughter saw Vanderbilt (as a sophomore in college), she said that she could have gone somewhere like that -- she would have just ignored the frats and hung out with the music kids.</p>
<p>Oberlin is not small. At 700/class, I think it's meaningfully bigger than many of the other LACs you had on the list. And one of my daughter's friends was a recruited athlete there, and at some good Div I colleges. (She is also somewhat arty.) They have real sports programs.</p>
<p>Williams doesn't have frats. It does have drinking, as does roughly everywhere, and it does have isolation. So does Dartmouth. Williams is kind of known for a good sporty/arty balance, though. You may also want to think about Wesleyan in that regard. It's a little isolated (although not far from Hartford or New Haven, and not hard to get to NYC or Providence), and definitely on the artsy end of things, but I know quite a number of serious jocks who have chosen to go there, artsy and not, male and female. It's also bigger than Amherst or Williams. (Amherst's small size is deceiving, because of the huge 5-college student concentration in an area that's not much smaller than the University of Michigan campus.)</p>
<p>Rice is smack-dab in the middle of Houston, the 4th largest city in the u.s.</p>
<p>Have you looked at The Princeton Review book, The Best 366 Colleges? They have lists of top 20 schools in different categories like "Best Classroom Experience" and "Campus is Tiny, Unsightly, or Both".</p>
<p>Let's see...from your list, Oberlin is #20 on the list called "Reefer Madness" (How widely used is marijuana?) and #10 on "Dodgeball Targets" (Based on a combination of questions concerning intercollegiate and intramural sports, the popularity of the greek system), and #14 on "Birkenstock-wearing tree-hugging, clove-smoking vegetarians". UMich is #9 on "Jock Schools".</p>
<p>Quality of life rating at Villanova is 97%....that's really good.
Wash U has 99%, even better...but they are not need blind.</p>
<p>William and Mary didn't make the book.</p>
<p>Anyway, you get the idea. Great book...you might want to pick it up!</p>
<p>Yeah, great book! You can tell by the finely-honed, sensitive technique of using b.s., hyperbolic lists. "Dodgeball Targets"? That's wonderful. Really useful information. Michigan is #9 on "Jock Schools"? All, what?, 25,000 undergraduates? Or just, say, 17,000 of them, leaving a Harvard-and-a-half of non-jocks? Or maybe even fewer than 17,000 jocks?</p>
<p>The rankings are all based on surveys of students. Therefore, the book points out, it can't tell you at which schools registration is actually the biggest hassle but rather the schools at which the students are most ticked off about registration hassles.</p>
<p>On "Jock Schools", the subtitle is: Based on a combination of survey questions concerning intercollegiate and intramural sports, and the popularity of the Greek system</p>
<p>Holy Cross is one of the smallest schools (2800) with division 1 sports. 25% of the students are varsity athletes. School provides free bus service to Boston and Providence and local malls every weekend both of which are 40 miles away.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Have you looked at The Princeton Review book, The Best 366 Colleges? ... William and Mary didn't make the book.
[/quote]
Really? This surprises me. It's made it every year I've checked since my oldest d started looking at schools almost 10 years ago. In 2007 the book categorized it as a "best in the southeast" school - it just seems hard to believe it fell completely out of the book in one year. Maybe it didn't make any of the top or bottom 20 lists? It's sometimes alphabetized under "c," and sometimes under "w," I've noticed.</p>
<p>If you like rankings, W & M was 6th in the US among public universities and 33rd overall in the most recent USNews list. </p>
<p>To the OP: I think your d would find that W & M fulfills several of her preferences, but not all. It's an hour from Richmond, and a little less than that from Norfolk/VA Beach. Williamsburg is a moderate-sized city with more shopping/dining/job opportunities than most cities its size, but I don't think it can fill the bill of "nearby large town."</p>
<p>Most of the kids I know from W & M could be described as you've described your daughter. Drinking is not the primary weekend social activity for everyone, nor even a majority - but it is for an appreciable minority, in all honesty. It does not define the campus climate, but it is there.</p>
<p>The financial aid for out of state students is not especially good. W & M does have a strong finaid program for low-income instate students. If your d is a top, top student, she might qualify as a Murray Scholar, which I believe is reserved for 4 incoming students and covers tuition, room, and board. Check out the website - I think students must be nominated by their high schools, and there may be a separate application.</p>
<p>Wheaton is about a 45 minute drive to Boston and even closer to Providence, which is a great small city. The college provides regular transportation to both. The college itself is in the middle of a small suburb with nothing much around it. It's got a solid sports program (no football) and while very competitive is somewhat easier to gain admission to than most of the previously mentioned schools. Conn definitely has its own identity. I visited it with my neice last year -- we both loved it and she will be attending this year. Definitely has its own vibe, which may not be attractive to some, you'd have to see for yourself. The closest city is Providence at 1+ hrs away, with New York and Boston just over 2 hrs away. Train station is only a few miles from campus.</p>
<p>Oberlin: artsy, no fraternities or sororities, 2800 undergraduate students, 40 minutes from Cleveland. More than "artsy" it has a world-class music conservatory on the same campus, the first to offer a jazz program at the conservatory level. For non-musicians, there's all that music pouring out of every window.
It has sports teams, but just doesn't extol athletics above all other endeavors. If that means sport-y, then it's certainly sporty. My D's roommate was on the tennis team.
I don't know what to say about all that granola characterization of Oberlin. Our D's experience was that she could make every choice as a thinking individual. Some of her friends were in food cooperatives, so learned to cook. Others preferred dormitories/cafeteria foods so they could attend to different EC activities and not invest the time. Anyone too "out there" for you can be ignored or worked around better than a huge, socially prominent weekend drinking culture, which Oberlin doesn't have and never did! </p>
<p>Amherst: l800 students, but within a 5-college consortium of approximately 35,000 thanks to: Smith, Hampshire, Mt. Holyoke, and the biggie UMass at Amherst. So it's small within large. No fraternities or sororities. Not isolated, but part of the suburbanizing Pioneer Valley that includes the small, artsy city of Northampton, MA (pop around 30,000). Has more sports attention that Oberlin, and a little less artsy than Oberlin. Intellectually rigorous with a wry, chill sense of humor. Smart, sincere, authentic people at every turn. For activities, don't just look at Amherst; look up the schedule for "Five College Consortium." </p>
<p>I'd look at Wesleyan for her, too! They have the ethnomusicology dept; film studies, and play in a Div-III sports league with Amherst and Williams.</p>
<p>What about these: Swarthmore, Haverford, Vassar? </p>
<p>This may be a case of over thinking your criteria. Almost every school on your original list does not meet your new criteria. Dartmouth, Williams, Colgate are very isolated and extreme drinking schools. Mich is huge and so on.</p>
<p>What is it your daughter really wants in a school? She originally chose schools with big personalities that just can't be switched out for schools in a better location (to her) with no drinking. Sporty and spirited=heavy drinking!</p>
<p>I think she needs to do what most of us do, find colleges she loves for their programs, faculty and student body and then decide if she can live with the location. Nothing is ever perfect.</p>
<p>That might be the problem here. See exactly what "sporty, spirited" means to her, and whether she can work around a big central barfy weekend party scene, or would rather work around other variables.</p>
<p>You're just going to have to start to visit schools and see what vibes your daughter gets from each one. Start with one small, one medium-sized, and one larger. It sounds simplistic, but she'll quickly get an idea of what she likes. Seeing is believing, IMHO. My daughter quickly realized that she did not want to be at a LAC with 1,500 kids. I was sorry to see her eliminate that whole category, but she knew what she wanted!</p>
<p>Also, I will echo the thought that nothing is perfect. Finally, it came down to one criterion for my daughter: If the school didn't have a strong Japanese-language department, it was out. You have to concentrate on what's truly important and filter out the rest.</p>
<p>I think your D is smart to focus on the culture but not to the exclusion of everything else. I think there are isolated schools where it is absolutely not a problem (Grinnel, Oberlin, Beloit, Cornell) because there is so much going on on campus; I think there are more urban schools that feel abandoned on weekends because the kids are all either heading home or doing stuff in the nearby city so you don't have the real "college experience". I think figuring out whether she wants the nearby city as a substitute for campus life (which is what motivates many kids at places like Emerson, Northeastern, Fordham, St. Johns, Queens college) or if she's really concerned that a school without a nearby city will be lacking in things she truly needs (ability to get internships at State capital, TV station, Opera subscription.)</p>
<p>I think the other thing to remind her of is that college is not HS on steroids. A lot of the social divides (jocks and nerds; queen bee's and goths) that can make a kid really miserable in HS are really gone by college if she does her homework. I cannot imagine that she couldn't find a like-minded group of 40-50 people at U. Michigan; she's not going to be friends with the entire Freshman class anywhere in the world anyhow, so as long as the school has the other elements she's looking for, I wouldn't get unduly focused on some of the other elements.</p>
<p>Your characterization of a place like Tufts, for example, seems to me to be looking at college as if it were a bigger version of HS. There are as many poets and free spirits at Tufts as there are kids who are pre-professional.... and by that I assume you mean pre-med since Tufts has a highly regarded Med school but no Law school (but the Fletcher School of diplomacy is world-renowned.)</p>
<p>The other challenging bit is that the sports/drinking thing is either something you can pretty much ignore or something that is pervasive. Suggest you look at a couple of places like Brandeis or Wellesley which are very non-sports oriented to see whether that's the vibe she's talking about. You might want to consider Emory- I think it's got a frat/party hearty reputation in some parts of the country but we know a lot of kids there on the more arty/intellectual spectrum who really love it.</p>