<p>My daughter is now a second-year. She was both shy and a little awkward with other people before she went; she felt welcomed and has made quite a few friends, in-house and out. She says one thing she really values about Smith is that the surface of people is really unimportant–no one cares what you wear, who you were before you came, what your sexual orientation is, any of that stuff. For her, Smith simply accepts you as you are. </p>
<p>As for student competitiveness–well, I think there are very competitive people at any school. They are not the norm at Smith, but they are there, generally (in my own, dated, experience) in the areas that will be more competitive once you’re out of college: i.e., economics, pre-professional-type majors. But it’s not cut-throat, in that while some people are more interested in grades than others, it’s uncommon to be mean about it. (there is another thread about first-group scholars on this board–I had to think about what that meant, even though I was first-group all the way through, I think. It just didn’t really matter at the time, and certainly no one but the people involved knew about it. There wasn’t any fanfare, or posted list, or anything, and as far as I know, there was never any public indication of class standing or anything like that. Even at graduation, I don’t think they announce your latin honors or your prizes, they just list them somewhere on the program.)</p>
<p>The upside is, unlike high school, you can be as smart as you are–no pretense, just a decent amount of humility. Pretty much everyone else is pretty smart, too, so you don’t have to fall over yourself reassuring other people that you’re not really smarter than they are.</p>
<p>Sorry I should have elaborated on the mixed classes thing and yes The Dad said it better than me My D experience has been largely collegial - she got her job this year through a recommendation from a friend to a faculty member which she really appreciated and at exam time there is a lot of supportive group studying.</p>
<p>I think you’ve nailed the essential empowerment of Smith: you’re allowed to be who you are, both personally and intellectually. You gain confidence in yourself and in your ideas, which in turn makes you more comfortable in social and professional situations.</p>
<p>Of course, it’s easy to idealize Smith. For instance, you can grow in the above ways at another college. And while the pettiness of high school is largely absent at Smith (let’s face it – even mature women can be petty!), that’s also the case at other academically competitive schools. What is different at Smith is the close-knit female community and its size. It’s more than just a circle of friends. It’s an environment.</p>
<p>As for the dorms, there’s a subtle distinction between colleges offering various levels of housing and the colleges sorting students into housing via financial status. I’m not wild about the former but the latter would be just plain icky: you could just stamp $ on some students’ foreheads and the “cents” sign on others.</p>
<p>As to paid-for “premium” housing, I don’t think colleges need any more proxies for entitlement based on family wealth. Just getting into and attending a private school as a heavy thumb on the scale in that direction as it is.</p>
<p>Back to MWFN: yes, it is easy to idealize Smith and because my D had a near-ideal experience, I constantly must check myself against doing so. I’ve kept in touch with the mom of one of this year’s first-years from our area and her D is apparently having a fabulous time…you can think someone is a good fit but you never really know until they actually experience it. So I always have a bit of “fingers crossed” that I don’t get an e-mail from someone who is disappointed after I’ve waxed so eloquent…or at least at length…about Smith.</p>
<p>^ People transfer for a lot of different reasons. It would be impossible to make a blanket statement about the “kind of people” who transfer or about the reasons why they do it. I don’t think most do it because of the women’s college atmosphere, if that’s what you’re asking. </p>
<p>No college decisions is 100% foolproof. At any college or university you will find students who ended up hating it so much that they transferred to another school. No one can promise you that you won’t end up transferring from Smith. But fear of failure doesn’t seem to me like a very good reason not to try, if you think Smith is good for you generally. And there’s nothing wrong with deciding to transfer colleges. They say that the crooked path has its dividends.</p>
<p>Okay. Thanks for everything. I’m really anxious/excited about starting college! My college counselor says I can definitely get into Smith (in fact, she said it’s a safety school) and if I end up going, I really want to be sure it’s the right place for me!</p>
<p>There is no college that some students don’t wind up hating and transferring. From Harvard to Smith to Southwest North-Central Amalgamated Mining & Knitting College.</p>
<p>Very little in life is guaranteed. You do your research, make your informed choice, and take your chances and see how it plays out.</p>
<p>As a side note, being paralyzed for fear of making a mistake is usually worse than making the mistake. (See also, we often can’t choose how we die but we can choose how we live.)</p>
<p>Fwiw, not that we treated it so, but we were told that Smith by one of College Confidential’s owners, a former Smith admissions officer, that was virtually a Safety for my D…“pirouette if not waltz in.” D never felt it a “Safety” at all and was challenged for all four years. (Whereas I think she would have despaired at Skidmore, her true Safety. It was really hard for her to find a Safety that she would have been happy to attend.)</p>
<p>Smith is a unique kind of “safety school” – it has a high acceptance rate, yet offers an education comparable to the other elite LACs. The reason it has a high acceptance rate has less to do with the academics and more with the applicant pool. First, the number of applicants are cut in half because of its single gender nature. And then more don’t apply because they want a co-ed school. Those who are left are generally serious students who care more about their education than about dating – although that doesn’t mean that Smithies don’t want social lives or dates. It’s just a matter of priorities. </p>
<p>I have tried to convince several high school junior/senior to look at Smith, Bryn Mawr, Mount Holyoke, and Wellesley because of the high return. They won’t do it because of either their preconceived notions of single-gender-as-convent schools or because they think they couldn’t possibly get admitted. You can’t know until you try.</p>
<p>In the idiom of the field, “an admissions bargain.” Far easier to get into than the quality of the school would suggest, not that it’s “easy” on an absolute scale…I’ve been disappointed that some applicants who seemed well qualified to <em>me</em> weren’t admitted.</p>
<p>Definitely not a convent, though inclined towards quirky.</p>
<p>I don’t think it would be a good thing to convince undecideds to apply to Smith. Would make the rejection rate go up (never quite figured out why that is a good thing if the students being rejected are qualified), while the admissions value would go down.</p>
My D experience has been largely collegial - she got her job this year through a recommendation from a friend to a faculty member which she really appreciated and at exam time there is a lot of supportive group studying.</p>