<p>Hottest Women's College
Smith College, Northampton, Mass.</p>
<p>With 2,800 students, Smith is the nation's largest women's college, and the first to start an engineering program. It is part of the Five Colleges consortium with nearby Mount Holyoke, Amherst, Hampshire and UMass Amherst. The facilities, particularly the cottage-style houses where students live in groups of 13 to 80, are so attractive that visitors originally preferring a coed college often change their minds. "Smith kind of won me over," says Katie Green, who thought she would go to a school with men. "When else in your life can you get the experience of being surrounded by smart, motivated young women who really care about what they're doing?"</p>
<p>Thanks for the link. Of course, we here were all ahead of the curve in recognizing Smith's hotness. <glyph of="" nose="" in="" the="" air=""></glyph></p>
<p>Methodological question: did they pick the pigeon holes and find the colleges to fit or did they pick the colleges and then define pigeon holes? Or was it a hybrid system?</p>
<p>I'm pretty sure they picked the pigeon holes and then the colleges. It would be the easier and more efficient way to research it for the publication.</p>
<p>There's one thread in..I think the college selection forum about the top 5 college towns. Well, incase none of you read it Northampton made the list!</p>
<p>"Smith is on Newsweeks 25 Hottest Colleges"</p>
<p>Nothing new ;) </p>
<p>"Admissions mania focuses most intensely on what might be called the Gotta-Get-Ins, the colleges with maximum allure. The twenty-five Gotta-Get-Ins of the moment, according to admissions officers, are the Ivies (Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Penn, Princeton, and Yale), plus Amherst, Berkeley, Caltech, Chicago, Duke, Georgetown, Johns Hopkins, MIT, Northwestern, Pomona, Smith, Stanford, Swarthmore, Vassar, Washington University in St. Louis, Wellesley, and Williams."</p>
<p>Great link roadlesstraveled. I'm sending it to my parents. I think they'll enjoy it. </p>
<p>In any case, I completely agree that Smith should be up there on the top twenty five but it saddens me that more people don't know of it. Well...more people my age that is. Last week i went to several dinner parties with my parents visiting relatives and friends and had to answer that question "Oh you're going to be a senior? What colleges are you looking into?" And when I told them that Smith was one of my top choices they immediately responded how great a school that was and continued to praise it's academics and social standing. But if I'm asked that question by my friends and I answer the same way I get "Smith? What the hell is that? I've never heard of it." At which time I have to reply with my normal spiel about Gilmore Girls and Sex and the City. But even after this, I wonder why Smith doesn't get the attention it truly does deserve.
And that was a random story I really didn't have to post here. =/ I'm bored.</p>
<p>D got an internship in a Congressional field office this summer partly upon being a Smithie. Put it this way: it didn't get her the slot but it got her resume closely read. You can't reasonably ask for more.</p>
<p>Thanks but I know what both of you are talking about. And I'm not worrying. I'm merely stating how it is a shame Smith isn't more well known to people my age.</p>
<p>Karen, the LAC's in general are a mystery to people your age. Most of the schools they've heard of are either the state schools of their state, Ivy League, and schools with notable sports programs--Wake Forest, Duke, USC, etc.--and the schools their parents went to. Only in this last category <em>sometimes</em> do the LAC's register. It takes the student who's really plowing through the college guide books or has a good GC or other mentor who starts to zone into the LAC's. And even within that group, womens colleges are a little off the beaten track.</p>
<p>I'm with you though. I'd happily take more "Ugh...a women's college?" reactions if Smith itself were better known. </p>
<p>The flip side is that most of the people who know of it respect it a lot.</p>