Social Fit @ LAC for Introverted Creative-Type

College Search & Selection
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I’ve read more (thank you) and this is such a great approach and option for the right kids and situation. It’s truly built around a small community and showing concern for someone’s food allergies is what you do when you care about them and want to be a good community member. Some LACs are so good at that in many ways, and that’s partly why she’s considering them.

It makes me think about the days when people offered vegan cupcakes at preschool bday parties. When they’re older, elementary school, you need to say, hey, gotta advocate for yourself out there… gotta often go without the treat… this is the real world now. And of course by high school, they’re carrying their own EpiPens. When they get to college they’re building their own communities and navigating far larger systems.

When it comes to food allergies, it seems larger schools (Chapel Hill, Northwestern, Penn State, UVA, Stanford…) can do it well, probably in part because of volume, dining contracts, and the ability to establish a broad system. It’s a little tougher for smaller schools… but at the same time easier because they don’t have to handle the same volume.

We were surprised to learn (through verified info on FARE) that many schools offer pre-ordered meals, including via an app. That includes schools ranging from F&M (2,300 enrollment) to UVA (22,000 enrollment).

I guess you don’t know exactly how the rubber meets the road until you’ve talked with a few students about their day-to-day experience, though. I hope schools can somehow make this kind of info readily available in the spring… so that families like ours aren’t scrambling. We need to consider dining services very heavily, but there will be so many other things racing through my daughter’s head. Do we need to tease all this out this fall, early next year, after she’s accepted somewhere?

I don’t want to put carts before horses and waste my time or hers. (And be a pain in the you know what @ her prospects). Maybe there’s some forum out there where students with allergies share their experiences?

Sorry @hoya91, if you’ve read this far. This probably isn’t the time or place – and I realize you were just trying to be helpful! :slightly_smiling_face:

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Not to suggest that Ohio State doesn’t offer good mental health services. That was a flippant comment. Large, public institutions do this well, too. She’s just not considering one.

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should definetely look into Muhlenberg! They give great aid too

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Thank you! We had a good visit to Muhlenberg. The performing arts spaces and dining services seemed especially good.

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It definitely can be true, but mostly isn’t an issue. There are some dorms that are freshman only (Ruef, Marquis) and some dorms that are mixed (South) and most upperclassmen tend to go to the Fishers or McCartney or the Frat and Sorority houses or LLL communities.

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Beware of Lehigh.

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I have a kid at Lehigh, not a frat boy or hard partier. He’s had a great experience. Nothing to beware of there.

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If we were talking about a boy, I wouldn’t have the same concern. My personal experience is with a young woman who had a horrible experience there.

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One experience, I dare say there are likely similar stories at every school, unfortunately. I say that knowing my example is also only one. That said, my son has lots of female friends who are having wonderful experiences as well. While I don’t doubt your story, I don’t think it’s appropriate to vilify a school on CC based on one student’s experience.

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Not vilifying the school. Just saying beware, which is a warning to look closely. If you still like it, then move forward. Caution is never harmful.

After the experience Of the young woman I know, I looked closer at Lehigh because a member of my family applied and was accepted there. Unfortunately her experience was verufied by numerous news articles which detailed the problems with frats on campus. More discouraging was the fact that when the president tried to get the situation under control, he received blowback rather than support from alums. I know that the president is committed to fixing these problems. I hope he has succeeded.

Lehigh has such great academics that I’m sorry I have to raise a caution flag about it.

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And yet if we eliminated anecdotal experience, then we’d be on to reputation, which is even worse. Eliminate reputation, then we have to rely only on people who recently attended or had kids attend every school we talk about. Nobody here has been everywhere.

I struggle with this as well. People get on here all the time and describe schools I know well - whether through it being down the road or as an alumnus or through my kids’ attendance or through one of my sibling’s kid’s attendance etc. - that does not jibe with my view at all. I spend 1/2 my time here wondering how a single poster can opine with such conviction on so many schools. For example, based on being here, stereotypes I myself hang onto, and what I read elsewhere, I presume that Washington & Lee is an infinitely different place than, say, Middlebury. I think I know that, but in reality, I don’t because I’ve never even been to W&L, because my stereotypes of the US south (even US south’ish) are stereotypes, etc. etc.

But with that all said, the traffic here would decline by 95% if we eliminated opinions that are based on limited information and experience or other source of impression. So it’s hard to say Bill’s contribution is inappropriate.

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