<p>My little sister (well, not so little - 17) is very much enamored with several women's colleges in the South. She wants me to help her decide where to apply - wants a school with an intellectual bent, extremely close professor-student relations, and a little bit of that "southern belle" feel. Any comments on the schools below?
1) Sweet Briar College
2) Hollins University
3) Randolph-Macon Woman's College
4) Agnes Scott College
5) Wesleyan College for Women
6) Mary Baldwin College</p>
<p>I've heard positive things about Agnes Scott....and Hollins has always had a good reputation especially for English and their Writing Program.....I'm not sure how serious a place SweetBriar is....and its really tiny.</p>
<p>Seconded about Hollin's English/creative writing program. They keep a list of Hollins graduates who have gone on to publish books; it's <strong>amazing</strong> for a school that size (about 800 women). They offer a MFA in creative writing, too. Also, from what I've heard, it's generally more liberal in feel than the other schools on your list. </p>
<p>If your sister is into math/science, Sweet Briar is one of two women's colleges (Smith College is the other) to have their own engineering program. They offer a general B.S. in engineering science, not any kind of a specialized engineering degree. However, I think you can combine it with some kind of business degree. </p>
<p>Mary Baldwin--I have a friend who goes there. From what she's told me about the academics, she hasn't found the foreign languages/math to be particularly challenging. That could just be a function of bad class placement, rather than the quality of the classes themselves, however. What she <em>is</em> loving, however, are all of the queer girls; that may or may not be a good thing, depending on your sister.</p>
<p>**I just read over this post, and realized that it sounds like I'm beating on Mary Baldwin. I really don't mean to be. I'm just passing on the impressions that I've gained from talking to my friend, and people are generally more likely to complain than they are to talk about the good/okay things. </p>
<p>Good luck, and I hope this helps!</p>
<p>I've only heard of agnes scott. I have heard things that agness scott has a good english program, and that's about as far as my knowledge goes</p>
<p>My aunt went to Hollins and loved it. It's small and a really tight community.</p>
<p>Sweet Briar has a really nice campus and it is very large for the size of the school. RMWC is in a town where you can walk to shops and things unlike SB which is out in the country 10 miles from town. Both have excellent facilities for horses and many students seem to have them. Must be part of the attraction. RM has better academics than SB.
The only restaurant near SB just burned down for the second time in a year. Jackie O used to go there when she visited SB.</p>
<p>There's a little saying that goes: "Hollins to bed, Sweet Briar to wed, and Randolph-Macon goes pre-med." Sure, these are stereotypes, but it's kind of applicable... IMO at least. :)</p>
<p>I was on here researching grad programs and noticed this thread...I'm currentloy a third-year student at Hollins. If you want to know anything in particular, I'd be happy to help. (PS: calidan - that saying is interesting in that the order of the schools is completely different depending on which school you attend ;-) I've heard another version at Hollins. It's all pretty silly though - I don't think many of those stereotypes really hold true anymore.)</p>
<p>Hi Art Girl!</p>
<p>Just wanted to let you know my daughter read about Hollins on the Internet, and decided Hollins was her dream school. She knew we could not afford it unless she received a substantial scholarship, so she worked really hard, and was very blessed to have received a Batten Scholarship. I cannot say enough about the faculty and students we have met while visiting - everyone there has been fantastic!</p>
<p>Congratulations to your daughter - that is wonderful, she should be so proud of herself. I would love to talk to her if she has any questions. I look forward to meeting her in the fall! :-)</p>
<p>Thanks! You, like everyone there, are so welcoming! I will tell Torey to send you a post - she is still recovering from a nasty case of mono, and has been swamped with make-up work, so it might be a day or two. My sister is an artist - where are you thinking of going for your Masters?</p>
<p>Tell Torey I hope she feels better! I had mono in high school, and it was AWFUL. I am still up in the air about MFA programs, but I guess my top choice right now is Tyler School of Art at Temple University. I am impressed by the program at PAFA, but apparently their reputation isn't what it used to be. I'm looking mostly at schools in the Philadelphia, Baltimore, and DC areas. VCU, Cornell, and MICA are also options.</p>
<p>She should also consider Salem College in Winston-Salem.</p>
<p>my AP psychology and AP stats teacher taught at wesleyan college for women in georgia for 16 years before leaving to retire (sort of, as you can see, she couldnt stay out of a school for long) to San Francisco. I was amazed that a college professor would ever want to teach at a high school... anyways, I've asked her a lot about the college (although I could never go there, for obvious biological reasons).. she has given me some amazing info about it over the year. Because it is so small, students are really able to work with faculty to carry out whatever kind of research they want to do, and the prof will then help fight to get it published. She has a few former students who are now finishing their Ph.D's at Stanford... and didn't have much trouble getting accepted to the program because they had such strong research completed. </p>
<p>The highlights, she tells me, is that at a small LAC, students take much much more personal involvement and responsibility for their education. All the students there, she said, are delighted to be there and delighted to study. It has a familial atmosphere because everything is so close knit.</p>
<p>I would say that everything TheCity said about Wesleyan applies to Hollins. In fact, our recent president (she passed away unexpectedly last year) came to us from Wesleyan. Many small women's colleges will offer these kinds of benefits. You just have to visit and see which one feels right to you, based on the academic environment, the social environment, etc.</p>
<p>Okay, ready for a really freakish "coincidence" . . .</p>
<p>My sister graduated with her BFA from Tyler, and I have a ton of connections at Temple - my aunt works in admissions at the the Business School, I graduated from Temple, my greataunt was the provost there for many years. If you need any help getting into Temple/Tyler, please let me know - I would love to help!
Mono is the pits! Tor is on week five of feeling absolutely cruddy, spent Spring break (and her 18th birthday) sleeping under a cocoon of blankets on the sofa. For ten days we had to wake her up just to make her drink something. Thankfully she is on the mend, but still looks and feels like a dishrag. She has a good 'tude about it - as she said at least she got sick while in high school and at home rather than in college and away. I hope you and she get a chance to meet - she is kind of shy and very much a country kid. (In our town - and I use that word loosely - cows far outnumber people, and honest to God, we only have one traffic light - and even that's a stretch since it only is a yellow blinker! We figured out there are only six traffic signals in the whole county.) I was a little worried about her making friends there, but I have to say once again, Hollins is a parent's dream. All of you guys (gals) have been great, and Torey has already chatted with a bunch of perspective freshmen on the board Hollins set up for them (what an awesome idea!)</p>
<p>I meant to ask what happened to her? The new President seems to be really fantastic, but I sensed the students were still sad about the former President</p>
<p>Both are academically very solid schools, on the small side, with beautiful campuses, good administrators and smart, likable (in general, at least) students. Both also offered me extremely good scholarship opportunities (ASC actually has an extrordinary endowment for a school of its size-- it has very proud almuna). Two of my friends are heading to Sweet Briar this fall, and they both love it-- great riding program, really beautiful campus, very pretty dorms and so on.</p>
<p>I really recommend Agnes Scott. The people there are wonderful. The girls are very intelligent and extremely friendly (but not all Southern belles-- half of the girls are from out of state, surprisingly). I've never visited Randolph-Macon, but it's also a great school and was my first acceptance to college (way back in November-- it's such a small school, which means they can give applicants and students a lot more individual time and attention).</p>
<p>Please check out Agnes Scott. You won't regret it (and Scotties arguably have the best location, about half an hour from Atlanta-- an excellent college town, and plenty of GA Tech fellows. :))</p>
<p>Rachell,</p>
<p>Congratulations to your daughter. My d is attending a smaller LAC on a scholarship and is having a wonderful and successful experience. I just love reading about students who have the wisdom to pick schools based on what is best for them (and their families) rather than on the basis of prestige and other people's expectations.</p>
<p>Again, congratulations to her!!</p>
<p>artgal, I am a RMWC graduate and President Bell's daughter was a classmate of mine (although Nora wasn't president of Hollins then). We lived on the same hall freshmen year. I was shocked to see she'd passed away.</p>
<p>Mary Baldwin has generally been reputed to be a little lower, academically, than the other VA schools on the list. Not knocking it, but it might be more of a safety for a student concerned about admissions at the others. </p>
<p>I don't much about Wesleyan but as for the others, I think your sister could get what she is looking for at any of them. </p>
<p>calidan, your ditty got me laughing. It was a comparison we Macon students reveled in at times although of course it wasn't fair to our worthy peers at Hollins and Sweet Briar.</p>