<p>sylvan,</p>
<p>All the schools except for Bonnie and Geneseo are in real cities—yes, the cities are not huge, major metropolitan areas like NYC, but Buffalo, Rochester, and Pittsburgh are all really pretty big and Niagra Falls and Erie are way too big to be considered small towns.</p>
<p>So maybe H is worried about town size–even for Geneseo. But he believes (or at least hopes) that Geneseo’s reputation as the best of the SUNY colleges (and one of the two or three best of all SUNYs, including the university centers) would be worth the isolation. Maybe he also believes that the size of SUNY-Geneseo is big enough to ensure that campus has lots to do both academically and socially and that also makes up for the isolation?</p>
<p>In other words, maybe H thinks that Niagara, St. John Fisher, and Gannon are all acceptable because what they “lack” in SAT scores/selectivity, they make up by being a school that’s large enough to not be “tiny” and are located in a place that’s large enough to be interesting to live in. Duquesne and Canisius are a bit more selective than these schools, although not as selective as Geneseo based on SAT scores, and are also in nice sized metro areas. All five of these schools have roughly 3000-5500 students, compared to Bonnie’s 2000.</p>
<p>So maybe Geneseo is acceptable to your H <em>in</em> <em>spite</em> of it being in a small, rural town simply because Geneseo is the most selective of the colleges, is large enough to not worry about academic opportunties, AND is the cheapest if you are NYS residents. In other words, if Geneseo had the same kind of stats that the other schools have or was as small as Bonnie, would H veto Geneseo too?</p>
<p>In other words, maybe “Olean–yuck” is your H’s short hand for: Bonnie is too small AND too isolated AND not selective enough?</p>