<p>What schools come to mind when taking into consideration quality of life and overall happiness of the student body? I've done a fair amount research and looked at retention rates, alumni donations, and various rankings that used their own criteria, but suggestions would be extra help.</p>
<p>Some things to consider:
* Cohesion and sense of community are important
* LACs and smaller universities are preferred, although I have no specific size parameters
* Money is no object
* 100% positive I'll major in the classics
* Religious affiliation and location are relatively unimportant</p>
<p>I love discussion and challenges, but I also love a party here and there and whatever else my friends or I might feel like doing. A school significantly tilted toward partying or academics is likely to be unappealing to me; balance is huge.</p>
<p>As for me, my unweighted GPA is a 3.8. I have a 2330 SAT and the most rigorous curriculum. At this point, I'm slated for third of about 500. My biggest selling point is my extracurricular involvement, which I would prefer not to say here. I'm half Native American, but will identify as white on paper. Girl from Virginia. Thanks.</p>
<p>One of the other college sites (Princeton Rev) has a list of the 20 schools with the “Happiest Students” according to their surveys. The ones on that list that seem to meet your criteria are:</p>
<p>Bowdoin
Claremont McKenna
Colgate
College of Wm & Mary
Colorado College
Rice
St. Mary’s College of MD
Whitman College</p>
<p>I’ve listed them in alphabetic order because I think it’s silly to rank them from more to less “happy”. They are all good colleges with solid academics, though I cannot vouch for the Classics program at any of them. For a strong Classics department at a LAC, for a female student, the first college that comes to mind is Bryn Mawr. If you’re o.k. with a women’s college, it is a beautiful school so check it out.</p>
<p>I’m thinking Dartmouth. Relatively small school, great sense of community, good party scene, arguably the best school for undergraduate study, etc. Not sure about their classics department though.</p>
<p>Other suggestions: Claremont Consortium Schools (Pomona, Claremont McKenna, and Pitzer), Amherst, Williams, Brown University, Dartmouth College, Duke University, William and Mary, Middlebury, and Colgate.</p>
<p>I highly suggest you put Native American down on your application. I think you are legally considered Native American as long as you are 1/8 Native American. So you wouldn’t be lying. It will definitely be a “hook.”</p>
<p>tk, I believe that some colleges also on PR’s “happiest students” list are places like Brown and Yale, but you didn’t include them as meeting the OP’s criteria. could you explain some of your reasoning?</p>
<p>^ Unless he/she wants to get in on her own merit, and not through “affirmative action.” I know people (African Americans and Native Americans) who have done that… Then again, I also know people who go the other way and milk their ethnicity for all it’s worth.</p>
<p>sciencefrenchie, I don’t see how there needs to be a disdain for using affirmative action, and getting in as an AA admit doesn’t mean someone didn’t get in on their own merits. I think the kind of attitude towards AA like you just displayed in your post can be harmful. </p>
<p>Also, IIRC Native Americans have to be registered with a tribe to be legally considered NA and get the benefits from that, it’s not as easy as checking a box.</p>
<p>I didn’t mean for that to sound bad; I was just stating my personal experiences and extrapolating them.</p>
<p>I never said that the OP couldn’t get in on his/her own merit, nor am I implying that AA/NA/etc. who are accepted into top schools are not there on their own merit. I believe that top schools will accept those who will be able to contribute most to the community and to use the school to their full advantage.</p>
<p>I am merely trying to find a solution for a proposed problem using my past experiences. I apologize for anything that may have been misconstrued as disdainful or harmful. I didn’t mean it like that.</p>
<p>Dartmouth has the reputation of having happy students, and was initially established to educate the “Indians”, the history of which they are well aware. My son’s freshman roommate was one-eighth Native American with an 1120 on the (two part) SAT. Louise Erdrich is somebody you might google on this re: Dartmouth.
Just generally, I would not be shy about high-lighting your Native-American background. I understand your reticence, and my guess is that you will do well in college admissions regardless. My advice still stands.
All your other criteria sound like Dartmouth to me.</p>
<p>Yes, the PR list includes 20 schools, but the OP indicated an interest in LACs and smaller universities. If the OP considers Brown and Yale small enough, those are fine schools too. And Reed (which someone mentioned) is a terrific small college. But I would not characterize it as an unusually balanced place. I’d say it would tilt strongly toward academics on the OP’s scale.</p>
<p>I’m familiar enough with some of the schools I pulled out to believe it’s no accident they are on that list. I think the ideal happy, balanced school for a good student would be selective, but not super selective; this is true of all of them. They have solid academics but not reputations for being brutally competitive. They also tend to have good recreation and entertainment opportunities. Bowdoin, Colorado College and Rice offer reasonably attractive/interesting city or small town surroundings. Bowdoin, Colorado, Colgate, St. Mary’s and Whitman are all excellent for outdoor recreation (St. Mary’s has sailing, the others have good skiing, hiking, etc.) None of them are “jock schools” but several have very active intramural sports. A couple have stand-out intercollegiate teams in one or more sports (Colgate and Colorado in hockey, Rice in baseball I think, St. Mary’s in sailing.) Most of them have fraternities and sororities but as far as I know, none are dominated by Greek life or are known for nasty hazing rituals. Sunshine and weather are better at some than at others but none of them have depressing industrial or crime-ridden surroundings. Several have unusually beautiful campuses. </p>
<p>So that’s my reasoning for picking those schools (aside from the size factor). </p>
<p>Of course, the PR list is just a starting point. Look into some of those schools (and the others that people are suggesting) to decide if any of them seem to put you on the right track. If so, look for other schools with similar qualities and go from there. Among the Ivies, I like Brown for balanced and happy due to the Open Curriculum and Pass/Fail options … somebody else might be perfectly comfortable with the competition, and deliriously happy, at Princeton or Yale. Then there’s the Classics factor (which could throw all of the above out the window).</p>
That’s the case for several of the colleges on this thread. Assuming that all classics programs at top colleges are good is unfortunately a dangerous assumption to make with departments that tend to run small even at large universities; colleges like Whitman with only two classicists on staff have exceedingly weak programs. As I posted in another thread, even an elite LAC like Middlebury can have spotty classics offerings - no intro Greek or Latin in the fall.</p>
<p>Small universities are generally the way to go for the OP. The suggestions of W&M, Brown, Yale, Princeton, Duke, Dartmouth, and Tufts were excellent ones. </p>
<p>To that list, I would add Oberlin, Haverford/Bryn Mawr, WUStL, and Stanford. Since the OP is in-state, I would also add UVA as a safe match and Mary Washington as a safety.</p>
<p>Measuring “happiness” is hard to do, but I’d suggest looking at several of the sources that provide direct student responses to a variety of questions. Perhaps the best of these would College P.row…le.r and Spa…rkn…ote.s. </p>
<p>I would counsel against reading too much into Freshmen Retention rates as there is a sometimes a prisoner effect for students at highly ranked colleges who are willing to put up with a lot of unhappiness in exchange for a prestigious degree. The truth is that most kids are happy at most schools. However, if you see a low rate, this is a red flag and merits investigation.</p>
<p>I would also counsel against placing too much weight on the Alumni Giving statistic. This clearly favors private universities and IMO should not be included in the USNWR ranking methodology. Some of the most passionate alumni come from public schools with comparatively low levels of alumni giving, eg, Penn State, UCs, U Michigan, U Texas, etc. </p>
<p>There also was a thread on the social life of the USNWR Top 20. You might find something helpful therein:</p>