<p>thatsall–Mac is a great school. I agree that the campus set up helps make it feel like a college community. It’s a pretty selective school, more so for instate students, but out of state as well. It’s nice because kids stay on campus pretty much all year so they are forced to become a community. When they finish the lightrail between Minneapolis and St. Paul, a ride to the airport is going to be simple, and cost about $1.50.</p>
<p>When will it be done, mncollege?</p>
<p>FYI, my ds2 didn’t like Mac nearly as much as I did. :(</p>
<p>Re: Oberlin…
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<p>Not “discards” - those go into the trash.</p>
<p>You are describing a campus-wide clothing swap, among students whose parents make sure they have acceptable-to-nice clothing, at a college known (like many LAC’s) for its family feeling. </p>
<p>If you have 2 daughters or know any 2 friends who occasionally swap garments from each others’ closets, you’ll understand. Mix and match. They’re having some fun.</p>
<p>Sometime in 2014. It’s a pretty nice system overall, just limited in where it goes. This line connects St. Paul to the Minneapolis line, which then connects down to Bloomington, the airports and the Mall of America.</p>
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<p>Indeed. It does sound fun. My only child does that routinely with her best friend. I didn’t mean for my post to be taken as negative, just as one teeny-tiny data point to support the notion that people at Oberlin may not have become much more clothes conscious over the years. Honestly, I didn’t see what this young girl was wearing, and for all I know, everyone is sharing last year’s Abercrombie and Fitch jeans. But to hear my daughter tell it, the outfit her host had assembled was notably colorful and eccentric. Nothing wrong with that.</p>
<p>I love the delusion that all these ultra-liberal schools are “welcoming” and “accepting.”</p>
<p>I love the delusion that being an LAC equates to being socially or politically liberal.</p>
<p>Both of my quirky kids went to Hampshire College, which might have the highest quirkiness per square foot index of any LAC. I think that is a very good thing, and if nothing else, it develops tolerance and acceptance of people who have very different views and outlooks; despite snarky comments from the likes of Schmaltz.</p>
<p>I also value the work our kids had to do to develop their own study concentration (as opposed to selecting from a list of majors) and follow it through to conclusion. So much contemporary educational research concludes that more active-learning techniques and more student-involved programs lead to more learning and more learning opportunities. Yet, most colleges, including so-called progressive LACs, still rely on conventional lecture-based courses and pre-packaged curricula. I would recommend at least looking at some of the ‘new college’ institutions that have much more student involvement in classes and areas of study concentration (New College, Marlboro, Hampshire, Evergreen State, UC Santa Cruz, to name just a few).</p>
<p>It is true that most LACs are expensive, but there are a couple of public colleges that I would definitely consider, such as The Evergreen State College and University of California - Santa Cruz. Of course, unless you live in WA or CA, you will pay out-of-state tuition, but that is still less than private school tuition.</p>
<p>I agree, but most people don’t seem to want to consider these less traditional options. Fear? Lack of prestige? Undoubtably, one can get a great education there. New College, my school, has high out of state tuition, but good merit aid.</p>
<p>“Fear? Lack of prestige?”</p>
<p>I think it’s mainly because most HS students are unaware of them.</p>
<p>The whole point was to address the original poster’s question about possible schools for her quirky kid. Of course these colleges aren’t for anyone, but that wasn’t the intent of this entire thread.</p>
<p>Just curious schmaltz - which of these “ultra liberal” colleges are you personally enough familiar with to judge whether or not they are warm an welcoming?</p>
<p>The Hampshire college post reminded me of our neighbor a few years older than D. She did the east coast tour of all the small, quirky schools including Hampshire, Bennington, Vassar, Marlboro, etc. She ended up at Fairhaven College at Western Washington University where they felt she would get all the alternative self-designed major vibe at 1/3 the cost. She is VERY happy there.</p>
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<p>I don’t think anyone is saying that at all, however, the OP asked for schools that lean that way so most of the ones posted are very liberal politically and socially. Of the LAC in our state, only 2 of them would be classified this way by most people, the other dozen or so would be considered fairly conservative.</p>
<p>My D is a sophomore at Oberlin College and is having an amazing academic experience there. She loves her classes and actually looks forward to doing the work for them. The professors are completely approachable and caring. As parents, my husband and I feel we are totally getting “our money’s worth” if you can measure such a thing. The intellectual growth she’s experiencing and the individual attention she’s getting is exactly what we’d hoped for in a college experience and quite different, I expect, from what she’d get a larger university.</p>
<p>Oberlin seems to get rave reviews from all. What are its academic strengths? I’m guessing music…</p>
<p>^ By one limited measure (undergrad prep for future PhD), Oberlin is strong across the board, being in the top ten (per capita) of all U.S. schools in all fields combined.</p>
<p>Doesn’t Oberlin create an <em>enormous</em> number of eventual PhDs? I read something years ago about where PhDs come from and I could swear back then that Oberlin was at the top of the list (probably population-adjusted). I was surprised at how broad the fields were–english-y majors, math-y majors, science-y majors. It was really impressive.</p>
<p>My s’s small U was probably a very similar learning experience/environment to my LAC. I think it has more to do with size than LAC vs U, though the added attention by the faculty on the undergrads when there is little or no grad program to distract them is also a plus for the LACs.</p>
<p>When I think of Oberlin, I think of foreign languages (along with Middlebury and Monterey).</p>