<p>Emerson and Eugene Lang are urban schools to consider as LAC alternates. I won’t call any of these safeties. SUNY Purchase is a financial safety.</p>
<p>Well, you know what they say, Sally. A small town in Minnesota is remote which means uncultured, but a small town in New Hampshire is remote which means charming. A kid in NY who won’t consider colleges outside the northeast is smart for wanting to stick close to home, but a kid from the Midwest who won’t consider a college on the coasts is a hick who is afraid to venture out of his comfort zone!</p>
<p>Each of my Midwestern kids has spent weeks at camps in the Bay Area and Philadelphia where they were in a small minority. They have both come back with head-shaking stories that reveal the provincialism of their coastal counterparts.</p>
<p>Again, I am not criticizing the poster above for allowing his/her child to set parameters (random though they may be)…but it is funny how kids form hard-and-fast opinions, often without any actual data, and then stick to them. It’s kind of like when kids say “I hate arugula/lima beans/couscous” and it turns out they’ve never even tried it.</p>
<p>I agree with provincialism of east coasters. All I can offer in my kids’ defense is that they felt that there were so many good schools here on the east coast that they had no need to venture west. My S did accepted to U of Chicago where he did deign to apply, but he did choose not to attend.</p>
<p>To be fair, my D wanted NYC only. She lived in London and Atlanta and still feels that way and will never leave again. She’ll sacrifice her career. All I can say is that I don’t share her feelings and that young folks can be obstinate.</p>
<p>I wish Oberlin, Grinnell, Pomona, Whitman, Kenyon, Carleton, etc etc etc had been on their radars. They both attended LAC’s.</p>
<p>OTOH, it was nice to be able to see them without staying overnight and not having airports be part of our routine.</p>
<p>DD is local for grad school, too. DS, in a local masters program, has said that he will go anywhere in the country for a PhD if he is lucky enough to be accepted into an unfunded program. Yay!</p>
<p>Shhhhhhhhhhhhh! Part of the charm of the Midwestern LACs is that the snobby kind of East Coasters won’t be there. It’s the same reason that we don’t tell everyone we know about cabin country up north. Let’s not ruin it, okay?</p>
<p>Agree, SOG! My Carl thinks the student body already is changing as it becomes a more difficult “get.”</p>
<p>
They’re hardly unknown on CC. In fact, they get at least as much attention as many of the northeastern LACs. It’s a pretty knee-jerk response for posters to rattle off the traditional list of Midwestern LACs any time someone asks for “intellectual,” “friendly,” or “underrated” colleges. The average CC poster is far more familiar with Oberlin, Carleton, or Grinnell than, say, Wheaton (MA) or Allegheny. </p>
<p>If any LACs are overlooked, it’s those in the South. Davidson in particular is criminally underrated and has fewer posts on CC than all 30 of CC’s “top LACs” except Macalester, Trinity (CT), and Whitman.</p>
<p>I know. Davidson was in my kid’s top four, and we love the place. But it is a pretty unique and somewhat self-selecting school.</p>
<p>I’m glad to hear love for Davidson. One of ds2’s bffs is going there in the fall.</p>
<p>The primary issue with many of the Southern LACs is that they tend to be either much more religious/conservative or somewhat more “hippy” than their comparable Northeastern LACs. Not saying all of them are, but many of the academically strong Southern schools would be unappealing to students from the West or Northeast (however that’s true of many other regions’ schools).</p>
<p>It also has to do with the fact that most people from outside of the region immediately assume that the South= racism, ignorance, and general backwardness. A number of prospective students on these boards immediately reject Emory because it’s located in the South, and thus must be a KKK haven :rolleyes:</p>
<p>Just noticed in today’s local paper (suburban NJ) that the private girls’ HS is sending 3 grads (out of a class of about 35) to Davidson (yes, they publish where each of the class of '13 is going in a half-page ad). That may indicate a growing awareness around here; our public HS has sent several kids there in recent years, too. My S calls it the “Haverford of the South” probably because of the similar emphasis on an honor code.</p>
<p>My kids must be terribly unique. They each chose a school that is probably considered a safety by most and although we live in a small town in Pennsylvania they each chose to go to New England, the midwest or the South. With all the information out there, why is it so surprising that many kids DO indeed stray out of their area??</p>
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<p>Not sure I agree, whenhen. The best southern LACs (Davidson, Rhodes, Hendrix, Centre, New College, Austin College, along with a few others) are not religious and are perhaps less conservative than, say, a Bucknell or Trinity. Hendrix is pretty hippy, but not as much as a Hampshire or Bennington in New England. On the whole the campus leans liberal but there are conservative students there too.</p>
<p>Let me preface this by saying I think it’s a great idea for students to get out of their comfort zone, and at least for myself being a liberal in one of the reddest states in America has been a great experience. In fact, I’d imagine it gets boring if everyone agrees with your assessment about certain political topics. That being said, why I wrote what I did:</p>
<p>NCF is a hippy school. It’s like the Evergreen State of Florida (although probably a much better school).</p>
<p>Around 50% of students at Rhodes join Greek life which may impact how conservative the student body is. That was just the vibe I got from the 2016 facebook group after I applied. It’s certainly not on the level of Liberty, but that vibe may be out there. </p>
<p>Hendrix, as you mentioned, does have a hippy reputation. You’re a better judge of it than I am. </p>
<p>I’m not familiar enough with the vibe of Centre or Austin College to argue how liberal/conservative they are.</p>
<p>Davidson is one of the more mainstream liberal arts colleges out there in terms of who goes there and the political atmosphere on the campus. </p>
<p>When I wrote that many of the better schools are more conservative or hippy I was thinking about the following institutions: Washington & Lee, Sewannee, Berea, Birmingham-Southern, Furman, Wofford, Guilford, Hamden-Sydney, Morehouse (more socially conservative than politically), UNC-Ashville, and Warren Wilson. </p>
<p>Could I be wrong in my assessments? Duh. I don’t go to these schools, I’m only basing my opinions of them on what I’ve read in articles about the schools, review sites, and various guides to colleges (not only Fiske and Princeton Review).</p>
<p>I don’t know about all of them either, but I know most of the better ones are not religious. Also my understanding is that a fair number of east coast LACs are pretty conservative and fratty.</p>
<p>I think one thing for the student to consider is whether an embedded honors college can give some of what they’re looking for in a small school, within the context of a larger school.</p>
<p>
Pretty off base. If I had to put numbers to Rhodes, I’d say it’s about ~45% moderate, ~40% liberal, and ~15% conservative. Greek life is not taken very seriously (i.e. it’s pretty open and nonselective), and all frats and sororities are nonresidential.</p>
<p>Guilford is a nice Quaker school. Pretty accepting and tolerant but not a hippie school. UNCA’s reputation for hippie-ness is also vastly overblown, though the town itself straddles an odd line between upscale/gentrified and alternative/artsy. Warren Wilson is admittedly pretty hippie-ish. </p>
<p>I’m likely no familiar with the others than you are…I’ll grant you that many of the others have reputations for moderate or slightly conservative leanings. Most still have reasonably sized and vocal liberal elements, however. It’s the less selective colleges with a strong regional draw like Samford and Presby that have the most noticeable conservative elements, I think. Colleges like Agnes Scott, Eckerd, and U Richmond are much more moderate/liberal than they are credited for being and, as sally305 mentioned, are pretty similar to many LACs in other parts of the country.</p>
<p>I haven’t found East Coast LAC’s to be conservative or overly fratty. S’s school banned frats in 1962. Most lean left.</p>
<p>DS is in grad school with kids from Elon and Sewanee. They had never been out of the South before. They get along famously along with a kid from Transylvania and a bunch of kids from Ohio and a large contingent from overseas. He is generally credited with having the best overall education from Williams, but they are all succeeding equally in the program because they all have amazing and different strengths.</p>
<p>My BFf’s son graduated from Davidson which he really liked. However, he did feel that the religious component did make life a lot different there. 50% of the kids went to Church on Sunday, and a fair number went everyday. I am not saying that this is a negative factor, but it does change the environment. My Jewish-atheist son would not choose that environment. It could be his loss, but there it is.</p>
<p>It’s okay for LAC’s to have their own flavor.</p>
<p>I would hope that if DS had found himself at Davidson he would have found a way to make it work.</p>
<p>His friend from Transy is a very conservative Christian, and they go to the theater together. I think DS’s greatest discomfort came from the fact that this friend did not know the names of the Beatles or any Beatles songs. OTOH, he speaks French perfectly and accompanied DS on a trip to Paris.</p>
<p>I don’t understand the fact that folks on CC feel so free to bash East Coasters as snobby, etc. There are millions of people on the East Coast. I read comments like this all the time. I get that it’s a stereotype. I don’t get the constant drum beat on CC.</p>
<p>VMT: Do you think it’s OK for people to bash the South and Midwest? Because I can assure you that happens a lot more on this site. The user base here is very Northeast-centric, which makes sense since as you say there is a huge concentration of people there and also a huge concentration of colleges and universities. Some of us outside the East Coast get tired of the disparaging comments about “flyover country,” not to mention the gross generalizations about corn fields, cow tipping, gun-toting bible thumpers, and so on. We have millions of people too. :)</p>
<p>@mythmom: Some of the East Coast colleges we looked at early in our search seemed much more Greek-oriented (and conservative) than we were comfortable with–Bucknell, Trinity, Union, and Gettysburg, to name a few. We tried not to make assumptions based on just the fact that a Greek system existed, but looked into whether it was residential and/or dominated the social scene. Oftentimes there was a connection to a preponderance of pre-business majors as well, which was something else we wanted to avoid.</p>