After a very unhappy freshman fall term at Georgia Tech, my daughter decided she did not want to be a mechanical engineer nor attend a large State University. She has returned home to Maryland for a gap semester, and applied to a number of small LACs and other schools to transfer to this fall. She was accepted to Scripps, Colorado College, Oberlin, Georgetown among others. She has narrowed it down to Scripps and Colorado College and after putting in deposits for both schools, she really can’t decide. She has visited both schools, and as a competitive road cyclist both schools have much to offer in terms of good roads to ride and easy access to nature. Both schools also offer good environmental studies programs and that seems to be her new area of interest. She knows students at both schools.
She has prepared her pros and cons list for both schools and calls it a dead heat, and while I personally believe Scripps is the better choice for her in terms of the entire Claremont consortium plus I live in Northern California, I told her the choice is entirely hers. No difference in costs either.
Any insight you can provide would be most welcome. If you’ve had a son or daughter who is equally torn between two choices how was the final decision at? Any specific anecdotes about either school would also be most welcome.
Thanks!
Alison
There’s a lot to be said for Colorado College’s block plan both in terms of field work with environmental studies and also scheduling that allows for block breaks that might come in handy as a competitive road cyclist. If she is outdoorsy in other ways besides cycling, the opportunities offered in Colorado are attractive.
I only know Scripps because it was on my daughter’s final list of colleges that she was considering attending. But both schools have an excellent reputation, so there is no bad choice here. If she really is on the fence, she can hop off into either yard and know that it will be the right decision.
A helpful exercise my daughter used was to mentally choose one school and live for a day as if that were her final decision. Pretend the others have gone away. How does she feel? Any regrets? Is she at ease with her choice? Do this for each school. If neither seems better, then she can simply choose by flipping a coin. With two good options, there is no harm in that.
I am not a fan of So Cal, and I say this as someone who was born there, lived half my life there and still goes regularly. The smog is horrendous, strip malls, traffic jams 24 hours a day, and people live a superficial lifestyle. Then again, who doesn’t want to go to the beach and have nice weather? Surely the biking must be infinitely better in CO. People generally live a healthy lifestyle. But, there are some nutty people in CO:-) So if all things are otherwise equal, maybe show her my post. If it were me, I would actually only think about what the students are like at one or the other, and would choose based on who I think I would fit in with better.
And a great number of them live in Colorado Springs.
Is she a visual thinker and/or list maker? If so, a largish dry erase board and color markers might be in order. I’ve solved a number of life problems with the help of Venn diagrams and pro/con lists.
The main thing is Colorado’s block plan. How does she feel about taking one course at a time? Is she pretty set on what she wants to study? Or suits she want to explore majors? While students have some leeway, they can’t “shop” classes like students can at traditional “take 4-5-6 courses at once” schools.
I think one major bonus of Scripps is the ability to take courses at other consortium schools. This is kind of a different approach than Colorado College. This seems more like a buffet approach, where one can take explore interests or indulge multiple interests by taking a slightly heavier courseload, including those at the other schools.
My daughter attends Cornell College, the other college with the block plan. She absolutely loves the block plan. Taking one class for three and half weeks is intense but it’s less stressful for my child than trying to juggle exams, papers and projects for several courses. For example, there is no finals week. By May, the student has already completed and received grades for seven blocks. They are simply studying (as they have already done seven times) for the final of their current block.
CC’s Geology department and Organismal Biology & Ecology home pages point out the advantages of the school’s location, as well as the block plan, for field work.
https://www.coloradocollege.edu/academics/dept/obe/
https://www.coloradocollege.edu/academics/dept/geology/