<p>I hate the word intellectual actually, but you get what I mean. I'm looking for schools with a tradition of academic intensity and a quirky student body. Schools I've looked into: Yale, Brown, UChicago, Reed, Swarthmore, Bard, Vassar, Wesleyan. Can anybody recommend me some other schools, or give me some insight about the ones I've mentioned?</p>
<p>hey, I looked into all those schools too (and applied to all except UChicago). Some other schools I looked into in this vein were Oberlin, Hampshire, Sarah Lawrence, Macalester, Kenyon. Maybe also Bennington, St John’s, Eugene Lang (The New School), Middlebury, Kenyon, Colorado College.</p>
<p>Also consider Bowdoin, Carleton, Grinnell, Haverford, Mills, Whitman.</p>
<p>But why hate “intellectual”?</p>
<p>Check out New College of Florida.</p>
<p>I definitely wouldn’t say Yale is unconventional or has a “quirky” student body, but you’re right with all the other schools.</p>
<p>Yale is appealing because of its directed studies program. But to be honest, the only people I know who get into those types of schools (harvard, yale, etc., etc.,) have spent the greater part of their adolescent life trying to make themselves appetizing to colleges. Hence, I neither think that I could get in (mediocre grades in junior year) nor would be particularly happy there. </p>
<p>I dislike the word intellectual because its often evocative of elitism for many people. I think love of learning, however, can be very inclusive indeed. :D</p>
<p>jarsilver, why did you ultimately decide not to apply to UChicago? I’m smitten with the school. </p>
<p>Also, I looked over much college literature on bowdoin, middlebury, and haverford, but it didn’t really leave me with the impression that the culture at any was particularly “academic.” Hampshire and Sarah Lawrence struck me as having unique curricula. Grinnell, Oberlin, Carelton, and Malacaster all are school that seem suited for me, but exist on what to my mid-atlantic self seems like a midwestern mystery-land. The rest, I’ll simply have to look into :)</p>
<p>I or my kids have applied to 10 of the schools mentioned so far and attended 4 of them, yet I don’t even have a tattoo, own a beret, or smoke Gallois cigarettes. Relatives or friends have attended some of them too. Each has its own special wonderfulness. My personal fave right now is Colorado College because that’s where my youngest is starting, and it is such an unusual, hidden gem of a place with its one-course-at-a-time Block Plan, gorgeous Rocky Mountain location, arts scene and “focus on your own d*mn family” attitude toward all the right-wing lobbying organizations headquartered for some reason in town.</p>
<p>Chicago is my old flame because it’s my alma mater, and IMHO offers just about the best undergraduate academics in the country so long as the field is nothing too “applied” and has any hope of attracting yet another Nobel Prize winner so we can keep bragging annoyingly about that. Middlebury is ever so nice but I would not call it unconventional. It’s a classic New England liberal arts college with a beautiful campus and facilities. </p>
<p>Eugene Lang is a weird little college (in a mostly good way), less selective than most of the others. There’s not much of a campus, and for the life of me I could not figure out how leftist Jewish intellectuals could design a small “alternative” school with so much maddening bureaucracy. But they offer cool classes with lots of discussion, and all of Manhattan at its doorstep.</p>
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<p>Have you no sense of decency?? I’m impressed with Colorado College, and kind of ashamed that I haven’t heard about it before, but I suppose that’s why I have you guys. </p>
<p>Eugene Lang first blipped across my counciousness with its little banner across the CollegeConfidential forum page. Its newness makes me weary.</p>
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<p>Yeah, when Chicago bites, it bites hard. Takes one to know one, I guess ;-)</p>
<p>It sounds like you’ve found a good groove of elite schools that are your speed (I have friends at all the schools that have been mentioned so far, so something’s working correctly, I gather). Not knowing your academic profile or georgraphic preferences, I would also think about…</p>
<p>– Whitman College: It has more name recognition in the PNW than the mid-altantic, but I often hear it compared to or against Reed. Whitman also has a liberal arts core that has some “Great Books” sense lingering in it. If you pick up “Colleges That Change Lives,” Whitman is listed in it.
– Rice: Back in the day, somebody strongly recommended I check into Rice and I often hear it compared to Chicago. If the people there are anything like my good friend, they are passionate about things, hard-working, and a teeny bit crazy (in a good way).
–Claremont Colleges: They’re one of the best package deals, IMO.
– Marlboro College: Also listed in “Colleges that Change Lives,” worth a consideration.</p>
<p>If you’re looking for schools in a certain selectivity range, I’ll sleep on this and try to come up with more flexible schools.</p>
<p>What all these schools seem to have in common is the lack of big Greek or D1 sports scenes. They are not party schools. They are selective colleges for former dodge ball targets, mostly.</p>
<p>Other than that, there are major differences in size (though they tend to run small), location and setting, curriculum plan, etc. Only Chicago has its recently-revived Lascivious Costume Ball, as far as I know. Only Colorado College has a former Governor and Ambassador to India as President who tools around campus on a Segway scooter, as far as I know. And only Macalester has a math department built around a square-wheeled bike exhibit, as far as I know ([Macalester</a> College Mathematics and Computer Science](<a href=“http://www.macalester.edu/mathcs/SquareWheelBike.html]Macalester”>http://www.macalester.edu/mathcs/SquareWheelBike.html)). So you’ll definitely have to make some agonizing choices.</p>
<p>Oh, I forgot to mention: Only St. John’s has an intercollegiate sports program centered around a powerhouse croquet team, with the distinction of having beaten the Naval Academy in 22 of 27 matches, lately dressed as seafaring Vikings, in the annual Annapolis Cup.</p>
<p>To give you some idea of how bad sports can get at these schools, years ago after a season in which Chicago had lost every football game, People Magazine offered to fly the team to the Rose Ball in a game with CalTech, whose team members claimed a higher average IQ than weight. The Chicago coach refused the magazine’s offer for fear it would do irreversible psychological damage for his sensitive players to participate in the “Toilet Bowl.” ([Marooned</a>! - Chicago magazine - October 2006 - Chicago](<a href=“http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/October-2006/Marooned/]Marooned”>http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/October-2006/Marooned/))</p>
<p>ImmanuelKant, basically I thought the essays were weird and I was too lazy to do them… at the time I was also more into LACs than big universities and I’d heard that UChicago is more graduate focused, which was a turn-off. but in retrospect, I wish I’d applied to more universities. if I could’ve done again I probably would’ve applied to UChicago.</p>
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<p>I’m not going to say this isn’t true. I am going to say that I think there are a lot of people at Ivy league institutions - at some of them more than at others - who did not “groom” themselves and are who as shocked to be there as anyone. I decided to apply to one Ivy league school because of its financial aid program and because of its wealth, which means hopefully more grants and more opportunities for low-income students like me. Anyways, Yale does not seem as pompous or groomed as other schools. It has an artsy, unconventional feel in comparison to other Ivies - though I wouldn’t call it UChicago. Although of course there are going to be a majority upper and upper middle class students at any private school, Yale really stands out to me as a place that’s not elitist. Although it does have “secret societies”, it definitely doesn’t have the exclusive and elusive (and expensive) eating clubs or finals clubs - not even frats are that big.</p>
<p>I just wanted to add to the love of Colorado College. Fantastic gem. I love the idea of block schedules, but have some problems with the idea based upon some cognitive learning research I’ve read. Still, I know I would have flourished with block scheduling.</p>
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I literally laughed out loud.</p>
<p>William and Mary
Brown
Reed
Chicago</p>
<p>“Yale does not seem as pompous or groomed as other schools. It has an artsy, unconventional feel in comparison to other Ivies - though I wouldn’t call it UChicago. … Yale really stands out to me as a place that’s not elitist.” </p>
<p>I also burst out laughing. Maybe the writer meant to be sarcastic?</p>
<p>Yeah… Yale is not artsy or unconventional compared to the others. Both of those terms tend to be used to describe Brown more than Yale, in my experience.</p>
<p>Check out the 40 colleges that change lives. These schools are academically strong, and unconventional in one way or another.</p>
<p>[Colleges</a> That Change Lives](<a href=“http://www.ctcl.org/]Colleges”>http://www.ctcl.org/)</p>
<p>William & Mary, Brown, Haverford, Carleton, Rice</p>
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<p>MM, I’d be interested to read that too if you have a link. Two econ professor at Colorado College, with a Wellesley professor, did a comparative study of how well three groups of students (on a block plan v. trimester v. semester system) retained concepts from a basic econ course years after the course. Conclusion: “we find that curricular structure is largely insignificant to the learning of economics”. The bad news was that all groups were about equal in forgetting much of what they learned. These were not econ majors though. ([SSRN-Semester</a>, Trimester or Block Plan? Retention of Economics Principles by Undergraduates on Alternative Curricular Structures by Daniel Johnson, Kristina Lybecker, Corrine Taylor](<a href=“http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1224522]SSRN-Semester”>http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1224522))</p>
<p>I hear anecdotal claims from Colorado College students that the block plan seems to reflect more realistically the structure of short-term projects in the working world, where you may be multi-tasking on administrivia but your primary mission focus typically is to achieve goals of one major task/problem over several weeks or months. One recent alum told our audience he just seems to be able to get work done more quickly under pressure, compared to graduates from other colleges, as a result of his block plan experience.</p>
<p>I think it’s probably in large measure a matter of personal fit. The one undeniable advantage I see in the block plan is for field work, travel, and independent study. This is wonderful for work in the life sciences and geology. You can go off to Mongolia or to gather fossils in Canada for 3.5 or 7 weeks instead of committing to an entire semester or year. The college leverages this advantage through “Vision Grants”, which support students financially in their independent (and often off-site) work.</p>
<p>Now, HS students and their parents shopping for an “intellectual, unconventional” place might be considering schools as different as Colorado College, Brown, or Chicago. These and the others are all great schools for the right kid but each is “unconventional” in a different way, as you are. So you want to dig deep to understand how each school’s special curriculum and opportunities could work for you. If you do this, assuming you meet the basic qualifications, you should be a more attractive candidate to any of these schools.</p>