On the subject of Canadian universities. Dalhousie and Simon Fraser are very highly rated and are lost among the well known schools (McGill, Toronto, Waterloo).
Vancouver has a high quality of life so Simon Fraser should be more popular. Never been to Halifax but my wife’s sister speaks highly of the city and I need to visit it some day.
My D graduated from DePaul - for her, it was the perfect school. She found it vibrant, accepting of all types of students (including the quirky emo kids like her), and more liberal than one might expect from a Catholic University. She also liked the emphasis on public service. She majored in accounting and had no trouble finding internships and a job after graduation; the reputation of DePaul in the Chicago business community and the strength of its alumni network are superb.
Beautiful campus, engaging professors, and an exciting city - she loved her time there.
@scout59 Thanks for tip re your daughter’s experience at DePaul. Do you happen to know how much religious diversity exists there? Thanks!
Whitman College in Walla Walla, WA. Smart kids, LAC so lots of interaction with professors, and a really nice place. They do give merit aid and FA. A hidden gem.
@MamaBear16 My nephew went to Whitman and had a wonderful time. He got a great job at Epic right after graduation. Great school! Definitely one you don’t hear about a ton.
As well as DePaul I would include Loyola University Chicago. I know two current medical school students who attended Loyola on full tuition scholarships. Both of them were admitted to med school directly from undergrad during their first application cycle so they must have been well prepared.
My niece went to Berry College in Georgia. She loved it. They really work with their students to help them get internships and work experience. She was able to get a great job right out of school.
Whitman (like Kenyon which was mentioned up the thread) is great but I feel that any school that’s on the CC pinned List of Top Universities or Top Liberal Arts Colleges is not the type of “hidden gem that’s never mentioned on CC” that this thread is looking for.
Hendrix College in Arkansas. My daughter’s friend’s younger sister graduated from there about 2 years ago and she loved it! At first she was skeptical about going to Arkansas for college, but they toured the campus and she was blown away. It’s also one of the “Colleges that Change Lives.” It’s been recognized as a top “Up and Coming” liberal arts college and it’s also been listed as having a “strong commitment to teaching.” It’s small and most of the students enrolled are undergraduates. Sounds like a wonderful school worth looking at!
How about Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska? It’s a Jesuit university and it has about 4,000 undergrads. A 2018 graduate from my school attends, he was recruited for basketball. Haven’t heard how he likes it, as I don’t know him real well. Again, it’s another school you don’t hear about a ton, but seems to be pretty good!
I’ve also heard good things about Centre College in Kentucky. It’s another CTCL. I perused their booth at a college fair I attended with my son. Another school whose booth I noticed at a college fair is Wofford College in South Carolina. It was their mascot that stood out to me, the Terriers! My new favorite college mascot! Haha! You don’t hear much about Centre or Wofford on CC. Though Wofford was in March Madness…
@Corinthian yeah, but some top schools don’t get mentioned a lot. And some of their threads aren’t very active. Even though Whitman is a top college, you don’t hear a ton about it…
Then again, underrated can mean different things to different people…
Creighton is pretty well known in the midwest. They have some vg hoops and baseball teams. Wife went to Beloit as a young foreign student and they treated her very well. She excelled enough academically to be accepted into a top tier Medical school.
@57special yeah, they aren’t too well known out in California where I live and work (at a school), but I have heard some people mention their sports teams…
I hoped my kids would show some interest in Beloit, but neither did. Too bad, because I always hear such great things about it.
Hope and Kalamazoo in Michigan. Beloit and Lawrence in Wisconsin. Lake Forest and DePaul in Illinois, St.Olaf in Minnesota. I like Michigan Tech for engineering. Coe and Grinnell in Iowa. Valparaiso and Butler in Indiana for the upper Midwest would be my favorites. All the big 10 schools and Purdue and Miami of Ohio are excellent in the upper Midwest. Carlton and Macalster are great but over loved and over exposed by CC in my opinion. There are so many more if you consider the Catholic unis in the mix!
About half the dentists I know went to Creighton. A lot of nursing student my age (40 years ago) went to Creighton because the U of Colorado nursing school is in Denver and at that time not much of a college experience. If the students wanted an ‘on campus’ experience, Creighton was it. Now there are more choices in Denver and the CU nursing school has more of a campus (but no football!). Another hardly mentioned on CC is Regis university in Denver, which has added both nursing and pharmacy in recent years, has D2 sports, and a gorgeous view of the mountains.
I completely agree. I mentioned it because it’s almost never discussed here on CC, and often when it is it’s listed as more of a safety to kids applying to top schools. It’s a fantastic place and because it’s a lesser known option I chose to mention it.
Not sure why Drexel doesn’t have a higher rank (not that rank overly matters) because everyone always raves about its Engineering Programs (as among the best of the best).
Because Hope College’s anchor came up earlier, and because there is never a wrong time or place for useless trivia. @privatebanker, I’m sure that @Corinthian knows this, but an anchor is what the personification of Hope carries, in the same way that Justice carries scales and a sword, and has a blindfold. Liberty is depicted in a number of ways, though we’re most familiar with the French interpretation because they created a huge statue of her. These are usually based on different gods and goddesses, mostly Greek and Roman - for example, the personification of War is usually modeled after the god Mars/Ares.
PS. In Lewis Carroll’s Hunting of The Snark, the illustrator added a drawing of Lady Hope with her anchor, since the crew “pursued it with forks and hope;”, “it” being the Snark.
@MamaBear16, I totally agree about Whitman. I would have loved for my daughter to go there, but ultimately she chose an out-of-state, more urban, medium-sized college. Whitman gave her a very generous merit scholarship, too. Sigh.
@1stTimeThruMom - I know there are many active religious societies/organizations on the DePaul campus, but I couldn’t tell you the percentages of specific religious denominations among its students. I know there are Hillel and Chabad chapters, a Buddhist association, and an active Muslim student group, all on campus…but I couldn’t tell you what % of students identify as Jewish, for example.
There also used to be an “Atheists and Agnostics Club,” too (the DePaul Alliance for Free Thought) but I’m not sure if it’s still active.
All students are required to take one or two religion classes - sorry, I can’t remember the exact number - and there are many, many classes from which to choose. My own daughter took some kind of ethics class and then a Jewish studies class…and we’re Presbyterians. (She just wanted to learn something about a religion and culture not her own.)
@MWolf Very interesting about Lewis Carroll’s Snark! The Hope anchor logo goes back to the founding of the school in 1851. The Hope website says this: