Upstate NY schools - Bard, Skidmore, Ithaca

<p>OP, I’m curious that SUNY New Paltz is on your list but not Geneseo. I’m not familiar with their writing programs these days, but it would seem like a school to look at, especially if you are in-state. Lots of great suggestions on this thread. Some other possibilities that occur to me (with varying selectivity): Earlham, Middlebury, Bates, Colby, Beloit, Evergreen State.</p>

<p>Consolation - I should have mentioned Geneseo-- we know quite a few students there and it IS on her list, just not for this trip. It would be one to visit in the spring once decisions come out. We’re on a bit of a time crunch for this first upstate loop.</p>

<p>JHS and others - re: Vassar, Hamilton, Middlebury, etc. –</p>

<p>Realistically her chance of admission to these schools would be very low. She already has two probably unattainable reaches that she loves - Wesleyan and Tufts, and will probably leave it at that. She’s a very cerebral kid and a good student, but has very few ‘extras’ that colleges look for, especially from female students from “over-represented areas” like L.I. Her weighted average will be a 97-something, but from our school, the (few) students gaining admission to schools like these are invariably ones with averages over 100, lots of EC’s , etc. A really good ACT score could help, but doubt it will change her chances too much. In fact, VERY few students from our HS attend LACs. The vast majority attend SUNYs, NCCC, or big state U’s.</p>

<p>Being undecided, the good news is that she is open-minded and thinks she could be happy at a variety of schools. The bad news is that it makes it a lot harder to choose.</p>

<p>I have 2 daughters at New Paltz and have seen Geneseo (also knew a few kids who went there). The earth/crunch factor is higher at NP, especially in the town. My kids have had some great professors and are both quite happy. One is a history/French major and one is leaning towards speech pathology. I don’t know where your girl would do best, but SUNY is a bargain.</p>

<p>Ispf72, so glad to hear you visited Whitman, it is a trek from where you are. We’re in California and went to see St Lawrence University because it sounded similar and gives good merit aid, but Canton seemed beyond the beyond. We liked Walla Walla much better, and it has it’s own airport. The travel cost does have to be factored in.</p>

<p>Have you been to Macalester yet? My S was accepted and it stayed in the top 3 until the very last, we really liked it. In the end, he decided that he wanted more outdoor and club sports opportunities than he thought it offered. If those things aren’t top priorities for your daughter, then everything else it has is first rate. It’s location in St Paul is wonderful and the travel expenses would be considerably less.</p>

<p>bopambo, I must have misled-- I wish we’d seen Whitman. What we did do was spend a couple weeks touring WA and OR - enough to convince both of us that we LOVE the PNW. D1 is quite serious when she says she’d like to live in WA someday. Me too, for that matter, depending on where the kids all fly to in the coming years. It’s nice to daydream…</p>

<p>When it comes down to area of study things get a bit wacky. Her strong points are def. English and writing but there’s still a small part of her thats holding out hopes for some classes or maybe even a minor in environmental studies/sciences. It may not be easy, but possibly doable with some of the schools on her current list.</p>

<p>and as for Macalester, it may be a bit of a reach, but if admitted and affordable we would visit in the spring.</p>

<p>Whitman is a great place, more “outdoorsy” than “crunchy”, I think (though it has its preppy element as well.) A good English department, and very good in the environmental sciences. It is basically the Williams of the PNW (with the rural, drinking thing as well). Most students I’ve met love it. </p>

<p>Macalester (which I personally like more) is statistically very similar, but it is tucked away in a nice urban spot. Lots of international students, and international opportunities (they pride themselves on that.) More to do (Twin Cities), but much less outdoorsy, athletic, etc. And more community service opportunities as well. I’ve known students there in the sciences who also believe they received a great education.</p>

<p>For literature and creative writing, I still think Bard is likely to be head-and-shoulders over either. But you’ll have to kick the tires yourself.</p>

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<p>Though it is a bit of a longshot, this factor may actually work in your D’s favor.</p>

<p>For a strong safety, where your daughter might get some good aid, I’d add Allegheny College to the mix. They’re known for their English program - I know of them best because they publish the Allegheny Review, the only national journal of undergraduate literature and it is edited by Allegheny students. It’s a small LAC in Pennsylvania - outside Pittsburgh I think. They also have a minor in Environmental Writing that might appeal to your daughter…</p>

<p>I’d also strongly consider Kenyon (in Ohio). They are also known for their writing program in particular. I have known several folks who graduated from Kenyon and they are very happy and had good experiences. Kenyon is less earthy/crunchy than Oberlin (a little bit more preppy) BUT still very much LAC-y.</p>

<p>The kids I’ve known that have gone to Vassar and/or alumni/ae from there are very artsy/alternative-y (one kid I know was deciding between Vassar, Bard, and Hampshire, for whatever that’s worth). But I have a small sample size here. </p>

<p>One thing to keep in mind: one young woman I know who transferred from an aforementioned school (I don’t want this thread to become a referendum about this school, so I am not going to state which one) felt the campus she left was very monolithic in its thinking and perspective; that it had a student body where everyone wore the same hipster-ish clothing, listened to the same types of music (or at least claimed to), and everyone was afraid to disagree with being “revolutionary” (I guess that’s irony, huh? Conformity is being seen as failure? Or selling out or something?). Just one experience, of course.</p>

<p>Is Sarah Lawrence too close to home in LI? Not crunchy enough I guess.</p>

<p>stradmom, I think Bard did a real disservice to themselves, by the person they had doing the info session as well. I know I was not the only one who found her completely underwhelming. (Check the visit reports and other threads.) I wanted to like Bard, but I also took my son there, knowing he probably would hate it as it was both too small and too rural.</p>

<p>“It is basically the Williams of the PNW (with the rural, drinking thing as well).”</p>

<p>I’ve never been to Williams so I can’t compare towns or student cultures, but I’d like to point out that drinking is not the prevailing campus culture at Whitman. Yes, students do drink (especially newly minted freshman), but there are many who don’t or don’t much. There is plenty to do on campus every night and every weekend besides partying. The school is a active and engaged community.</p>

<p>When you say rural, that evokes images of a school in a corn field, but the campus is in the middle of a nice town of 30,000. Students have plenty to do on and off campus. Whitman has fraternities and sororities, and a fair number of students join, but they are much more service oriented and inclusive than many. </p>

<p>The vast majority of parties happen at the fraternity houses and the parties are open to all. The school stresses safety over punishment in it’s alcohol policy so you don’t find kids drinking their brains out in tiny parties behind closed dorm room doors. If a student has had too much alcohol to be safe alone (many an 18 year old has exercised bad judgement), the responsibility of those around is to take that student to the health center which is open 24/7. I am very relieved by Whitman’s approach.</p>

<p>Re Hobart & William Smith:</p>

<p>I suppose it doesn’t surprise me that it’s preppy or has a lot of kids in frats. But the student whose family I know is an artsy URM with hard-core left wing parents. As a technical matter, I suppose she’s a preppy (having gone to private schools for her entire education), but I am pretty sure that’s not how she rolls. She AND her parents seem to have loved H&WS.</p>

<p>Re: Hobart and William Smith</p>

<p>DS is a freshmen Trustee Scholar. They give out great merit scholarships if you have the grades/scores.</p>

<p>Only 15% of the students are in frats. William Smith doesn’t even have sororities. So it does not dominate the social scene. The school cracked down on the frat parties many years ago. When were have been there, we have seen preppy, hipster, athletic - basically anything you see on any other campus.</p>

<p>My son applied to HWS and he is far from preppy even though he went to a prep school. I certainly don’t think it’s preppier than Hamilton which DS crossed off his list because of that reason. </p>

<p>That being said a lot of guys in frats (don’t think the women have sororities) than where he is (Bates - no greeks) which also has a lot of kids who went to prep school. But, I don’t consider frats a preppy thing since Frats are definitely popular at schools that aren’t considered preppy (big State U’s for instance.)</p>

<p>As for Williams the town definitely doesn’t have a rural vibe but there was nowhere to eat at 3:00 in the afternoon after we went to The Clark one day. We had to drive to Bennington to get something to eat!</p>

<p>Look online at the depts she might be interested and check the online catalog for the actual courses offered and backgrounds of those profs and their research interests. I know she’s undecided, but this gives an idea of the academic environment.</p>

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<p>When I used the term “preppy”…it is not to denote private school graduates…but students with clothing styles, attitudes, and conversation topics nearly the polar opposite of the earthy crunchy vibe sought out by the OP’s child. </p>

<p>When I said preppy, it means someone who tends to dress a bit too formally for occasions(i.e. undergrad wearing formal corporate dress where it is not required or even appropriate like a college classroom or rock concert*), extremely materialistic about life and career goals, brags about possession of markers of materialistic wealth and/or social prestige associated with upper/upper-middle class or goes on endlessly about aspiring to do so(i.e. Hamptons real estate), is skeptical of earthy crunchy hippie folks/values, and tends to lean on the conservative side of the political/social spectrum. </p>

<p>As for Hamilton, I was actually surprised that it was mentioned and associated with the “crunchy” vibe the OP’s child was looking for. Only classmates/acquaintances I knew who attended Hamilton and were happy there fit the preppy vibe to a T…and we all graduated from NYC public high schools. </p>

<ul>
<li>Knew a colleague who is preppy and was clueless enough to wear a gown/dress with pearl necklace to a pop-punk concert. She later related how embarrassed she was when she realized everyone else was wearing ripped jeans, ripped t-shirts, colored/spiked hair, etc and being stared at for wearing something more appropriate for an opera night at the Met.</li>
</ul>

<p>And the kids I was talking about at Hamilton and Hobart are people who tend to dress a bit too informally for occasions (like job interviews) where a little bit of formality would be appropriate, who are extremely non-materialistic about life goals (and would never even use the phrase “career goals”, at least without retching), live without markers of materialistic wealth or social prestige, embrace earthy crunchy hippie values and people, and profess not to be able to tell the difference between Obama and the Republican right. In other words, not preppy. </p>

<p>My Hamilton nephew is the child of hippies who separated before he was born, and both of his parents spent a significant portion of his youth on public assistance. He comes from a rural community, and post-college he lives in an even more isolated rural community, where he and a Hamilton classmate are trying to have a community-supported bakery. Neither of them has a car; all bakery business is transacted on foot or by bicycle. His hair is – and was throughout college – shoulder-length. He got where he is now, in the Rockies, by riding his bicycle there from Virginia Beach with four other Hamilton classmates, some of whom continued on to Portland OR.</p>

<p>So am I OK in characterizing this guy as crunchy? He registers pretty darn high on the crunchometer! If he’s not totally crunchy, it’s because of the raisins, not diamonds or pearls.</p>

<p>I’m sure he’s not exactly the typical Hamilton student, but he loved it there, felt like he had lots of friends, had a succession of girlfriends each more adorable than the last, grew as a person and as a student, and if the atmosphere had been as preppy and materialistic as described he would have been completely miserable.</p>

<p>OP … my second child was accepted to both Skidmore and Ithaca College and both were on his final short list. </p>

<p>We did not find Skidmore to be earthy/crunchy but it was close … more of an upper middle class artsy vibe … and the campus is beautiful and nestled in a woods … I would think most earthy/crunchy types would feel quite comfortable at Skidmore.</p>

<p>One of things I liked about Ithaca College was the wide variety of types of students due to variety of schools within the college. The town of Ithaca is pretty earthy/crunchy however to us IC had more of a laid back main stream middle class kid feel (with a bit of a jock feel) … again I would think a earthy/crunchy person would fit in fine but it is not the first description I would think of.</p>

<p>Both are excellent options for the right student!</p>

<p>Cobrat, I was using your definition of preppy and I don’t see HWS students fitting that definition. I’m using the Original Preppy Handbook definition.</p>