Beloit and Lawrence would have been excellent alternatives to the college my kid ultimately chose. I described the whole college search and application process in more detail in a post in the general college selection forum. This is an excerpt focused on Beloit and Lawrence.
We have no close connections to Wisconsin and knew very little about either Beloit or Lawrence before starting Sasha’s college search. We had met a very small number of people who had gone to Beloit and we had never even heard of Lawrence. But, by the end, Beloit and Lawrence were two of Sasha’s top four choices. After visiting them, I completely understand why they both have very devoted fans and why many students choose them over more selective colleges that may seem like more obvious choices. I realize that many people from Wisconsin (and neighboring Illinois and Minnesota) apply to Beloit and Lawrence due to their close proximity to home, but Sasha was very impressed by both of them and preferred both of them over nearly all other possible choices, near and far.
Beloit probably was Sasha’s second choice. Beloit had remarkably friendly students with varied interests who come from all over the country, including a large number not only from the East Coast but also the West and Pacific Northwest. The college seemed to have a non-competitive-but-still-serious culture that appealed to us. Beloiters frequently talk about how exceptionally collaborative and collegial the school is, and we could see the collaboration and collegiality with our own eyes. We constantly encountered Beloit students walking, talking, laughing and studying in groups. Many of them stopped what they were doing to introduce themselves to us. They spoke very affectionately about their learning experiences and professors. Many of them talked about the self-confidence going to Beloit had given them. We also noticed that athletes and non-athletes seemed to spend time with one another and support one another. While we observed a significant number of “quirky” looking kids at every college we visited (with the possible exception of Oxy), Beloit may have had a slightly higher percentage of quirky kids than the others. To our surprise, a few of the quirky kids belonged to fraternities, along with more conventional looking kids, and they all seemed to get along well.
The Beloit students we met all seemed very excited about their classes and their extra-curricular activities. The arts offerings on campus were plentiful, though not quite as plentiful as at UPS or Lawrence. The campus has many performance spaces, large and small, formal and informal. There are also lots of athletes on campus—the school has a large number of teams given the small size of the student body. (Beloit has the smallest student body of the colleges Sasha considered.)
The Beloit campus is pretty. It’s slightly hilly, with wide open spaces and an eclectic mix of old buildings, plus a few new ones. The dorms were the nicest we saw. The new science building is very attractive inside and out. Generally, Beloit’s campus reminded me more of small East Coast college campuses than other Midwestern college campuses.
Beloit, Wisconsin is not a great city, but its small downtown has been redeveloped in recent years and now has several nice places to go to eat, get coffee or hang out. Older posts on College Confidential say that there are no nice places to go in downtown Beloit. Those comments may have been accurate when they were written but they’re not quite accurate now. Still, Beloit is a much smaller city than Sasha wanted and doesn’t seem to offer much nightlife. On the plus side, Chicago and Madison can be reached by public transportation. Madison is an hour away, and after talking to students, Sasha thought that music lovers like Sasha really do end up going to concerts in Madison from time to time.
Sasha also liked Lawrence. Appleton, Wisconsin is bigger than Beloit and surprisingly interesting. The campus music and art scene is very strong, benefiting from Lawrence having a conservatory, much as the UPS music scene benefits from the UPS music school. The Lawrentians we met seemed very nice. Lawrence attracts quite a large number of very serious students, as well as a few who were not very serious. Overall, the students were more diverse and came from more places than we expected. I think Lawrence and Beloit attract similar students (and similarly varied students), but there may be more intensely serious students at Lawrence, and there clearly are more intensely serious musicians at Lawrence. Lawrence also seemed to have a somewhat higher percentage of clean-cut Midwesterners than Beloit.
Lawrence’s campus is attractive, with many nice old stone buildings and a beautiful new student center. Downtown Appleton’s main street, College Avenue, separates Lawrence’s main campus from the conservatory. People from all over the region head to College Avenue for restaurants, nightclubs, etc. Appleton was a pleasant surprise and in most ways more appealing than Beloit, but we found Appleton to be less interesting and less attractive than Tacoma. Unfortunately, getting anywhere else from Appleton is hard. Madison and Milwaukee are each about two hours away and Chicago is about four hours away.
Lawrence is not as well known on the East coast as is should be. People seem to confuse it with Sarah Lawrence and St. Lawrence. Given its highly respected faculty, smart student body, terrific record of graduate school placement, vibrant arts scene, attractive campus and interesting small-city location, Lawrence should receive far more applications than it does.
Overall, Sasha thought that living in Beloit, Wisconsin an hour from Madison would be preferable to living in Appleton, Wisconsin two hours from Madison, especially since Sasha really liked the quaint feel of Downtown Beloit and several of its cafes. While Sasha preferred Beloit College and Beloit, Wisconsin to Lawrence University and Appleton, Wisconsin, both schools seemed terrific, and I completely understand why plenty of people prefer Lawrence to Beloit. I also can see why some people (including Sasha) prefer both Beloit and Lawrence over Oxy and Mac, even though Oxy and Mac are in major cities, are better known across the country, and are harder to get into. I also can see why some people prefer Beloit and Lawrence to better known colleges like Oberlin and Grinnell, which Sasha also briefly considered (discussed below). Beloit and Lawrence are really hidden gems. And, I should add, they were both extremely generous with merit aid in Sasha’s case.