<p>Tell me anything you know about this school. Facts, rumors, opinions.... Thanks!</p>
<p>It's featured in "Colleges that change lives" by Loren Pope. Worcester is a dingy town, but it's only about an hour from Boston. Excellent financial aid, a strong international presence, and superb programs in many areas such as psychology, geography, biology, chemistry, and international relations.</p>
<p>My friend lives nearby in Auburn, MA. He pretty much said Worcester is a horrible horrible place to go to college.</p>
<p>Clark has a great academic reputation especially in psychology. Several of my friends have boys attending. One did not get into a top 10 LAC and chose Clark over the state u. Another was a top 10% of the class AP/honor student who received 16K merit $ for each of 4 years. Check out Clark's website for merit opportunities. Clark is viewed as a school high on academics and low on location/beauty/QOL. The school is located in Worcester, Mass a small city 40 minutes from Boston with an unattractive downtown area that for geographic reasons that are unclear to me - commonly receives record snowfalls. See below. Unfortuantely, there is no major ski area located there! </p>
<p><a href="http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2005/s2379.htm%5B/url%5D">http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2005/s2379.htm</a>
January 05: This is also the snowiest January on record for Worcester, Mass., with 51.1 inches through Thursday morning.</p>
<p>Some conflicting opinions here. Anyone else care to help sort this school out?</p>
<p>Thanks.</p>
<p>I spent my freshman year at a 2-year college in the Worcester area (quite a while ago). The weather didn't seem any different from the weather in Boston or Detroit or any other place about that far north. Worcester is not glamorous, but it's got a lot of colleges, the 3 top being Clark, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and the College of Holy Cross. There are also Assumption College and Worcester State College, among others. Worcester has a nice art museum, and a big sports/concert arena. Boston is a straight shot down Route 9 or the Massachusetts Turnpike. Boston is far enough away that you wouldn't be dashing there on the spur of the moment, but it's close enough that you could easily go there for the afternoon or the evening and come home without feeling like you'd been on a long trip. Clark seemed to have a very good reputation in the Worcester area (it was the intellectual school, whereas Worcester Tech was the techno-geek/frat college, and Holy Cross the enlightened jock college). The Clark students were known to be liberal, free-thinking Northeasterners, with a very large Jewish population. It also struck me as a place where academics were taken seriously. Like Tufts, it has a liberal arts college feel to it, but the significant graduate school gives it a research edge that liberal arts colleges typically wouldn't have.</p>
<p>Although Clark has a wide variety of varsity sports, it does not belong to the New England Small College Athletic Conference (Williams, Amherst, Bowdoin, Tufts, Colby, Bates, Middlebury, Wesleyan, etc.). Just as the Ivy League is on the surface an athletic conference, but its members have come to define elite Northeastern universities, the NESCAC members have sort of evolved into the who's who of liberal arts colleges. I think Clark's quality is such that it could be a member of the NESCAC, and if it joined, it would surely benefit from being associated with the other, more-famous schools. But even as it is, iy has a good reputation, with psychology and geography being the 2 most famous departments. As every Clark blurb will tell you, Clark is the only place in the US that Sigmund Freud lectured, and they are very proud of that connection to psychology.</p>
<p>The neighborhood Clark is in might be a little daunting to those who are not comfortable with urban diversity. But it's not even remotely close to as rough as some of the neighborhoods that some of America's other top universities are in, and it's got a self-contained feel to it that makes one feel completely safe while on campus</p>
<p>I second Tourguide's opinion.</p>
<p>I too spent my college years in Worcester. Clark, then and now, has a reputation for excellent academics and an interesting mix of students. It is located in a grittier part of Worcester. Worcester is still suffering from an identity crisis, being the neglected middle city between Boston and Providence, but efforts are continually being made to rehab, restore, rebuild. I also can attest to the Worcester snow-belt phenomenon. I don't know why, but it does get more snow than Boston. But after 4 inches, another 3 barely makes a difference. I would encourage a visit to the school.</p>
<p>A friend's daughter was accepted at a top seven-sisters college in New England but Clark was her second choice; in some ways I think she regrets not going there. All of the positives above are true - I would add that the college has excellent resources for students with learning differences.</p>
<p>That is a lie worcester is a great place to go to college I have grown up there and work at Clark every summer. Its very Urban and a great place to go to school youll get a great education and have a great time</p>
<p>Two cents from a former Worcesterite:</p>
<p>Many Clarkies stay connected for life. They seem to have a school spirit that is lacking at many other more renowned institutions. Excellent programs in the sciences. Campus is a bunch of buildings stuck on south Main Street, which is the "bad" part of town, but undergoing some fairly recent renovation. Worcester doesn't have a lot of hot spots, but the parks are nice and the bus lines are good for those students without cars. Students at Clark can take classes at nearby schools such as WPI.</p>
<p>It was the only place in America where Sigmund Freud gave a lecture.</p>
<p>Any more thoughts on Clark?</p>
<p>I visited and it seemed like a nice enough school, kind of similar to the University of Puget Sound, where I'm currently enrolled. It has brick buildings that seemed to be in decent shape and a solid reputation. It seemed a lot more gritty and urban than Wheaton MA, a similar college in a nonexistant town which I perfered, probably due to the horrible neighborhood. It was surrounded by a lot of empty storefronts with broken or boarded windows, abandoned factories and homeless people. On the other side of the school was a bigger road with chain stores that seemed ok. Academically, I liked it and the small liberal arts atmosphere was what I was looking for, but the surrounding area eliminated it as an option for me.</p>