<p>I really want to attend a college with an accepting and friendly atmosphere. How are these colleges in terms of friendliness/unfriendliness? I'm trying to shorten my list of prospective colleges but I don't know which ones to take off.</p>
<p>Carleton College
Clemson University
Connecticut College
Emory University
Pitzer College
Pomona College
Stanford University
Swarthmore College
Tufts University
UC Davis
UC Irvine
UC San Diego
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Washington U St. Louis
Wesleyan University</p>
<p>Also feel free to suggest some other friendly colleges for me to check out. I feel like I have too many reaches and I need more safeties and matches.</p>
<p>Note that I'm not basing my entire college decision on the friendliness of the campus, but its a very large deciding factor.</p>
<p>I found WUSTL to have a warm feeling about it. On my visit the people were friendly and welcoming. The only other school I visited on that list was Swarthmore, and I went in with high hopes (after visiting another quirky school like Chicago) only to be let down. Almost no one was even roaming the grounds when I went around November while the weather was still fairly nice. The entire experience left me a bit uncomfortable especially during my interview which only exacerbated its seeming pompousness. Just my opinion. Having said that it’s one of the best academic schools on your list - just left me with a bad taste is all. </p>
<p>And I’d be remiss if I didn’t throw out another school not on that list - my own school Northwestern. I didn’t visit until acceptance week (Wildcat Days) and while the initial assembly of sorts was a tad bland, when I split off to go into a group designated by my prospective major I was pleased beyond belief. With about 20 other people, we met in a conference room with my specific dean to really discuss anything we needed. And my student group leaders were incredibly kind - one of the least robotic things I’ve ever seen on a college tour. I remember my father and I got lost exploring by ourselves, and a random student coming from the gym approached us seeing we were a bit disoriented. Ended up having a good 15 min conversation with this random kid. Definitely left a great impression on me…obviously.</p>
<p>I keep hearing that Dartmouth is a friendly school but I doubt I’ll apply. The only ivy I’m applying to is Stanford because I’m a legacy and they don’t look at freshman year grades (and mine were bad). Plus I live very close by. Dartmouth, on the other hand, I don’t think I have a shot at.</p>
<p>And I guess I’m just so hopeful about Stanford. It is by far my favorite ivy. I don’t even consider the others. My grandpa is a professor at Princeton but even if I got accepted there I doubt I’d go.</p>
<p>The people at WUSTL were one of the biggest factors in my deciding to commit there ED. When I visited there, everyone was so open and welcoming and seemed not just like intelligent people, but /nice/ intelligent people who all meshed together and seemed ridiculously happy with where they ended up. It might just be a midwestern atmosphere thing, because it extended outside the campus to the surrounding town as well (random people on the Loop were nice enough to googlemap for my dad and me how to get back to campus when we were confused). That was the exact kind of place I wanted to spend my college years and I’m still eagerly counting down the days until I get to campus.</p>
<p>Tufts I actually did visit, but didn’t like it very much. It didn’t seem very open or welcoming to me, and even though many students were wandering around campus while I was there with my mom, they pretty much ignored all of the potential applicants (whereas at WashU they were always coming over to us eager to help us out or sell their school to us). I ended up taking it off my list after that.</p>
<p>From the people I know who go to Emory/will be attending, it tends to be a relatively friendly school. The people I do know from there are themselves one of the nicest groups of people I know, and judging from their stories on campus I’d like to think the rest of the school is the same.</p>
<p>Another school to consider, if you’re looking for an academic match/safety perhaps (not sure if it’s a financial one, and judging by the caliber of schools you’re looking at), is Muhlenburg College. It’s a small school, but the people there were very sweet and welcoming to all the potential applicants who were on campus at the time. It had a good vibe, and I would have applied there if I hadn’t been accepted ED.</p>
<p>Clemson students are extremely friendly! We were also listed as the #5 happiest students in the country by the most recent Princeton Review rankings</p>
<p>I think that considering the incredible diversity of the student body, Wesleyan does an excellent job of building a sense of community. Just about everyone, jocks, hipsters, preppies, artists and STEM majors can sing the <em>Alma Mater</em> by heart. :)</p>
<p>I know that all those campuses have thousands of students, and that friendliness - like every other human characteristic - has aspects of a normal distribution curve. There will be small numbers of exceptionally friendly and unfriendly people, larger proportions of mostly friendly and mostly unfriendly people, and a huge bloc of people in the middle. Given that college students are in the peak social-life years, you’ll find the scale everywhere to be skewed towards the “friendly” end. There may be differing vibes - e.g., intellectual at Swarthmore, preppy at ConnColl, activist at Wesleyan, Southern at Clemson, etc. - but you’re not going to find any real, measurable differences in basic friendliness.</p>
<p>Yeah I realize that Stanford isn’t an official Ivy, but I consider it to be just as good as one (if not better) so I just used it to get my point across.</p>
<p>You made a good point, gadad. I do realize that not every college is perfect in terms of friendliness, but there is usually a noticeable feeling of warmth in a place that you would enjoy being.</p>
<p>Dogs can be friendly, unfriendly, or indifferent.
I don’t know about colleges. </p>
<p>What are you looking for that would make a school seem friendly to you?
The fact that few people were roaming the Swarthmore grounds on a random day in November would not necessarily make it unfriendly, in my view. Maybe everybody was off in the classrooms, labs, gym, and dorms being incredibly friendly with each other in their quiet, Quakerly way. </p>
<p>A boisterous, rah-rah sports scene would seem friendly to some people, but not to others. Carleton may be a friendly enough place … but I’m sure some people clam up pretty tight when it’s -5F outside on a winter day.</p>
<p>I would expect big, impersonal, bureaucratic schools to make many people cranky. Maybe that does not happen in California. Connecticut College is small but the parking attendant hollered at my wife and son when they made a wrong turn during a visit. That was very unfriendly. He never applied. </p>
<p>Check out Colorado College. It is small and personal, with lots of sunshine, gorgeous mountains in the background, and outdoorsy, adventurous students. It might be another good “match” school for you.</p>
<p>Might consider Holy Cross-very friendly students, good diversity, don’t have to be religious and great alumni loyalty-one of best alumni giving rates in country. Others are Bowdoin, Middlebury.</p>
<p>I don’t know what all the Tufts bashing is all about but I think it’s a pretty friendly school (it’s like Brown in that regard…friendly people). I mean, it is ranked high by princeton review for happy students and has a reputation of students being competitive with THEMSELVES and not one another.</p>
<p>Everyone I have met from Stanford has also been really nice. Maybe I just befriend nice people or perhaps it’s a Cali thing. Either way, it’s just an anecdotal observation like all the other responses.</p>
<p>I can’t speak all that much about the other schools, but I know that Davis has a super friendly environment. All of my friends that go there love it, all the people I know there are kind, and the general feel there is really warm and welcoming! I’ve visited a couple times this summer and my perception of it as being friendly, which I’ve had for years, only grew. </p>
<p>There are students at every college who are really friendly. There are students at every college who are jerks. Welcome to the melting pot of America where we have people of different types.</p>
I’ve visited a couple times this summer and my perception of it as being friendly, which I’ve had for years, only grew. </p>