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<p>Yes, until the students start using dining hall trays to sled down the snowy stairs :D</p>
<p>In all seriousness, I think students in large urban areas use the city - but students in small college towns and rural areas make their own mischief. Put thousands of 18-22-year-olds together and they have no problem manufacturing their own distractions.</p>
<p>I agree with CharlesSA. Most of the colleges that students here on CC consider are pretty comparable in terms of academic quality. I’m not convinced that a sufficiently motivated, intelligent, ambitious student would have wildly different life outcomes at Stanford vs. Smith on the basis of the academic quality of the classes/professors alone. Those places both attract top academic talent wrt professors (albeit with different foci). The difference probably comes in with some club she does that changes her life, or a study abroad experience that gives him new perspective, or a classmate who knows someone influential in her chosen field, or a research experience he has with a great professor. What’s really going to define the difference between Stanford and Smith are those quality of life factors.</p>
<p>So yes, you do want to make sure that your chosen college/university has acceptable graduation rates and student satisfaction (which you can somewhat roughly gauge with the percentage of freshman returning for sophomore year, although that’s not perfect). And you definitely want to be sure you can afford it via good financial aid. But assuming that you are comparing schools that are close to identical or within a certain small range on those factors, the other student life stuff is probably a better and easier way to to decide.</p>