<p>Agree there are nice kids everywhere, but the overall school culture can have greater or lesser amount of the "nice" vibe... </p>
<p>Brown was a place with lots of happy students. It's hard not to be nice when one is happy....</p>
<p>Yale
Davidson
Rice
Vanderbilt
William and Mary</p>
<p>Washington and Lee, where the speaking tradition is alive and well!</p>
<p>Clarkson -- it's small, it snows, GREAT engineering program, great kids</p>
<p>This is a very strange thread. "Nice kids" go to every college and university in the country. In fact, I would say that "Nice kids", in what I assume is the OP definition, are the majority of well-educated college students. What you have to look out for is the kinds of activities and behaviors that are promoted on college campuses. </p>
<p>Think of it this way. If you would meet any 21-year old male college student, lets say as you were walking down the sidewalk one day, who lives in a frat house on a college campus, I would probably say there is at least an 80% chance that he is a very kind, decent person with a good upbringing. The difference is what happens when he is participating in frat activities that involve binge drinking, female students, and high peer pressure to interact with females in a sexual way. This is when your Johnny B. Good may turn into a threatening or even dangerous person for your daughter. Now this is not always the case, but the point is clear. Find out about the student culture at your college of interest. What keeps students occupied? What do they do on weekends, and what is popular on campus? You can find out much more about Johnny B. Good that way than you can just by looking for "Nice kids".</p>
<p>It is not individuals you should be worried about, its what happens in groups that is much more significant.</p>
<p>Middlebury and Williams. Snow. Happy kids. And 5-year engineering programs with other schools if she thinks she wants engineering but isn't sure.</p>
<p>Olin if she's sure about engineering.</p>
<p>Wise to include the "if" at this point. My daughter thought she wanted engineering and then changed her mind.</p>
<p>Grove City College does indeed have an engineering program and the students there are nice, particularly if you are willing to buy into their conservative Christian world view. And I suspect that most will also be nice if you do not.</p>
<p>Also do not reject larger colleges without some investigation. I attended Ohio State, a big daddy of universities. However its engineering college was smaller than the engineering colleges at universities with far smaller enrollmnets and most of OSU's individual departments were smaller than many small LAC departments. I know that my civil engineering class numbered less than 40 and the atmosphere was quite intimate. In fact its ASCE chapter has student/faculty socials to this day. Enrollment into an honors program makes large universities even more attractive to top hs students.</p>
<p>If she is looking for smaller colleges with engineering, those that come immediately to mind are WPI, RPI, CMU, Duke, Clarkson, Swarthmore, Case and Rose Hulman. And with the exception of Cornell, any of the Ivy League colleges which offer an engineering curriculum would meet her criteria too.</p>
<p>While all schools have mostly nice, good kids, there are some campuses where people on campus that you don't already know are more likely to smile, say hello, or strike up conversation. Also, at schools where there is more interaction between students of different majors, there is more likely to be a 'friendly' vibe. I'm a student at CMU, and I love it, but friendly isn't the first word I think of to describe it- there's a few too many cliques of international students, and a few too many people who are lacking social skills. I've spent a ton of time on campus at Rice, and I would consider the students, as well and faculty and staff, very friendly. My friends who go there think the admissions department found a way to identify and reject applicants to obsess too much about grades and rank- I wouldn't say the same about my school, but I don't think that's a priority of our admissions department.</p>
<p>Thank you all...this is a lot of feedback for one day of postings! DD and I need to consider what has been provided here, but again, thanks!</p>
<p>For those who were a little weirded out about the nature of the question, let me just offer the idea that of course there are wonderful kids at every college. This goes without saying. And of course the dynamic on campus contributes to the stress level of the students, and this contributes to behavior. I'm not slamming any school. I am simply posing the question, in a non-quantitative way, of "what have you all noticed?" with regard to the outgoing friendliness of the student body at the schools you know.</p>
<pre><code>In my opinion (worth what you pay for it), schools vary in friendliness and intensity. If others disagree, well, that's what makes horse-racing fun!
</code></pre>
<p>The statistics of small sample sizes are always of concern....might not that happy lot of kids walking by at say, Tufts, NOT be engineering students, for example?</p>
<p>Okay, now on to something different. I attended a well known engineering university but was a science/premed major. Happiness as an engineering student, in my opinion as an observer of most of my classmates and in particular my H, is pretty much in a direct relationship with how typical your work load is for the school you attend.</p>
<p>As a premed at an engineering U I felt like my work load was no worse than the norm-- and that impacted my overall happiness.</p>
<p>I would speak with many Engineering students, not random passers by or even tour guides, very frankly about this topic before I would charge on selecting one of the very fine, but not engineering-oriented, schools being mentioned on this thread for a student who knows they want to be an engineer. I am sure there are happy students studying engineering everywhere....but this is just a thought.</p>
<p>Lawrence, in Appleton, Wisconsin, has a lot of nice kids!</p>
<p>I'm getting such a kick out of this thread. Our local newspaper interviewed a whole bunch of kids just finishing their first semester at college. They went to schools that covered the range from community colleges to ivies, small privates to huge publics. EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM mentioned how "nice" and/or "friendly" everyone one was at their school. As so many of the posters have said, it's where your child feels comfortable that counts.</p>
<p>tokyorevelation9, not a big fan of frats are you?</p>
<p>I haven't read the whole tread, so I'm not sure if anyone has mentioned Texas A&M. Out of all the schools I visited, I thought that school had the nicest kids.</p>
<p>university of dayton -- known for extremely friendly students. about 6k students. great "family" environment</p>
<p>W&M, Davidson, Wake Forest. Not pretentious nor arrogant. Very happy to be there.</p>
<p>Most American kids are socialized to be "nice and friendly" as they are growing up. Northern Europeans on US campuses remark on this cultural trait with its emphasis on upbeat cheerfulness--some of them feel this is "superficial" but many of them find it refreshing although difficult to instantly acquire the same behavior.</p>
<p>I agree that there are nice kids everywhere. My daughter is at Chicago, which is about the last place one go for "niceness", but "nice" is one of the first adjectives you would choose for most of her friends and housemates -- open, friendly, noncompetitive, supportive, all those nice qualities.</p>
<p>Perhaps the only way to approach this question intelligently is to define what one thinks of as "not nice" and then ask which schools are going to attract a disproportionate number of those "not nice" kids. Schools with a very vibrant fraternity and sorority scene are going to attract a lot of kids who value that, and they may not register as especially nice if you don't. Schools with a reputation for being hard are going to attract people who want that challenge (or that label), and so are going to feel a bit less laid back and more frenzied than other schools. But all of those places are full of nice kids.</p>
<p>This is a very strange thread. "Nice kids" go to every college and university in the country. In fact, I would say that "Nice kids", in what I assume is the OP definition, are the majority of well-educated college students. What you have to look out for is the kinds of activities and behaviors that are promoted on college campuses.</p>
<p>I live in an area, which is supposedly very "nice" but we give others a lot of space. Those coming from other areas, complain about that we aren't as "friendly" as advertised.
It isn't that we aren't "nice", but we just like our space and will give you , yours.
I prefer that to being with people who feel they have to be more outgoing than they would like, so as not to be taken for unfriendly.</p>
<p>Some people are outgoing, others aren't, although those who are outgoing seem to be made uncomfortable by those who aren't.
Its ok to want to spend time by yourself, and even if you have company, to not spend the whole time chatting, but instead "doing something" together.</p>
<p>I expect on every campus there are those that are more outgoing, and depending on the part of the country, and how many students are local and how many are from far away, may color the atmosphere to a greater or lesser extent.
I would agree that living in areas where people share hardships, like in long midwest winters, that students may be friendlier and * nicer*.
But also the south, has a well deserved reputation for those who have finely developed social skills, and are eager to reach out.</p>
<p>Personally, I find being around outgoing people exhausting. I am someone who regroups by being by myself, not with others. It isn't that I am not as * nice* as someone else, at least, i don't think so- ;), and it took me until I was well into adulthood, until I realized that it is OK, not to be as effusive as a talkshow host. That just wasn't me.</p>
<p>Visiting a campus will give you a better idea if the types of interaction are what you are looking for.
I think the students at Ds school are very * nice* but they are also generally more reserved and introspective.</p>
<p>It was quite amusing to find that D, who although still considered quiet by the "outside" world, was one of the more socially skilled & outgoing inside the Reed bubble.</p>
<p>
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It was quite amusing to find that D, who although still considered quiet by the "outside" world, was one of the more socially skilled & outgoing inside the Reed bubble.
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<p>ditto. Now that made ME smile.</p>