The comment about it getting a little repetitive after 2 years is a common saw at smaller rural schools. Yes, there is a lot going on every weekend. It encourages mixing between the classes so you will have good friends gradiating a year or two before and after you.And it’s one of the reasons that students take time abroad as well as make occasional weekend trips. But you may be really ready to move on when you graduate. (Not a bad thing!) Of course, there are people who aren’t excited about all this “community”, so it’s never going to be a great option for them.
The alternative is a school at which much of the energy, particularly for upperclassmen, is dissipated into the nearby city. Friend groups make trips together but aren’t necessarily mixing with the students in the classes below them. I have family members who have chosen both. Neither is better, just different. But for me, the tight community that comes from having to make your fun with other folks is preferable. If you want to do a city when you graduate (or grad school ), it’ll be there. @circuitrider echoes my sentiment fully.
When the classes are not completely full, and the major does not require additional admission criteria, that indicates that the department has unused reserve capacity – i.e. more faculty and other resources than needed to handle the number of interested students.
@TheGreyKing - D is at Williams’ rival and has not had issues with getting any courses she wanted, but the process sounds similar - there is a pre-registration period and certain “if full” preferences stated for many classes (first years, majors, etc).
Interesting he was shut out. I wonder now if A does it by who registers first, after other preferences are out.
Hmm.
Unused reserve capacity=unpopular courses.
While both are outstanding academically, these are two very different schools for a variety of reasons.
You should visit each school before applying.
Might be worthwhile to ask for schools which are similar to Williams College as there is no guarantee that you will be offered admission to either school.
Also, it might be difficult to find a school similar to Vanderbilt since you want to major in psychology & minor in business while also taking music classes in a well respected school of music.
Just following up for the record, since this was a small part of this discussion:
Registration re-opened yesterday for students dropped from courses. S now has four courses about which he is excited, all of which are small discussion-oriented classes. Not one large lecture as a first semester freshman.
Another advantage of Williams: 60% of students get a single freshman year. It also seems like many people have gotten the type of housing (double or single, Frosh Quad or Mission Park) they requested.
Interesting that do many freshmen get singles. My D says she would rather have a triple vs a single. Thinks having a roommate is a big part of the freshman experience. I must admit though, that I don’t relish the idea of triples.
@TheGreyKing are the singles all in one dorm? Or on one floor? I’ve heard to dorms with lots of singles and then it’s nothing but good. All kids in the dorm in the same situation. They leave their doors ajar, etc., to be social when they want.
@homerdog A lot of the rooms in Mission Park are singles. The dorm is broken up into entries, and each entry has a junior advisor. Each entry has a common area where the kids socialize. My son’s entry also had organized activities every week. My son loved the setup and is rooming this year with the friends he made in his entry.
One of the dining halls is also located in Mission, which my son really appreciated on cold winter mornings.
Mission Park is entirely singles this year (sometimes one or two rooms per floor at Mission Park are made into doubles.) There is a common room for every entry, just down the hall from one’s single.
Freshman Quad has a lot of rooms where one double and one single share an additional common room. Sometimes two or three of these kids put their desks in the common room, as well as getting a couch for it, and keep their beds in the smaller double and single bedrooms. So it is a single that is kind of not a single— best of both worlds.
There is a whole section in the Williams College Bell Book (you can find it online) about the relative advantages of Frosh Quad vs. Mission Park. Both are well-loved by students.
100% of freshmen reside in these two dorm complexes.
Freshmen at Williams live in “entries” where a group of freshmen live together and do a lot of activities together. It will be interesting to hear what the entry experience is like this year. Until this year, the entries always had 20 students and two junior advisors (unpaid junior student volunteers who do absolutely no discipline stuff, but just exist to help the freshmen get comfortable on campus and bring them into the community). This year, it has been changed to double entries: 40 freshmen with 3 or 4 junior advisors. I do not entirely understand the reasons for the change (it was about the junior advisors, not the freshmen— something about this new way being better for junior advisors who are members of racial minorities and/or of low-income backgrounds?), but the junior advisors chose it.
Each entry also has a common room where the kids spend time together— sometimes formally for entry meetings and for every Sunday night’s “Snacks,” and sometimes informally just to hang out.
Besides doing things with their entries, freshmen also spend four days of the orientation period in another social group doing an “Ephventure” for which they sign up. A small group of freshmen and two sophomore leaders go on this chosen adventure, which might be a backpacking trip in the mountains, or a canoe trip, or other less outdoorsy activities like visiting local places of interest (museums, etc.) and meeting local residents.
So, having a single is not isolating at Williams, since it is the norm and since there are so many built-in systems to help the freshmen “bond.”
@wisteria100
@homerdog
One factor that I don’t think has been mentioned is Greek life/fraternities & sorrorities.
If you like it, Vandy’s for you. If you don’t, it’s not.
It’s not a small factor in campus culture, and its absence was one reason I chose Williams (over Dartmouth) back in the day.