Would love your thoughts on these 4 LACS!

College Search & Selection
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<p>My son has been accepted to Macalester, Occidental, Reed, and Whitman. I felt like we researched pretty thoroughly before he applied, but now that it's down to choosing, I'd love your impressions. A little more information:</p>

<p>Interests: he loves math, statistics, sports (as a fan/analyst), strong in all the sciences. He is also a terrific writer and has been writing professionally for about a year. He does also read constantly and appreciates good literature, but he sees himself more as a scientist. A dream career for him would be combining writing with statistics or science.</p>

<p>Abilities: straight As in a full IB diploma program. He loves to be challenged and will be unhappy at a school where the work isn't rigorous. (We know all the above are challenging!)</p>

<p>Personality: quiet, respectful, progressive. Quietly funny and thoughtful--not the kid who blows you away with personality, but his a small number of friends who are very important to him (and who love and value him). He can be snarky, but would never deliberately hurt someone's feelings. I would also say it's important to him to be around smart, respectful people. And he is not super comfortable with an artsy, hippie-ish crowd (not in a hostile way, but a little granola goes a long way with him).</p>

<p>From the above, I feel like all four schools are good matches for him. (I also notice that I really love my son!) He is waitlisted at two of his Reach schools that I think he'd jump on if they came through, but believe me, we're all pleased that he has the options listed.</p>

<p>If you have read this far, thank you, and I truly appreciate any time you might spare to post your thoughts!</p>

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<p>Those are all solid schools. If he is not super comfortable with an artsy, hippie-ish crowd, I’d take Reed out of the mix. Has he visited all of those campuses? Have kids from his HS gone on to any of those schools?</p>

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<p>My son was accepted to both Whitman and Macalester, he didn’t apply to Occidental or Reed. We all loved loved Mac and thought it was a great place, but after overnight visits at both schools, he felt Whitman was the better fit. Fit is so subjective, it’s really hard to predict what will appeal to different kids. </p>

<p>He liked the idea of the school’s outdoor program, and went on one of their freshman pre-orientation outdoor trips known as Scrambles, since then he’s become a Wilderness First Responder and has led 3 Scrambles himself. Not all Whitties are interested in the outdoors, but many who didn’t think they would be have discovered through the Whitman Outdoor Program that they like kayaking, hiking, rock climbing, etc. There is also a lot of participation in club and Intramural sports. I love that all are welcome to participate no matter their skill level or experience, and they seem to have a whole lot of fun. In fact, I’d say that the majority of students at Whitman are open to try new things and tend to be joiners. They are a pretty friendly bunch.</p>

<p>Walla Walla is charming, but small and that means that the students become very closely knit. There is a real sense of academic collaboration and study groups are the norm. There are some jocks, some hipsters, some hippies, some preppies, loads of musicians, and they all seem to get along. The sciences are strong and good writing is mandatory, everybody writes in every class, even math.</p>

<p>When I asked my son what the differences between Macalester and Whitman were, he had trouble explaining and ended just saying that Whitman felt like home. Whitman’s campus is gorgeous, the weather is more moderate than Minnesota, and Ankeny field is the heart of the campus, especially in good weather. I really liked Macalester’s campus, but it definitely has a more urban feel and the winters can be long and very cold.</p>

<p>Hopefully, your son will be able to attend the accepted students programs and have the opportunity to stay over for a night. Those visits can be invaluable in getting a sense of the “vibe” and I predict he’ll know which one he favors after he’s spent some time on campus.</p>

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<p>Thanks, yaupon and bopambo! I appreciate your insights. </p>

<p>I think Occidental is falling off our map–none of us likes L.A. is what it comes down to! The other three are all really attractive, and we’re going to hit every visit or reception we can manage. To my surprise, my son is not put off by what he hears of Reed–the rigor seems to outweigh the grooviness in his mind. We have visited Whitman once and had kind of a mixed time, but it was our first campus visit and we didn’t plan all that well.</p>

<p>Rambling. A lot to process these days. Thank you both very much!</p>

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<p>The politics at Reed and Macalester can be a bit off-putting to those who like their politics a little more laid back. Good schools, but they’re more in-your-face than Whitman or Occidental are - and that can be an issue for some students, especially if they happen to disagree with the cause-du-jour.</p>

<p>I wouldn’t let LA turn you off Occidental. The school is the school and it being in LA shouldn’t generally make a difference. I don’t know where home is, but getting there from LA is certainly going to be easier than Walla Walla, unless you live in Spokane.</p>

<p>All are good schools, personal feel is going to be the big issue, as it always is. And make sure your son’s major is on offer before you go - no sense picking a school you like, but you can’t major in what you want.</p>

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<p>Reed is relatively strong in physics compared to most LACs. It has a nuclear reactor.</p>

<p>All have American Chemical Society approval for chemistry.</p>

<p>However, if he is interested in math or statistics, he should check the offerings in those subjects in the catalog and their frequency of offering in the schedule, for each school. A quick glance indicates that none is particularly deep in math, though adequate for a not-super-advanced student not looking to explore a large number of elective areas in advanced math.</p>

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<p>I would agree with MrMom62 that Macalester, like Reed, is not ideal for a young man who “is not super comfortable with an artsy, hippie-ish crowd .”</p>

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<p>How blandly condescending.</p>

<p>There are plenty of people at Reed who do not fit the ‘artsy’ label, whatever that means. There are also people here who have transferred from Whitman because of a perceived lack of academic seriousness in the student body there. Make of that what you will.</p>

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<p>I wasn’t referring to Reed being “artsy” at all. It does have a reputation, fair or not, of being an activist campus, and a Hard Left one at that. (The joke is that there is so much groupthink going on that the only political arguments on campus are between the socialists and the communists.) That bothers some people, others can ignore it, but it’s something you should be aware of going in. Macalester has a reputation of being very into gay and gender politics. Whitman and Occidental don’t wear their politics on their sleeve quite so much, though I’m sure you can find the usual suspects there.</p>

<p>I have no doubt that Reed is more academically hard core than Whitman. There aren’t many place more hard core than Reed, it’s what it’s famous for. To some people, that’s a good thing, to others, Whitman is preferable. Again, it’s something you should be aware of going in.</p>

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<p>MrMom62, I appreciate (OP here) your point about the political atmosphere at Reed, having gone to Berkeley myself. My son is deeply progressive and committed to justice, but he’s not a fan of knee-jerk anything! So this might be a really important cultural consideration.
Also, I’m curious what “hard core” means in this context. Would students at Reed be able to compete academically at Pomona or Stanford? (I can read the percentiles, obviously, but this sort of characterization comes up a lot with Reed, and I’m not quite sure what it means.)</p>

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<p>Your son will be able to decide which environment he prefers. And he has 4 great choice. He sounds perfect for Macalester (I confess I’m biased). It is academically rigorous, and Mac students are serious students who tend to have varied interests. The Twin Cities provide a vibrant backdrop, but there is a real campus with lots to do. Yes, the student body does lean left, but students respect the opinions of others - “Minnesota Nice” is an expression that has some validity. And yes, it gets cold (it wouldn’t be Minnesota if it didn’t get cold), but the kids seem to make the best of it. I question if the posters who have such strong feelings about the politics of various campuses have first hand knowledge of them. I’m afraid I agree with Ghostt.</p>

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<p>I see Macalester as more wonderfully “activist” than “radically liberal” and agree with opine that one need not be a member of the Weather Underground to thrive there. Am also not surprised that Occidental and LA fell off the list, sounds less of a fit. Reed is, in my opinion (without hopefully drawing anyone’s ire), more of a place of extremes, and one has to be comfortable handling that. It’s a place with wonderful challenges and opportunities but, as tends to go hand in hand, more risk of failure (think graduation rates). Whitman seems a “safer” place, it may be the most welcoming environment of the bunch, but is certainly more isolated geographically with possibly fewer resources without Portland/Minneapolis-St.Paul at one’s doorstep. I really think this should come down to campus visits and gut trumping analysis.</p>

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<p>By hardcore, I mean Reed has a reputation of being one of the most academically rigorous schools in the country, with rigorous grading standards to boot. I have no doubt its students could compete with Stanford and Pomona students, and many do, moving on to equally rigorous graduate programs. One does not just skate through Reed, at least according to its reputation, and the Reed alumni here at CC tend to confirm that.</p>

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<p>MrMom62, I appreciate (OP here) your point about the political atmosphere at Reed, having gone to Berkeley myself. My son is deeply progressive and committed to justice, but he’s not a fan of knee-jerk anything! So this might be a really important cultural consideration.</p>

<p>Why does “radically liberal” have to mean knee-jerk anything? And honestly, I think on CC and elsewhere certain schools get strange stereotypes. Reed is definitely a more liberal-leaning SLAC, but most SLACs are. They have gotten a reputation for social activism, but I don’t necessarily think that means they’re still burning bras and draft cards.</p>

<p>Personally, I think good visits are in order. There’s nothing in your OP that specifically recommends any of the four SLACs - or rules any of them out. When they’re all the same level of appealing on paper, then it’s time to visit, if possible. Sometimes there’s just a je ne sais quoi about being on a particular campus that makes a student feel “home.” It is, in part, what motivated me to select my mid-ranked SLAC over Emory - when I walked around on campus I felt at home, warm, welcomed.</p>

<p>If you can’t visit, I think eliminating on other factors is as good an approach as any. If you don’t want to be in LA because of whatever it is you dislike about LA…that’s totally okay. You really can’t go wrong here, and honestly gut feelings and smaller concerns may be exactly what you need right now to narrow your choices down.</p>

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<p>My son has a friend at Reed, this friend is a true intellectual, he is thrilled to be in the library most of the time and he loves esoteric conversation late into the night. While very intelligent, my son didn’t think that atmosphere was right for him. Politics aside, I think you have to highly value a life of the mind to thrive at Reed.</p>

<p>Just curious, rejnel, what did your son think of Whitman? I know it’s not a place that will appeal to everyone, I’m just wondering which aspects he had mixed feelings about.</p>

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<p>Thank you all! Everything you’ve shared has added to the picture, and I really appreciate it. I know visits are going to be the deciding factor from here, and we are going to knock ourselves out to get to all of them. But you have all given us plenty to chew on this week.
bopambo, our “mixed time” at Whitman was sort of anomalous, I think. We got desperately lost en route (were on time for our sessions, but not before spending a lot of time on deserted country roads), our young tour guide was giving her second tour and was easily flustered, I was put off by the fact that we were hustled past every single one of the arts buildings in favor of classrooms and labs, and the food we found at a sandwich shop in town was terrible. None of these factors truly reflect on the quality of education a student can get out Whitman, but overall we came away feeling like it had been a weird day.
He’s going to a Reed reception this weekend, and we’re getting tickets to the Twin Cities for mid-April. I don’t know if we’ll get back to Whitman, but it’s still certainly in the mix. And the L.A. thing–I do understand that the campus is the campus, but I also think it’s realistic to think about whether you’d like to live in the area where you go to college (more of a reality for my generation than his). And I don’t think he sees himself in southern California.</p>

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<p>Not to hijack the thread, but in reality, on some campuses, there is no intellectual debate, there is only radical orthodoxy enforced by intellectual jihadists. Swarthmore comes to mind, to pick a school not on OPs list. Some of the most closed-minded places in the country are colleges campuses, and that a shame. I actively tried to avoid such places for my daughter, not because she would disagree with the viewpoints, but because that is the very thing college should not be about.</p>

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<p>Thanks for the reply rejnel. We had some of those weird days while visiting schools and there was little to be done to resuscitate the image. A similar thing happened to my son and husband at Carleton, it was a cold rainy day, the students were bent over walking to classes due to the weather and the admissions receptionist was in a bad mood. That visit was forever imprinted on my son’s mind even though we all know Carleton is a great school. Father and son then drove on to Macalester where the sun broke through and everyone was happy to see them.</p>

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<p>I’m sure yield must be, at least to some extent, a function of weather on visitors’ days!</p>

<p>MrMom62, re “in reality, on some campuses, there is no intellectual debate, there is only radical orthodoxy enforced by intellectual jihadists” I’m sure this is true–and in fact, my son is more sensitive to it than I am. I tend to be the total bleeding heart; he processes his politics much more rationally (which I admire). You wouldn’t hesitate to call either of us big Lefties, but he values energetic, nuanced debate very highly indeed.</p>

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<p>OP here. Had asked for thoughts on Macalester, Occidental, Reed, and Whitman. My husband and I stayed out of the decision almost entirely (which gave us front-row seats to our son’s process–fascinating!). He fairly quickly ruled out Occidental and Reed for reasons that made sense. Had an excellent visit to Mac mid-April, and I thought that had tipped it. But in fact he was on the fence until 6 this evening, when he finally made the call. And we have just put down a deposit at Whitman College! I couldn’t be happier.</p>