Is Amherst 'preppy'? - Page 5

mythmom · 10-26-2009, 07:45 AM

Hey, where's Andover, St. Pauls to that other one starting with Deer (Deerfield?)? My kids went to public, so I am not beating any drums. Just kidding around.

And yay, Williams. Not so bad.

At Barnard wall the "prep" school women were from Hockaday which is in Texas. Strange, right? And Texas oil money.

OldbatesieDoc · 10-26-2009, 09:30 AM

I guess Kwu thinks Phillips/Exeter are the Uber-preps. But what about Miss Porter's?Let's not be sexist here...Thanks Voss, great stats.

vossron · 10-26-2009, 09:54 AM

Hey, this is fun! Given links to other prep schools' data, I'll add them, and other colleges as well that take significant numbers of preppies.

mythmom · 10-26-2009, 02:37 PM

There's also the wonderful world of Manhattan day schools: Spence, Chapin, Collegiate, Horace Mann ++.

3togo · 10-26-2009, 04:12 PM

this may be a shortcut ... awhile back Mini created "the entitlement index" which looks at the percentage of kids at a college that went to private schools (entitled) or receive pell grants (not entitled) ... check out posts #57 and #58.

"Rich kid schools"

3togo · 10-26-2009, 04:25 PM

To the OP ... my oldest and I visited about 20 high end schools in the Northeast (mostly urban). To us the schools that stood out as not feeling "preppy" were Smith, UofChicago (the one midwest stop), MIT, and Barnard (although the city chic comment seems accurate for Barnard). We did visit Amherst which actually felt a lot like Yale ... we liked the school and the students ... they were on my daughter's list ... but there was a bit of preppy feel ... nothing over the top at all but a bit of a feel.

As many have mentioned this is a very personal thing and virtually all the schools have become more diverse over the last 20-30 years. I think it is hard for any of us to compare schools most of which we only get a glimpse of and a few we know quite well (the schools our kids attend) but for even these schools it's tough to put our impressions in context. For this reason with our oldest we recommend visits to extremes to hopefully provide context for these discussions ... in this particular case I personally believe most folks who visited Amherst, Macalester, Smith, Davidson, and Colgate I think they would say Amherst is far from the most preppy place they visited but there were other places that felt less preppy also.

'rentof2 · 10-26-2009, 04:33 PM

3togo, those are pretty interesting lists... but, wow, some people must have a lot of time on their hands!

mythmom · 10-26-2009, 04:53 PM

I love visiting colleges. I do it the way other tourists visit cathedrals and museums, and I don't have to take a plane or go to Europe -- so it's the "poor man's" tour.

It's even more fun without kids.

Last year's list including Middlebury, which DS and DD didn't like (because the info session spent the entire time talking about how VT doesn't have billboards. They felt that was too too PC environmental.) They refused to look at the school.

When I sent back I loved it!! And DS said he was being silly and should have looked at it and applying, but since he is happy where he is, it really doesn't matter.

I would love to see Oberlin, Grinnell, Pomona, and Oxy, but those do require plane rides, so we haven't gotten there yet.

Want to go back to Princeton which I haven't seen since I was a girl.

3togo: You were right: I don't think Barnard did feel preppy. It's pretty gritty. The "urban chicness" of it all came more from the city, and really only expressed itself in girls who were already sensitive to it. DD's roommate, who was "unentitled," from rural Georgia, never got into it at all. And DD would have been fashion conscious wherever she went.

She don't told me that NYC, Broadway from 59th St to 72nd St. is her favorite place in the world. But she felt this way long before college. She went into the city all the time to take classes at Broadway Dance Center from the time she was thirteen.

She is really hoping to go to Fordham Law School next year (if accepted) so she can continue to hang out there, but she said she'll been happy to go to CUNY law school which is in Queens, not chic, and not Tier I. So my fashionista is not a snob, just an esthete! (I sympathize; I am too but in different areas.)

'rentof2 · 10-26-2009, 05:27 PM

Oh, yikes, mythmom... my state doesn't do billboards either. And I quietly express my gratitude whenever I cross the state line.

I haven't visited Oberlin, Middlebury, or Grinnell (would love to though),but I have visited Pomona (numerous times) and Oxy.

My son was VERY interested in Pomona for quite awhile. We visited twice, he did the on-campus interview (that was a third visit), and he was pretty gung-ho. We had other things that took us to LA so it wasn't like 3 dedicated pilgrimages to The Holy Claremont, but I got pretty familiar with the campus.

There were just a couple things peculiar to his special interests that weren't quite a *perfect* match with Pomona, but it was his #1 choice school for some time. Had we not made that fateful 2-day trip to Massachusetts in late Sept. of his senior year, I think it's not unlikely he'd be at Pomona right now. It's a very pretty campus, in a very different way than Amherst, Williams, and that general type. It's suburban, but very tranquil feeling. Also having the other colleges in the consortium be all continguous gives it a feeling of being small, but also big... if you know what I mean. Kind of the best of both. It feels peaceful, but lively.

Oxy is a personal favorite of mine. A wonderful little school in the heart of LA (but you wouldn't know it when you're on campus), that has a great vibe. It's selective, but not *that* selective. My son also really liked it a lot, but was not so into the urban setting. He kept on his "list" as his favorite of what were sort of his match/safety schools. I'm not sure how we ever could have afforded it, even with whatever aid he'd get, but the school itself is pretty neat.

mythmom · 10-26-2009, 05:42 PM

'rent: They didn't mind the no billboards. They just didn't like it as a "selling point" for the school. No billboards is cool. However, as New Yorkers, billboards are like air. Thing of Time Square. There certainly aren't any billboards where we live. None at all.

Was it a particular program that made Amherst a better fit than Pomona? His major?

I would think the combination of small Pomona and "The Claremont Colleges" would be great.

Your S is a great adventurer. My kids both refused to look at *any* schools west of the Hudson with the exception of U of Chicago.

OldbatesieDoc · 10-26-2009, 07:32 PM

I have friends who live in Middlebury, so have been many times. Tour was good, buildings beautiful, pool is awesome, with big windows framing the mountains.The town is funky and fun.
I dragged my 2nd son out to MN, where I did grad school, and he had to confess that the trip was worth it.He liked all 3 schools: MacAlaster, St Olaf and Carleton.
We had a dreadful experience at Bowdoin-the admissions officer and the student tour guide kept talking about Bowdoin's contribution to the civil war. We felt as if we'd fallen amongst re-enactors or something. They both refused to consider it.
And of course, anyone reading the thread knows we didn't get a great impression of Amherst...Our tour ran over, the guide was TERRIBLE, and when we got to the admissions office at the end, it was locked-everyone had gone home. The info session was given by a new staffer who also rambled on instead of admitting he didn't know things, and it was an ordeal.For whatever reason, airplanes flew overhead repeatedly-I am told that isn't typical, but it was another distraction.

'rentof2 · 10-26-2009, 07:53 PM

What made Amherst a better fit than Pomona........

Hmm, well... you know sometimes these things, these impressions prospective students can get, are picked up from little things here and there. It's easy to give them too much weight when you're looking for clues in a vacuum.

The first thing was that he picked up a student newspaper on one of our tours of Pomona, and then read it from time to time online. He didn't like the tone of some of the commentary and student columnists. It seemed a bit harsh in its humor, often that clever, cutting type of writing (sort of like baby Maureen Dowds). It wasn't the content of them, but the tone that he found a bit rude and haughty.

Of course I told him a handful of students writing for the paper does not define a school... but you know, it's that thing of trying to read the tea leaves.

He had also (like most kids applying to these schools) spent the years beforehand studying across subject areas at a high level, and pretty relentlessly. He got to a point where he just really wanted to press forward in the areas that interested him most, and he wasn't over-the-moon with Pomona's "breadth requirements." Not that he wouldn't have soldiered through them there or other distribution requirements somewhere else, but there was something about the way they were expressed at Pomona that just left him feeling like he'd jumped through hoops for four years and didn't have a lot energy left to keep doing it. He wanted college to be more about intellectual freedom, ideally, but he hadn't really made an open curriculum any kind of a deal breaker (in fact the topic never arose until much later). It really was something about the way they communicated the breadth requirements that put him off just a wee bit.

But like I said, he was overall very high on the school.

When we went to MA things just clicked for him in a different way. We saw 3 colleges in 1.5 days (Amherst, Williams, Tufts) -- we couldn't afford to make the trip in the first place, so we kept it super short. He's such a homebody by nature that I kept pushing for him to go farther from home to stretch his comfort zone..

One of those be-careful-what-you-wish-for experiences.

Now we only see him twice a year because he's so far away and it's such a long and expensive trip. But he couldn't be happier and it is a wonderful place for him to be. I'm not a fatalist by any measure, but on a purely poetical level it seems like he is meant to be there.

mythmom · 10-27-2009, 08:41 AM

'rentof2: Smiles. Happy for your DS, and I'm sure you're right. I can especially see the open curriculum being uber attractive to some kids.

I liked the student at Amherst's info session stressing how much this meant to her. Some of the parents were real pains, challenging her on this, but bless her, she held her own nicely. I was very impressed with her and the description of the advisement process.

DS less go. I guess it just wasn't *HIS* place.

wtidad · 10-27-2009, 11:49 PM

Sunmachine -

My son has enjoyed Bates very much but its history - integration in the 1800s, founded by abolitionists, etc. matters not at all to him. He is probably a good example of the jock/prep hybrid - plays football, enjoys a party, etc. He did not choose Bates for its liberal traditions or current "crunchiness"

As to the liklihood of greater racial diversity - I wouldn't hold my breath. Lewiston, Maine (in fact, Maine in general) is a tough sell for lots of black kids. Between the weather, the remoteness from all places they are likely to be familiar with, and the "entitled" student body, I think that Bates is not a terribly attractrive choice for many American minorities. I think that some of the increase in AA numbers may be due to foreign students, as well - who, regardless of skin color, are a whole seperate thing.

Keilexandra · 10-28-2009, 08:44 PM

^International students are never counted in domestic minority numbers. But I agree that Bates is not a terribly attractive choice to most minority students.