Clark University Visit Report by morvoren

Visit Activities:

Information Session: Yes

Campus Tour: Yes

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Campus:

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Off-Campus:

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a bit worrisome neighborhood

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Campus Visit Notes for Clark University

Visit Description:

Clark seemed relaxed and laid-back. The campus is filled with brick buildings, but there is a real campus feel, and a quad. In the center is a statue of Freud, “our mascot,” the tour guide explained, giving the background that it was the only university where Freud lectured when he was in the US. And psychology is one of their strengths, the most popular major.

The tour guide was a field hockey and ice hockey player who was a little too much of the ‘does everything kind of person.’ However, the tour was pretty comprehensive. The cafeteria looked great although the bistro where we had lunch before the tour was not very good and we ate some mediocre sushi, but it was a sunny place, with very relaxed students and some sense of diversity. I noticed a bunch of African and African American students. Turns out there is a very international feel at Clark; they take a large number of foreign students and pride themselves on their international student bodyand their study abroad programs. Their diversity otherwise doesn’t seem that much to write home about: 8 percent or so. Class size 20 on average, only one large lecture class: intro to psych, the most popular major. 1 in 10 faculty student ratio, and it’s “real” we were told, everyone teaches. Dorms seemed reasonable; the floors were separated by sex, and most were doubles for freshman; later you can join with friends in suites.

Here were the real bonuses from the info session. There is a college consortium and you can take classes at the other schools including WPI, although as we learned later, WPI is on a completely different term system, so that might be difficult; Clark has a 3/2 engineering program with Columbia, you could major in computer science for three years at Clark and if you maintain a 3.0 average for your first three years at Clark, you can then transfer to Columbia, study for two years in Columbia’s engineering department, and then graduate with a B.S. from Clark and a B.S. from Columbia. They also have an a pretty amazing program where in a bunch of subjects, you can do a FREE fifth year and get a masters at Clark. You need a 3.25 for sophomore and junior year - only trouble you can’t do that either in psychology or comp. sci. Another plus, while there is a kind of core, it is very flexible. So you have to take 8 courses from 8 different areas… but if you are absolutely freaking out about languages because of hatred or a learning disability, you can take a Spanish lit in translation or another foreign culture course. Similarly, in history, you could take the history of film, and so forth, so there is a great deal of flexibility. Also 40% of the undergraduates (there are about 900 graduates) do research projects with professors and many of them are published.The woman leading the info session said that Clark was not competitive, was cooperative and the kids were not stressed out. It sounded like it might actually be true.

The kids looked much less intense than at my son's prep school, or at places like Grinnell or Wesleyan. .

Clark is in the middle of a poor, rather tough looking working class neighborhood. Both the student guide and the Information lecture lady emphasized that you use common sense: it’s an urban area, never walk alone on campus at night (9 times in 10 you’re OK said the lady). There are escorts for going everywhere when it’s dark—4PM to 3AM. This seems to be true at many colleges we visited.