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Grinnell College Visit Report by morvoren
Visit to Grinnell College in September 2008 by morvoren (Student, HS Class of 2008)
(Member since November 19 2008 with 64 posts)
7 of 7 people found this visit report helpful
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Campus Visit Notes for Grinnell College
Visit Description:
The college is mostly modern buildings, with surprising architecture that allows light inside. Grinnell has a huge endowment because they invested in Intel before it was even Intel. It shows. The place feels like an incredibly rich and well endowed campus. On another level, these campuses all start to feel the same. Our son felt it was a lot like Wesleyan. The students were very smart looking, keen, and very put together. Having looked at sixteen places over eight months, I have come to believe that there is a real difference in students who seem fully formed, and those who still seem forming. These students seemed the former, very driven, very intense, the kinds of kids I tend describe as Hermione Grangers, if you know what I mean. Also, it felt very Eastern, like a college on the East Coast. The place doesn't have the same kind of sense of community as, for example, St. Olaf or Earlham, but that may also be that the kids are more driven. The College is in the middle of nowhere, since there is no real town to speak of, just a block or so of a town, and the rest of it the typical American Mall plus cornfields.
Our tour guide didn’t walk backwards, which shows you what an individualistic place Grinnell is. Out of 16 places we have seen, only two tour guides did not walk backwards. She was the daughter of diplomats and had lived all over the world, in Indonesia where her parents were currently, and Canada and many other places. She was majoring in history and theatre. She showed us her room which was wonderfully messy and was a single (she is a senior). There don’t seem to be the kind of theme living dorms that we saw in some places, although there are foreign language houses, and one or two themes that change. This year,for example there is an eco house. Floors are generally coed and students vote whether the bathrooms are single sex or coed, with one vote keeping it to single sex.
The dining room was the place that seemed to have the most sense of community, a light filled dining room where everyone seemed to eat, pretty much at the same time and good food. I had stir fry which was quite wonderful, you choose your ingredients and they stir fry it, and a great thai soup. The dining hall was spacious and airy and had an upstairs with private meeting spaces for groups and classes, as well as outside eating places when the weather was good.
Most people were in jeans, shorts, birkenstocks, and the student body as I said looked quite diverse, and very much the same kinds of kids we saw at Vassar and at Wesleyan, although perhaps less Asians. It had the same kind of energy as those two places. Facilities seemed wonderful from athletic to the science center. Classes seemed small and very hands on. No TAs, all professors, etc. Not hard to get in classes you want, we were told, which I have heard is a problem at Wesleyan. Huge amount of activities on campus. The Library has a million volumes and there is a separate science library.
Our son was fairly grumpy that day and didn't want to any of the suggested classes. So after the tour, we simply wandered into the science center and walked into the computer science dept on the third floor and professor John Stone’s office. Stone talked with us for 45 minutes or so, right on the spur of the moment.
After lunch our son had his interview with what he described as a fairly unsympathetic woman. It was the only bad interview he has ever had. He said that it was pretty intense and very focussed on scores and grades. Later when a Grinnell rep showed up at his HS, he noticed that she had a paper in hand with the names of every student who had visited and a rating. He only got a 3 our of a 5, so clearly they didn't really like him, which doesn't matter since he got into Bard early action, but you might want to know this. Bottom line: intense, academic, well endowed, great kids. Not for our son.