I was also going to mention the consortium. Amherst students have access to UMass, down the street, and to Smith, Mt. Holyoke and Hampshire if it survives.
Colorado College is kind of in a unique place geographically. Itâs really the top LAC in the entire Rocky Mountain region or mountain west which is an enormous region covering maybe 1/3 of the country.
Along the Pacific coast you have a variety of options like Reed and Whitman in the north, Pomona and Occidental in the south, and of course places like Stanford, USC, and Caltech. And lots of less selective LACs, Jesuit schools, and the like.
As you look east there is basically nothing in ID, MT, WY, UT, NV, AZ, and NM, the entire intermountain west, until you get to CO and have Colorado College and University of Denver. Lots of state schools scattered about the west, and BYU, but no other elite LACs or private universities. Past CO you basically need to go all the way to TX, MO, or MN to find comparable schools. Colorado College basically has no peer institutions inside a giant radius.
The massive Killington complex is just under 2 hours from Amherst and thereâs closer skiing than that. One can talk about east vs CO skiing, but itâs not like Amherst isnât as close to good slopes as CC. Amherst ski club goes out pretty regularly I believe.
Did your kid already decide?
My nephew was a freshman at CC this year. He attended an exclusive private school in Brooklyn where most of his friends went onto Yale and Brown. He didnât want that same Northeast preppy pressure cooker and opted to apply to CC early, despite his guidance counselor and parents pressuring him to apply to the East Coast schools with those reputations. My take is that the world is changing. Kids are starting to see things like quality of life matter more than reputation- They are realizing this perhaps before parents are and Before USNWR and Fiske are as well. CC has smart student body and amazing faculty and an innovative program of learning. Yes, you can also be outdoors. That is a healthy thing. I went to Amherst and it was full of partying and drugs as well as lots of academics.There is some skiing but you have to travel 2 hours up to VT to get decent skiing and further north for good skiing. The narrow view of what are the âtop 5 or 10â best schools is simply that, narrow.
Thank you for all of the replies. I believed that I would be alerted when there was a reply, but wasnât, so I am just reading them now. My son landed on CC. When it came down to it, he was trying to talk himself into Amherst and Carleton felt too close to elements of high school from which he wanted to distance. He spent a lot of time on Amherst admitted student chats and was amazed by the stories and locations of the the students. He attended a class with a legendary professor that his mother had 30+ years before and came out energized, knowing that he was right there with the students and that diverse viewpoints were welcomed and thoughtfully presented. He was turned off by admitted students showboating intellectualism, etc. He got a hand-written note from a current Amherst student and it felt perfunctory. He may have had some regret had he gone there, but he would have gotten over it.
In our hearts, his mother and I know that CC is the right school on many levels. Its location and schedule are unlike any other LAC, and we imagine that there are many other students that are equally accomplished and motivated that choose to attend for the precise reasons that he did, despite the gap in prestige. He will take advantage of the outdoor culture there and be healthier. The block plan may be perfect for college in the age of Covid. We both work in education and see kids chase the golden fruit for the shine all the time and then end up taking time off from school or leaving their time there with regrets because it wasnât the right place for them. We still are grieving a bit, though, because we know that Amherst would have challenged him and forced him to grow in ways that simply cannot happen CC - it will be too comfortable. They also have the financial resources to make the right opening decisions regardless of cost. His mom didnât love Amherst of the 80s, and was excited for our son to be part of its present. We know many Carleton grads. It is an incredible school that is deeply loved, and it is close in a time of great uncertainty.
So weâre sacrificing financially and he is taking on debt that he likely doesnât completely understand. I know we did the ârightâ thing for the ârightâ reasons. I still think about it a lot, though, and hope letting go and trusting him was the correct thing to do.
1 Like
It sounds like your child would be happiest at Colorado College. The question is how financial concerns complicate that.
You may consider that Amherst College is the most prestigious, Carleton College probably the best at environmental science and geology. But, again, it sounds like your childâs preferences are clear: CC, then Amherst, then Carleton.
Congratulations on Colorado College! Sounds like it was the right fit for your son!
Congrats to your son on CC! He wonât be disappointed. I loved my time at CC; prepared me very well for post-graduate.
It IS like Amherst isnât as close to good skiing as CC. Itâs just geography. Oh, and the crowds are worst in the east, and the ice, and the vertical drop.