<p>I’m a high school senior and I have offers to play football at Midd, Georgetown, and Davidson. I’m interested in studying Economics and/or politics. I’ve taken official visits at Midd and Davidson and I loved them both. My official at Georgetown is the 17th. Thoughts?</p>
<p>NESCAC sports are great and you can really enjoy your academic and college experience. 8 week season and tough competition. Middlebury is a great choice the only tough part is being in Vermont v. DC. Vermont is a neat place.</p>
<p>Congratulations, all excellent schools! Do you have preferences towards location? For your interests Georgetown is hard to beat, affording you the opportunity to intern during the spring term when you’re not playing football.</p>
<p>With your interests, politics are important to consider. If you are more Conservative, you may not want to go to Middlebury. Likewise, you won’t want to go there if you do not want to be in the cold. Though, with Davidson and Georgetown, football is clearly overshadowed by basketball, but they are still D-1 (albeit FCS). They are all good schools, and I would choose Davidson or Georgetown, but it comes down to what you want.</p>
<p>If you have an interest in politics, then Georgetown’s location should be a major factor.</p>
<p>Georgetown isn’t very strong in economics or anything that isn’t politics. Further, there isn’t much campus at GU. Unlike Hopkins or the Ivy League schools, GU is not a research university and does not have leading scholars and researchers on its faculty. It offers no academic advantages over good liberal arts colleges like Midd or Davidson, unless OP is interested in studying business.</p>
<p>Midd is the major outlier in this decision. Beautiful location, but you’d better love snow and mountains. Even Davidson, with its small size, is a stone’s throw, about 20 miles, from Charlotte. Midd is as rural as the northeast gets. </p>
<p>Academically, all great. If politics really a consideration, location for Georgetown obviously comes into play. Visit Georgetown. I suspect you’ll know right away whether it’s right or not.</p>
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<p>This is patently false. The Carnegie Foundation rates Georgetown as an “RU/VH” institution, which stands for Research University/Very High. That’s the same category as Johns Hopkins, Harvard, Yale, Cornell, etc. Also, leading scholars include Michael Eric Dyson, Madeleine Albright, Anthony Lake (a former NSA advisor), George Tenet (former CIA director), and people well-known within their individual fields (like the former president of the American Philological Association). Their political science department is also ranked in the top 10 by the National Research Council. Georgetown is an excellent research university.</p>
<p>OP, I think the question comes down to whether you do want to go to a medium-sized research university or a small LAC. Georgetown does offered unparalleled opportunities for a student who’s interested in economics and/or politics - including a political economy major I’m pretty sure that neither Midd nor Davidson has, plus the opportunity to do internships in DC. But Davidson and Middlebury are also great, well-reputed LACs, and you’ll have a more intimate educational experience there.</p>
<p>In the vein of athletics - Georgetown is Division I, and their athletics program is considered one of the best in the country. The facilities you’ll have access to will be very very different from what you’d have at Midd or Davidson, even though Davidson DI too.</p>
<p>Does size matter to you? If so georgetown is much bigger then the other two schools.</p>
<p>Keep the size school you want to go to in mind when making your decision. </p>
<p>Also if you want to help make your decision easier cancel your visit to georgetown as then you will only be deciding between two schools!</p>
<p>^ Why would he cancel a visit to Georgetown to avoid making a choice between three?! People have to make choices from more then two things at a time on a regular basis. Dismissing a third option without consideration hardly leads to the best choice.</p>
<p>“Georgetown is an excellent research university.” Really? Where are the nobel prize winners?</p>
<p>No math, no physics, and no chemistry. And economics? GU is joke. It’s nothing but a large Catholic liberal arts college.</p>
<p>“In the vein of athletics - Georgetown is Division I, and their athletics program is considered one of the best in the country.” - Sure, it’s the USC of the East.</p>
<p>“The facilities you’ll have access to will be very very different from what you’d have at Midd” Yes, GU’s facilities are in every respect inferior to Midd’s.</p>
<p>^There are no Nobel Prize winners at the vast majority of liberal arts colleges. Doesn’t mean the quality of the UNDERGRAD education is a “joke.”</p>
<p>As to the original poster… a lot will depend on your visit to Georgetown and meeting with the coach. No one here knows how much you want to make football central to your time at college, and only the coaches at the 3 schools will be able to tell you what level and amount of play you can expect. </p>
<p>As far as academics, all 3 are excellent and well-respected. </p>
<p>Their geographic locations are very different… so only you can decide whether rural of city life matters to you.</p>
<p>I’m sure there will be various trolls trotting out useless rankings or whatever, but just ignore it and go with the best fit after your visits.</p>
<p>[BTW, rankings are good tools to give you an overall sense of an institution’s relative standing… but they are flawed, imperfect tools, so ignore small differences.]</p>
<p>They’re all great schools, the question is, how do you fit in each of them academically? What are your HS grades, test scores, and courses? And how does that stack up against your peers at each school?</p>
<p>Middlebury and especially Davidson are known to be very tough academically - doing well in class plus football won’t be easy for a top student, let alone an average one. (Not saying which one you are, we have no info on that, so either one is an equal possibility.) Georgetown at least has the reputation of making accomodations for athletes, that might be a consideration depending on how you feel you stack up against the other students at the other schools.</p>
<p>If you’re strong academically, then go for the school you like best, but be careful of overmatching yourself, that can make for a very long four years.</p>
<p>All three are great schools. But if your are interested in politics then where better to be then in Washington DC. Georgetown has a great political science and international relations program and I’m sure their economics program is strong too.
All three are private schools, so I’m guessing they’ll pretty much cost you the same? SO yeah I’d go to Georgetown.</p>
<p>Gtown football is usually the bottom of the Div1aa Patriot League(Colgate, Holy Cross etc). Midd and Davidson are Div3 football teams with smaller athletic facilties. Williams and Amherst dominate Midd in football in that Conference. Holy Cross has JAN15th application due date if interested and HC is offering athletic scholarships for football starting this year. Also Holy Cross has a 25000 seat stadium-perhaps biggest of all selective LAC’s.</p>
<p>All are great schools. If you are interested in politics, Georgetown seems like an obvious choice but if you prefer the environment of a LAC, then you have two fine choices. You can’t make a bad decision.</p>
<p>If the sports thing is important then D1 may have an impact. I may be wrong, but I expect that you will see a difference in athletic facilities. D1 vs. D3 has budget implications. Ask the coaches questions about what impact that has on a regular basis. What hotels do they stay in. What food subsidies do they get? What kind of weight training coaching will there be? What kind of physical therapy? Are there team meals? Do players get a lot of extras like t-shirts, sweat suits, hats, shorts etc?</p>
<p>Some of these things seem trivial but the life of an athlete is different from other students and you may want those things. Especially since from an education standpoint, my opinion is that you cannot go wrong with any of those three choices.</p>
<p>Go where you “feel” most comfortable.</p>
<p>My guess is that if the OP has already visited Middlebury and Davidson, he knows of their athletic facilities and relative strength within the conference. BTW, Middlebury is not dominated by Williams and Amherst, if one checks the standings, and in fact is one of the more dominate teams with arguably the best facilities across the board in the NESCAC.</p>
<p>Academically, all will likely offer a challenging and rewarding experience but D.C. is certainly a different beast than rural Vermont or North Carolina. </p>
<p>I hope one of these schools stands out in your visit as the best fit with who you are and what you’d like to make of the next four years. Kudos!</p>