Colleges for Non-Competitive Achievers

LurkNessMonster
Fri, 13 Jun 2008 12:31:14 +0000

My daughter was also in the same position as your son: being a noncompetitive kid in a large public high school. Her school was filled with very assertive high-achievers. My daughter is very smart, but she didn’t want to play in that arena. She’s much more low-key and not much of a joiner. I did get the sense that she got lost in the shuffle in that huge, bustling place. (She loved it there though.)

Consequently, I tried to interest her in attending a LAC where she would get some personalized attention. After touring several good ones, though, she soon realized she wanted a larger school. She also needed a school with a strong Japanese-language program, which filtered out quite a few colleges (as computer science will do for your son). And she didn’t want to be “in the middle of nowhere.”

She has just finished her freshman year at the University of Pittsburgh, and she loves it there. Her classes were challenging, and she got a chance to shine. The kids were friendly, and a larger school has so many courses to offer. So my bottom-line advice is to follow your son’s lead. He will figure out what’s important to him. I second the advice of the poster above who said to look at Carnegie Mellon. It’s right next to Pitt in a very nice section of Pittsburgh. CMU has one of the top cs programs in the country, if not the top. The kids are super smart and high achieving, but I don’t think the atmosphere is cutthroat. Your son could check it out.