<p>“Mini, and curmudgeon, does the average student at Smith and Rhodes have the same opportunities at these schools as your kids?”</p>
<p>The paid research assistantships in the first two years are available to roughly 40-45 students in each class, and are the prime “merit awards” at Smith. I would also say that since they created my d’s research position where none had previously existed, that is unusual. </p>
<p>What is most extraordinary at my d’s school, in my opinion the thing that most makes it stand out, is the quality of the advising. For everyone. And it goes well past the academic stuff, though there is enormous amount of that as well. As a women’s college, Smith has paid particular attention to women’s life trajectories, and starts conversations with students about this virtually the moment they set foot on campus. From the brochures, it looks like a New England college with fall colors missing Y chromosomes. (In fact, that’s much of how I would have described it 35 years ago.) But it isn’t a college that lacks men; it is a college that is specifically geared to the needs and aspirations of women. From the creation of the engineering program, where the goal is not to produce engineers per se, but future engineering managers, to the paid involvement of women in research from the first days they set foot on campus, to the women’s financial network, things are just, well, shall we say, different, or “XX attuned”.</p>
<p>Smith both last year, and cumulatively over the past three years, had the largest number of Fulbrights, and the largest number of research Fulbrights, among LACs (and more among women than Williams, Amherst, Swarthmore combined.) It is NOT because the students are brighter - they’re not. Or because there are more academic superstars - there aren’t (or they would have more Rhodes or Marshalls, where you find the superstars.) I chalk it up to fantastic advising, and the college’s deliberate attempt to instill chutzpah - to simply create “uppity” women.</p>