In our family, I was the one with the anti-Ohio bias - really more of an anti-Midwest bias, as I grew up on the East Coast, lived for a few years in LA and had never spent time anywhere in-between. My son, on the other hand, spent all of his school years in international schools in Tokyo, so he entered the college application process with no preconceptions about location. We visited schools all over the country - Southern California, Texas, North Carolina, Maine and Colorado - Denison was a late addition to the list, but as soon as he set foot on the campus, on a cold rainy day in March, that was it for him. He’s a junior now, and sometimes when he calls me in the morning on his way to class, I can hear the birds singing and he’ll mention there’s a deer crossing his path up ahead. It’s all pretty exotic for a kid from the big city and he’s getting a great education, academically and socially. I myself am looking forward to visiting Granville (the perfect college town) next month after our unanticipated two-year Covid hiatus, and I’m pretty embarrassed now that I almost kept Ohio off the list because of some stupid preconceptions. I always feel bad when I read about kids knocking schools off their lists because they are in the South, or in Texas, or in Ohio.
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