Colleges your child crossed off the list after visiting, schools that moved up on the list. Why? (NO REPLIES)

I’m from NC and once I visited Davidson I KNEW it wasn’t the place for me.

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To clarify, some or even most of those LAC’s listed above that “require gym” are very loose in their definition. You can do sport, club sport or even just a club activity like frisbee or Quiddich. It’s great to encourage physical activity.

Reed College has a fairly extensive PE requirement, which surprised me, because it doesn’t have much of a sports culture. But it can be fulfilled in a wide variety of ways, from archery to juggling to meditation to white water rafting…

@Ipo744 Why didn’t you like Davidson? We’re in the Midwest and our high school sent three kids there last year. I was thinking it might be a good match for our S19.

@homerdog - For me it was a homogenous environment that seemed dated and stuffy. Lack of diversity, lack of good athletics, and location were my main down votes. It reminded me of W&L if you’re familiar w/ that mixed in with High Point University. There’s been some serious allegations, lately, on sexual assault happening there that bear looking into as well. No one would question the academics there - it’s just a very specific niche for people who are looking beyond academics. Hope that helps.

@Ipo744 Thanks. Lots of kids at our suburban wealthy high school like schools that keep them in their bubble. Our son is not really looking for that. At least right now, prior to even looking at any colleges, he says that he wants to get away from all of these entitled kids. It will be interesting if he picks up a snobby vibe at schools once we start visiting. I think the lack of diversity might be an issue for him as well. I think I read that Davidson is working on the diversity issue but I know change sometimes takes time. And sexual assault issues…yikes.

@homerdog , @Ipo744 et al - if you haven’t seen this article, it’s very interesting: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/01/18/upshot/some-colleges-have-more-students-from-the-top-1-percent-than-the-bottom-60.html?_r=0 It looks at the ratio of kids in the top 1% economically, vs. those in the bottom 60% - one metric of how skewed the demographics are at particular schools. Davidson is #33 of the 38 colleges who have more top-1%ers than bottom-60%ers. Other interesting stats in the article too, and you can add any college you’re interested in to the tables.

My son goes to Davidson. I’m familiar with that NYT article and found it fascinating. That said, to me, the more interesting stat wasn’t whether there were more top-1%ers than bottom-60%ers, but rather just how many bottom-60%ers there were. And Davidson does very well in that regard for an excellent SLAC.

In any event, I wouldn’t put too much stock in a random person saying they knew Davidson wasn’t for them or in a random person saying they knew Davidson was for them.

We toured Davidson with our S after he was accepted. He didn’t end up going but liked it fine. We were worried it would be too athletic-dominated since it’s a D1 school despite a small LAC student population, but it didn’t appear so. We liked the focus on honor code (and he lamented after his first semester elsewhere the self-scheduled finals Davidson has). We didn’t like that the sit-in classes were not legit lectures but tailor made for prospective students. All the remarks for the senior people during the conference were excellent, including the current students. We found the adjacent village a little too tiny for our taste but that wouldn’t have been a deal-breaker. In the end he just liked a couple other LAC’s he was accepted to a little more (and Davidson was far for us – over 8 hours).

Just looked up Davidson. It’s fairly diverse for a school of it’s type:
white-68%
Hisp-8%
Black-7%
Asian-5%
Amer.Ind-1%
students from foreign countries-8%

Also, it’s a Div 1 school so athletics are pretty serious

Agree with person who pointed out that many schools “require gym” - but Davidson requires a varsity/club/intramural team sport. If you click the links on the website link below, you will see that they really are team sports - nothing like frisbee.

Interesting to me that they require a team sport but not an artistic/musical group performance activity.

I’m sure some kids think it’s fun but it was a big negative for my kid, who prefers to exercise on her own.

https://www.davidson.edu/academics/physical-education/courses-and-requirements/team-sport

Clarification - meant to say “they really are team sports - nothing like yoga or spinning classes”

Wow, that one requirement would completely put my kid off Davidson.

Also, it’s a Div 1 school so athletics are pretty serious

yes - Steph Curry played basketball at Davidson, and they have made quite a number of appearances in the NCAA basketball tournament

All D1 schools and teams are not competitive. We looked at a few of the smaller D1 schools and didn’t find them competitive or that the players were particularly happy. Davidson might take sports seriously, but not all of their teams are competitive or successful. I think a lot of the smaller schools just sponsor some sports to remain D1 eligible, and it shows.

@traveler98 I know a student in CA who just loved Rice and the vibe, and is going there. I don’t know much about Rice except it is a very good school, with a big endowment and a nice, safe campus feel similar to Brown. Seemed like a good small school especially in engineering.

Wow…I never heard of a school requiring a team sport. That would have not gone over well with any of my kids! And I believe Princeton is the only school left with 1st semester final exams after winter break. Are there any others?

FYI, most Davidson students get their team sport requirement completed by participating in Freshman Flickerball during the first semester. Flickerball is a traditional bonding activity with your hallmates. Each team consists of students on your floor and teams compete against other freshman teams. A total of approx. 6 games are played. There is no required amount of playing time needed to get credit so cheering on your hallmates from the sidelines counts!

@homerdog We visited Davidson and my DD loved it and applied. She did not like many LACs (she hated Williams due to the grotty town and isolated location and did not like Wesleyan due to the town). We thought the school seemed academic and the student body was pretty diverse. We also liked the town and the close proximity to Charlotte for airport as well as internships.

If you have time, I would recommend a road trip to see Davidson, Wake Forest, Richmond and WIlliam and Mary as the all are a bit different despite their similarities.

We toured William & Mary the day before visiting Davidson. We really liked the campus and the area. The info session was not at all impressive, but it wasn’t a deal breaker. I don’t recall exactly, but my impression was the person running it just didn’t come across as very academic and it felt like it was really oriented toward Virginia-based students, which I get that 65% have to be. It was just very insider-y. It must be typical, for example, for Virginia schools to take field trips there because he spoke like almost everyone there would have visited before, and did a lot of comparisons to UVa. As an OOS, it didn’t really relate to us. The school itself has a lot to offer between location, beautiful campus, history, significant alums and the LAC-like feel despite having 9,000 students and grad programs. But the vibe during the info session and tour was one of being the “other” significant Virginia college. It stayed on the short list of schools my S considered after acceptances, but never rose to the top 2-3. I think he likes the bar set high and may have been a tad put off that the admission standards were so much lower for the 65% from in-state vs. being somewhere where everyone is as-much or more academic than he is and he has to rise to the challenge (That said, W&M and Davidson have a reputation for tougher grading than most of the NESCAC’s.) And the significant percentage of people in frats was also off-putting for him, even though everyone kept saying the frats were low-key and not cliche-greek culturally. I did like how they seemed to own and embrace having a bad football team.