I just visited Williamstown (well, drove through really) for the first time this summer. What does “grotty” mean?
Grotty means grubby, rundown, dirty @OHMomof2 .
Butting in, grotty is British slang roughly meaning shabby or run-down.
Never been to Williamstown though.
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That doesn’t seem to describe Williamstown at all. Small, perhaps even tiny, yes. Isolated, pretty much. But run-down, dirty? Really? I must have been in a parallel universe Williamstown.
I’m not sure she was asking for a definition; I interpreted the question as “What, in your opinion, makes Williamstown grotty?” If that was not her intent, I would like to know the answer. 
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Thanks all 
(and ski - I was asking both. I had the impression it was a bad thing but I wasn’t sure exactly what the Bad Thing was)
I didn’t get that impression either but I was busy gawking at the fall foliage (it wasn’t summer, it was late October, my bad).
Williamstown is small and somewhat isolated but not run-down or dirty.
When visiting schools with a student who is interested in engineering, I can’t emphasize enough the importance of understanding the ease / difficulty for students to access and change majors. his was a key issue that we discovered that many parents were either not aware of or misunderstood. The two that we found offered engineering students a high degree of flexibility in selecting or changing majors were Lehigh and Case Western. Most schools require an application for each major or change, and you may be rejected.
I believe Lehigh and Case technically require students to complete a form and speak with their faculty advisor, but the purpose is to ensure that the student understands what they are changing into. Unlike most schools, they do not have hard constraints where students have to compete for seats in specific majors.
That is a good point, @Much2learn , that families should be aware of things like this. For some kids/ families, this is more of an issue than for others. We were not that concerned, even though both of our kids were interested in engineering. We were okay with them starting with general engineering classes and going from there (exploring options).
^ Maybe grotty (I meant more run-down than dirty) was a bit harsh. I should have said “uninteresting”. We had just driven around New England all week and saw some other college town that we liked more both as generally appealing towns and good college towns.
@sevmom “We were okay with them starting with general engineering classes and going from there (exploring options).”
So we are too. In fact, where she ended up at Lehigh, she will not choose a major officially until the beginning of Sophomore year. The key is that at that point the students are allowed to choose their major and don’t have to apply to a major and hope they get in.
Our D is leaning toward majoring in Chem E or Comp Sci. If your student had the same interest, at many schools she could be rejected from one or both. She may have to apply to another major or transfer to another school. If your student is not attached to any particular major, they may not mind as much, but it is good for them to be aware of it.
@citivas
Interesting perspective on W&M info session. We had a very different experience and the woman who did most of the presenting at our info session was very articulate and engaging- one of the better ones we saw, hands down. There were also several students on hand at the session who spoke, each giving unique viewpoints.
@Much2learn , I agree, good to know things going in . CS , in particular, has gotten very popular again in the last few years. We were okay with taking our chances at our state schools, feeling our kids could meet minimum requirements to get their desired major (about a 3.0). And if not, maybe engineering was not meant to be and they might need to consider something other than engineering . Minimum requirements to move into a particular major are probably more typical at state schools, where the majority of engineers are still educated.
@wisteria100 , I really like W & M and Williamsburg, and as a Virginia resident , would have liked to have my sons at least consider it, but they wanted a bigger, livelier school (bigger sports and social scene). My older kid at least was willing to take the tour and probably would have done physics there if he had been interested in applying(they don’t have a college of engineering). Younger son would not even take a tour!
Side note giggle- I got confused on what school was being described with the “grotty” post - and thought it was WilliamsBURG- to which it thought “If that’s someone’s idea of Grotty, what do they consider NICE?”. Then I read more carefully and figured it out. :-B
Yeah, Williamsburg is almost too NOT grotty!
For my kids, they’d take small rural village of Williamstown over Disney-fied, tourist laden Williamsburg any day of the week.
Just reconfirms that although threads like this can be fun, don’t put much weight into the comments of others. Go kick the tires yourself.
I hear Williamsburg, and I think of the hipster neighborhood in Brooklyn! I love the Berkshires area in MA, but didn’t find Williams College campus very appealing. I think it was the street diving the campus that bugged me. However, it’s supposed to be an amazing school, so I would imagine that people would overlook the less than perfect layout. As a town, Williamstown is okay, but there are prettier places in that area
Western Massachusetts, outside of the touristy Berkshire towns and Amherst, has been economically depressed for decades and have not shared the boom times that the Boston area has.
@Lindagaf So does Barnard, Chicago, Harvard (the famous swim test). But at virtually every school you have a broad range of “gym” classes to chose from, including yoga and billiards. It’s not an onerous requirement and shouldn’t deter even those students who are “bad” at sports.
@exlibris97 , D attends Bates, which has a year-long gym requirement. She currently does Zumba with her friends. We used to think it was a waste of time, but as she is a natural couch potato, it’s probably a good thing.