I am a freshman at Cornell applying to transfer to Yale, Brown and Williams. I find that the social atmosphere is not very intellectual, mostly Greek, and not very accepting of gay students like me. I also feel that I will enjoy myself at a smaller school with smaller classes and bigger sense of community.
However, I am afraid I am missing some other schools to apply to, especially those with a city with things to do like Penn, Harvard, Columbia and Northwestern. I want to know if anyone can recommend another school or give any general insight for my situation.
Studying computer science and psychology.
Providence is a reasonable size city and things to do. Brown itself has some decent neighborhoods to explore, although is is easy not to leave the campus area, it is not very Greek. Boston is an hour away for a weekend day trip, but it is not outside your door. Columbia would be really different as a very urban school with students doing their own thing off campus more. Not sure about transfers with the core, they might put you in GS. I would skip Harvard as only 12 or so transfers a year. Penn is sort of Greek too , iirc.
FWIW, if you wind up staying I imagine things will look better for you than they do now.
After freshman year people go off into their own groups, houses, etc, Those who joined fraternities go there, and the other 2/3 of the student body basically has nothing more to do with fraternitites, unless they want to. My D2 transferred there as a sophomore and never attended a single greek event her whole time there.
As a freshman you are likely experiencing the "worst’ of the class sizes. They will get smaller.
Not necessarily small, or LAC small, but smaller. Depending on particular selections.
As an upperclassman your “community” more and more centers around your group of friends, your living arrangements, and your major(s). With a group of friends, most people find they have plenty to do there, without a big city but with a college town and 30,000 college students right there.Certainly more than most LACs are likely to have.
When I was there it seemed like there was an active gay community, but that was eons ago. IIRC Ithaca has a sizable gay community itself. My hunch is this social aspect would get better, once you are out of the dorms.
So in short, once you are away from the dorms, living with friends instead of anybody, and away from freshman rush, you will be spending a lot less time around people you don’t like.
But if you feel you’d prefer a big city, Ithaca is not a big city,
And if you prefer the intimacy of an LAC, Cornell is not an LAC. Those are accurate facts that will not change.
Also fwiw, some of your preferences may be working at cross-purposes.
The schools my family has experience with suggest to me that proximity to a large city can be inversely related, in a causal way, to a college’s sense of community.
And the LACs I am most familiar with that are not in cities do not have all that much, relatively speaking going on around them. Their communities are too small. The worst combination, seems to me, is small school + small locale.
From these perspectives, a mid- size school in a small collegetown/city can be a good compromise/balance vs. some of the competing features you’re looking for. Like Cornell. [Though perhaps less like Cornell in some other respects].
Another thing to keep in mind, you are not liking the class sizes now, but come senior year you may appreciate the breadth of the course catalog, and the depth of advanced courses/areas you can pursue in, and related to, your major(s). Keep that in mind too, particularly as you consider LACs. It would be unfortunate if you arranged things such that you experience the worst aspects of each environment.
As someone that goes to Northwestern, I wouldn’t regard my school as one with an ‘intellectual’ vibe generally speaking.
UPenn doesn’t have a reputation for being intellectual either.
UPenn, Harvard, Columbia and Northwestern are all in or near cities however.
UChicago?
I agree with monydad that some of your preferences may be working at cross-purposes. U of Chicago, generally speaking, has more of an intellectual atmosphere for undergrad than Northwestern. NU can feel a bit more pre-professional, albeit in a similar vein to Cornell. And I do agree that if you were to tough it out in Ithaca, you’d probably locate a more inclusive community in subsequent years.
In addition to Yale and Brown, I’d suggest maybe looking into Swarthmore. Only real issue with Swarthmore (and I’m not sure on that, so you should verify with others) may be that their CS isn’t as strong as some other CS programs – such as the one you’d be leaving at Cornell. Still worthy of investigation. You may also want to have a look at Carleton, which could satisfy most of your criteria, and not too far from Minneapolis.