Dartmouth vs Cornell

3togo
Wed, 12 Jul 2006 08:05:22 +0000

I just wanted to make sure that SorGirl didn’t truly mean/it isn’t true that the prevalence of frats and partying led to the “dumbing down” of campus, which I guess (judging from people’s posts, and my own impressions of Dartmouth) isn’t something to worry about.

this is one I would strongly suggest campus visits to check out … in MY opinion schools where frats and drinking dominate the social scene in general have a different feel than schools where they don’t. I said different … not good or bad … and, for ME, the frat centric social scenes didn’t work as well. The other dymamic that the Dartmouth / Cornell comparison raises is smaller versus larger school … again different … not inherently good or bad but different … to ME it seems smaller schools are more likely to have a dominate feel to them which can be terrific if that you fit into that culture (for example, Williams and Swarthmore are absolutely terrific LACs and, in my opinion, seem to provide very different undergrade cultural experiences) … while bigger schools have more room for multiple large sub-cultures (or said another way less cohesion across everyone) … again not good or bad … just different. And for me when I visited schools my preference along these dimensions became crystal clear and I modified my ordering of schools and my new first choice felt like home from the start of my campus visit.