Description of Tufts

Mastadon
Mon, 10 Nov 2014 04:55:45 +0000

I copied this response from the “Colleges for a very intelligent student who doesn’t want to be swamped with work”
thread, per the request of @SouthernHope. The original poster was inquiring on her daughter’s behalf, who was creative and interested in statistics and/or animation.

Tufts may be a good fit.

I live in the western suburbs of Boston and I am a Tufts (Engineering) Alum.

My daughter is currently attending Tufts and is a creative (but social) type. In high school, the hyper competitive environment (academically and socially) made her anxious. We crossed our fingers and sent her off to Tufts.
We heard nothing for the first couple weeks, which made us anxious.

Then we got an email from the parents of a friend of hers who was attending another highly regarded NESCAC school.
They were watching their daughter’s sporting event at Tufts and ran into our daughter. They said she looked like a different person - she looked so relaxed and happy. A few days later, our daughter called home and raved about how different college was from high school and how friendly and non-competitive the people from all the various social groups were.

There is a large creative community at Tufts (fine arts is one of the largest majors) and that community (along with the IR community) tends to set the campus culture. As a psychologist, you have probably read about the inverse relationship between creativity and competition and creative types seem to thrive at Tufts.

Having said that, academic standards are high and workloads can get heavy- particularly around exam times. First semester, all but the most organized students will have their study skills tested. But then again, the workload is not like MIT and there is time to participate in clubs and other activities as well as time to venture into Davis Square (next to Tufts), Harvard Square and Boston. For wilderness escapes, The Tufts Mountain Club owns a lodge in the White Mountains of New Hampshire and provides vans that students can reserve to get back and forth. There is also the Middlesex Fells (a large urban forest) a couple of miles away for hiking and mountain biking.

The on campus drawing and painting classes are amazing, because they are taught by professors from the Museum School at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Although they take time, my daughter found the classes both relaxing and refreshing. She also hops on the “T” and visits the Museum of Fine Arts a few times each semester (it is free for Tufts Students). Some of her friends have taken classes at the Museum School.

Davis Square (in Somerville, next to Tufts) is a great hangout - because Somerville has the second highest density of young people and artists in the country (NYC/Hoboken is first). Harvard Square (two “T” stops from Davis Square) is another great hangout, as Cambridge has the third highest density of young people in the country.

There is a Multimedia Arts Minor that is run by a woman in the engineering college who recently won a presidential award for mentoring women in engineering. There are engineering courses in animation/visualization as well as game/web design that are accessible to liberal arts majors. Applied Math majors use the “Viswall”.

There is also a Communications and Media Studies Minor that can include courses from the Experimental College as well as course credit for an internship. This is good prep for careers in digital marketing/advertising as well as the traditional media industries.

http://www.excollege.tufts.edu/mma/MMA_at_Tufts.html
http://www.excollege.tufts.edu/mma/About_The_Program.html

http://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/science_nation/viswall.jsp

Prospective Students | Department of Computer Science;

http://ase.tufts.edu/cms/whatiscms.html
http://ase.tufts.edu/cms/cmsinternships.html

Good Luck