Different feel of different LACs in the Northeast so we can narrow visits [English, history, visual arts, non-sports]

Going to underscore this. It may also be a function of what school within the university you are in, because yes some classes will be large, but D19 went to a large private yet most of her classes were less than 25 students. One of her professors helped arrange a related internship at an organization he knew was looking and where he thought she would do well (she did, they loved her and she loved them). Something like honors colleges or “that” school within a large university can definitely give you the best of both worlds.

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I think beginning around here (post#555) you’ll find a sub-string comparing how each of the NESCAC colleges dealt with the pro-Palestinian protests last year:

EDIT: I completely skipped over the OP’s description of their child as being an “acerbic comedian” who isn’t particularly interested in politics :thinking:. If this is the main concern, then they may want to lean into some LACs including Trinity and Colgate, or smaller universities like Quinnipiac (CT), UMASS, and Drew (NJ) that have active fraternity and sorority chapters. Your child may not necessarily want to join one, but you can often use their presence as a surrogate marker for a certain kind of non-PC tolerance.

@HorseParent , you are a little ahead of what is optimal given that your child is still closer to the beginning of BS than the end AND it makes sense that distance is making you feel you need to make the most of any time you have.

My advice, before we get to vibe, is 1. to make sure you have Spring Break next year reserved for college visits. BS traditionally have long-ish breaks, so that should help. 2. Have your kid talk to and observe the senior class’ destinations where he can match what kind of kid chooses what school, and have him plan to do the same with the class ahead of his. This is a great resource and is often clearer than information from folks who don’t know your kid..

As for vibe - make sure you visit when school is in session. I’d suggest getting a few “clumps” of varied schools to visit – i.e., Hamilton, Union, Bard/Vassar. Trinity, Conn, Wesleyan. Your child will likely have preferences within the group, and that will help you and the CC when you get that assignment next year. Or if you already know that the Bard, Vassar, Wesleyan end of the continuum is out of play, you can mix size, urban, etc variables to the exploration.

When DS sat with his CC after a similar trip (spring junior year) and said what he liked and didn’t, she was able to give him another 10 schools that were likely to fit the bill. He applied to 9 of them!

At this point, exposure to types of schools could be most valuable rather than specifics, and it sounds like you have some good ideas on that already.

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We used to start with Amherst because UMass is also there so kids could see smaller LAC and larger university. We also looked at Hampshire for an “alternative” school. And for female students, of course Smith and Mt. Holyoke are in that area too. None of my kids applied to any of these schools but it gave them an idea of what they preferred.

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It seems to me that the interest in visual arts might be what differentiates which schools to look at because not all liberal arts colleges are strong in this area. Bowdoin, Amherst, and Williams are, but getting accepted in any of these three is extraordinarily difficult, so I wouldn’t start there.

I’d start in Connecticut. Wesleyan’s Center for the Arts offers numerous classes and exhibition opportunities for students, and the program covers various disciplines, including painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture, photography, and digital art. The college also has extensive facilities, including Davison Art Center, a venue for exhibition of art by students and professionals alike. Wesleyan also has the College of Film & the Moving Image, including the Reid Cinema Archives. The Wesleyan Film Series is funded and run by Wesleyan students for the Wesleyan community.

Connecticut College, on the other hand, offers an integrated approach to the arts, including studio art, art history, and conservation. They also have the Lyman Allyn Art Museum on campus.

Middlebury College in Vermont is worth a visit. They blend traditional studio art, media-based work, and art theory. Students are encouraged to display their work either in the on campus museum or at the student run gallery.

The University of Rochester in Upstate NY is not a Liberal Arts College, but it is a smaller research university (6500 students) with a 9:1 student faculty ratio similar to many LACs. It is also very welcoming to international students with about 25% of the student population. In addition to a Dept of Art & Art History, they have a Film & Media Studies Program and a Digital Media Studies Program. The on campus Memorual Art Gallery (MAG) is a fabulous resource and runs a regular series of art classes.

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Since the OP is outside the US, it may be important to know that “Greek system/culture” at US colleges and universities refers to fraternities and sororities, many of which use Greek letters as their names, rather than anything related to Greek ethnicity or nationality.

Yes, fraternities and sororities do tend to be associated more with “traditional” gender roles. At many campuses, they also tend to be more self-segregated in terms of race and ethnicity.

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As a form of general overview, Hamilton and Amherst College are the two Northeast LACs that appear in this Princeton Review survey-based site, “Their Students Love These Colleges”:

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People seem to love Clark University. Check the Colleges that Change Lives website and events ctcl.com

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Thesis Day at Wesleyan University:

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My D26 is mostly only interested in small LACs and we recently visited Swarthmore, Haverford, Vassar, Williams and Amherst. We will try to see some other non-NE LACs this summer. This thread is very helpful as my other kids attend large schools.

My daughter is trying to figure out if there are overall different vibes among students and professors between the schools. Setting aside their geographic settings (eg, remote Williams, Semi-remote Vassar/Amherst and suburban Swat/Haverford) and academic particularities (eg, open-curriculum at Amherst, Williams’ tutorial system), I’ve sort of concluded that culturally these schools are much more similar than different. What I mean is you’ll have quiet studious types v jocks v social butterflies, etc. at each place but all of the students love the small environment where you know your profs by first names and everyone knows each other and is collaborative. There are a few other differences like Swat seems more intense and liberal and Williams has a lot of athletes, but are there more cultural differences among the student bodies or professors between them? My daughter liked all of them and we both are having trouble distinguishing between them culturally. She has struck up conversations with different random students on each campus to get vibe checks. All of the students she talked to gave pretty similar answers to why they chose their schools and the positives aspects of small LACs. Are we missing something?

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You may be over thinking things. These are all very expensive private colleges that are in the fortunate position of being able to cherry pick from a very broad swath of hardworking, exceedingly polite, “academicky”, kids whose chief differences - despite all the hype - boil down to what suburb in what part of the country they come from. Some of them are athletic recruits (the NESCAC colleges come to mind); some of them were leads in their high school plays; another bunch know their way around a science lab (or makers space), but they are the backbone of every first year class. There’s only so much variation you’re going to get.

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I can only speak to Williams. My C21 decided to attend because of the diversity. It was high on their list of priorities when choosing a college. When we walked around campus (no tours, covid) there were all kinds of groups interacting with each other on campus. They were all smiling and laughing and talking to each other as they passed. After Columbia, it was the most diverse of any school applied to. After arriving on campus they spent a lot of time with Williams First students (first gen). There are a large number of students on financial aid, as Williams is very generous, and this only adds to the diversity, and perspective, of the student body.

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So long as we’re importing other thumbnail sketches:

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“There’s only so much variation you’re going to get.” This is true for all the reasons outlined! I will add: there are slight variations in culture at these schools. For some kids, those variations mean everything and can be the difference between loving the school and not. And for others–the variations are meaningless to the point where they might as well not exist. For example, for kids dead set on a bigger university like my older ones were, these SLACs are identical. And that’s not exactly wrong. But if you went up to Williams and innocently asked if they thought their campus & students & academics were interchangeable with Wesleyan’s…I’d pull up a seat and get out the popcorn for that one. So, you could (not saying reasonably!) sort these schools into “slightly more artsy vibe” and “slightly less artsy vibe” knowing of course that they all are liberal ARTS colleges, not, say, engineering schools. Maybe Oberlin is what you’d put on one end of the spectrum, and then Williams & Amherst over on the other. This is a tiny spectrum, mind you. But it’s one (ridiculous!) metric someone who has spent a lot of time at/around these schools might mention. I will say my kids have lots of friends at these schools and they all are very happy. The ones who have graduated have jobs! Or are in grad school.

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From my perspective, you’re not missing anything. No two places are exactly alike, no two cohorts are exactly alike and no two visits are exactly alike. NE LACs attract a range of kids seeking the things LACs have to offer. Yes, there are feeder populations (boarding, other private and high academic public schools), and so on that score it’s fair to account for it. But I personally do not advise getting too wound up about these amorphous accounts of “vibe”, particularly based on some random visit, and especially based on internet forum responses. To me, assuming there’s no specialty the child is seeking (e.g., languages (Middlebury), art history (Williams), film (Wesleyan), coastal studies (Bowdoin), etc.), the main thing to consider is location. If you don’t want isolated rural, then you’d better know where you’re going before committing to Hamilton, Colgate, Middlebury and Williams. Those places are “out there”, regardless of whatever mitigating considerations people will cite for you. Having said that, I think for all the schools, even those in less isolated locations (except, maybe, Tufts), it is important to conclude that the kid will be happy with campus life.

I think you’re right that all these schools will have more or less the same groups of young adults, with variations on the margin by school and by class year. There are going to be wildly political kids at Williams and more buttoned down kids studying econ at Wesleyan and the inverse is certainly the case. Middlebury has lots of kids aiming for Wall Street, so remember that the next time someone draws a caricature of the school as some haven for granola crunching, Birkenstock wearing kids whose primary interests in life are organic farming, rock climbing and skiing. I mean, you’ll find them there if those are your people, but it’s ok if they’re not.

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I agree with this AND I think a student should assess how happy they’ll be if they find their tribe and it’s small and not part of the dominant culture.

There are students who are quite miserable when they feel like they are outside the campus norm, especially on a relatively isolated campus. And there are probably just as many who could not care in the slightest. I feel like this is something everyone needs to assess for themselves.

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Prefacing this by saying that I do not live full time in the US and so do not have a lot of opportunities to do a lot of long drives. Would love to visit all the LACs but not sure if we can.

Kids are at boarding school, so we did drive around MA for that.

For LACs, we are looking for locations at least comparable to the towns of Concord and Andover in MA. The towns are big enough with shops and restaurants and easy access to big city Boston. Towns where Deerfield and Northfield Mount Hermon are for example, would be way too small and isolated.

Hoping someone more familiar with the towns can help me out with this.

Thank you!

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Amherst, Wesleyan, Smith, Swarthmore, Haverford, BrynMawr, Holy Cross.

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Swarthmore, Haverford, Bryn Mawr, Wellesley and Smith are examples that appear in this Newsweek article:

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Clark just announced they were laying off 30% of their faculty.

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