I could use help creating a list of colleges for my daughter to tour. She is a good athlete and wants to play her sport in college. Recruiting is done young so she needs to start touring colleges as a freshman.
She is looking to play at the high d3 to low d1 level. D3 is where she is leaning because she wants time to focus on grades. As a freshman she is 2nd in her class of several hundred.
She has narrowed her list of likes to: pretty campus, urban area with a lot to do, within 3 hours of Boston. She also wants good academics. Looking in CT, MA, NH, RI, NY, I have Tufts down as a possibility. Could you give me additional d3 campuses to take her on a tour of? A friend’s daughter goes to Amherst and suggested she look there, but is there a lot to do near the Amherst campus?
Thanks. She added Brandeis to her list of visits. Most of the rest are too far away for her to consider. She doesn’t want to travel more than 3 hours from Boston which makes finding the right fit hard.
Thanks for the reply. Not business. She has mentioned physical therapy or sports medicine. She plans to go to grad school but is young to know a complete plan. As an undergrad she talks about majoring in biology and psychology unless a specialized program fits her interests.
There are plenty of good schools with D3 athletics in New England. But most of them are liberal arts colleges outside the big cities. So the “urban” requirement will definitely hurt your options.
Tufts, Brandeis, Clark U, and Trinity are urban. Wellesley, if a women’s college is OK. Holy Cross, if low D1 and Catholic is OK.
Not convinced that Connecticut College qualifies as particularly urban. If New London is urban enough, them add Wesleyan U. Middletown is bigger than New London, and closer to Hartford.
Amherst, MA is not a major urban area, but it does have tens of thousands of college students, due to the presence of UMass, Amherst, Smith, Mt Holyoke, and Hampshire. It’s known as a “college town” environment that caters to student interests and budgets. From a student perspective, there may well be more “things to do” in Amherst than in, say, Hartford. Sure, Greater Hartford has a much larger population, but I think they are mostly insurance executives, not students.
Some sports are trying to get away from early recruiting. Lax is one that has and soccer is following close behind.
There is a big difference between some of the D1 schools and the D3 schools in some sports. St. Anselm is D2, as are Stonehill, Merrimack, and a bunch in NY.
Some Patriot League teams are generally lower D1 so they might work (Holy Cross and Fordham fit geographically – these are both Jesuit schools so that would have to be OK) as well as BU (not sure if that may be closer than you like).
Wellesley College is lovely and they do run shuttles to Boston and Cambridge, but it’s a good 30-40 minutes from the city, more at rush hour. Wellesley itself is very suburban.
If she were interested in Philadelphia as a city, that would open things up a lot. But if the 3 hours to Boston rule is hard snd fast, no need to complicate things.
Union? I would guess if New London counts, do would Schenectady!
Union would be @3 1/2 hrs. from Boston. Bates is @3 hrs. from Boston. The campus is pretty. It flows into Lewiston. Lewiston is a city, but I don’t know it well enough to know what it offers specifically. Bates has lots of activities on campus and a big outing club.
If your D is open to women’s colleges, check out Smith College. Northampton is a small city that is very walkable and student friendly, with lots of shops and places to eat. There’s a free (for students) bus system that connects all five colleges, Amherst, Northampton, the Hampshire Mall, and other towns. There are lots of things to do both on and off campus at both Smith and Amherst.
Worcester (Clark U, Holy Cross) s a larger city, and is home to 6+ colleges. There’s a train from Worcester to Boston that takes about an hour.
I can’t think of any other schools that haven’t already been mentioned.
Suffolk University, Boston MA, D3
Emerson College, Boston MA, D3
Southern New Hampshire University, Manchester NH, D2
University of New Haven, New Haven CT, D2
Bentley University, 10 mins from Boston MA, D2
Many options in Worcester: Clark University, D3, WPI, D3, Assumption College, D2
NYU, NYC, D3
“Camberville” is the second largest city (by population) in New England and it is just across the river from Boston. It has Red Line subway connectivity to Boston with Green Line connectivity coming in Dec 2021.
It contains MIT, Tufts (both with top 10 D3 sports), Lesley University and the college that is not to be named (which is D1).
Amherst is to be avoided because it recently adopted an extinct copy of Tuft’s mascot 1: :
Don’t know where to begin---------Cambridge is across the river from Boston and contains MIT and Harvard. It is NOT the second largest city by population in New England (not even close).
Tufts is in Medford, which borders Somerville, which in turn borders Cambridge. So Tufts is two towns away from Cambridge.
Yes. It’s a massive college town mainly because of the 25K or so kids at UMass, though all the 5 colleges have a neighborhood with restaurants, shops, coffee, whatever. (Except Hampshire. It has a lovely indoor farm/gourmet market within walking distance but that’s it).
Cambridge, certainly. Tufts, close by at least. Clark, yes but Worcester isn’t a particularly vibrant city, IMO. Conn made my D’s list because of the location but when we visited we found downtown New London, such as it is, quite far away from campus. Not walkable, really.
Barnard is D3 and 3 hours away in NYC. Sarah Lawrence and Fordham are in Westchester/the Bronx so less than 3. Vassar and Marist in Poughkeepsie are in range.
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