Good College Fit Inquiry - I'm hoping for Indie, chill, nerdy vibes :)

Hiii I’m a prospective transfer student coming from Carleton College. The school’s pretty chill and I like it in a lot of ways but im considering transferring because I just don’t feel “right” there.

Anyway, I’m hoping for reccomendations on where to apply. I will be applying as a philosophy major, love the outdoors, and wouldn’t mind going to a bigger school. I hope to apply to intellectually rigorous schools, strong in the humanities, with chill, sorta granola-y vibes.

Any advice is super appreciated!!!

Also, I know many of you might be thinking, “wait isn’t that just Carleton??” And yeah, it probably sorta is, but it’s a bit too quirky for me, among other reasons, and although I’m not committed to transferring, I’m at least considering it.

1 Like

Budget?

Wisconsin, Madison is pretty crunchy

2 Likes

Haverford or Swarthmore if you want to keep that LAC feel. Brown if you want a slightly larger school.

1 Like

Budget will matter most of all!! But not knowing, here’s a few:.

William and Mary comes to mind. Rochester too. So does Lewis & Clark and Whitman from what I’ve read, but may be too similar to what you have now if size an issue.

Actually Cal Poly Humboldt hits home, especially with outdoorsy, but likely not academic enough.

It may seem off as it’s known for STEM, but Purdue may be a place for you to fit from a personality POV. But U Oregon more from an outside POV but not sure quirky is right. I do know a quirky kid at Col State and that has outdoors but not sure it’s known for quirky. But any large school will have many quirky students.

Good luck to you.

UVM? Definitely very outdoorsy/ gradnola-y, not sure about the philosophy program specifically….I know several very smart kids there, so I am sure there is a strong cohort of intellectually dedicated kids. Brown or Dartmouth (seem very different, but both have elements of what you are asking for - obviously, both are very hard admits)

I like the Wisconsin, Lewis&Clark, U of Rochester suggestions, too. I know less about them, but the Claremont Colleges maybe?

2 Likes

In addition to budget, it might be helpful if you posted the other schools you applied to last year, which ones you got into and turned down, and what was appealing about the various options you had in front of you. Otherwise, with a request like “schools like Carleton but also not like Carleton” you might get recommendations that you’ve already considered and set aside.

8 Likes

And your college GPA!

OP - What are you hoping to do post graduation? Other than the “chill” part, I was thinking Cornell. They are transfer friendly and meet all of your other criteria.

1 Like

Carleton is definitely not chill (nor is Williams from your other thread.) Transferring to Williams as a 4 year

Posters really do need your college GPA, whether you have budget constraints, and results from last year to best make recommendations.

I agree with some of the recs so far (rochester, Oregon, UVM, Madison, Lewis and Clark, Whitman) if they are affordable and/or you are open to bigger schools. Staying with smallish schools for now, maybe also consider Vassar, Kenyon, Occidental, Santa Clara, Pitzer and Colorado College could fit. IME Swat, William and Mary, and Purdue aren’t what I would call ‘chill’.

2 Likes

Thanks for posting the previous thread.

They are so focused on one school they didn’t get to, I wonder if this is another - I should be at the highest ranked school - of which Carleton isn’t far off.

The major can be done at various schools so hopefully OP is truly open this time to others at they noted (open in reality I guess).

Best of luck to them.

1 Like

My general concern reading this thread and your earlier thread might be summarized as the grass is not always greener on the other side of the fence. It is very possible to transfer and then discover that you are not at a place that is any better than where you already were, and that might even be a worse fit. Also, there are some potential downsides to transferring.

As an example, there are significant advantages to getting to know your professors. These advantages include things like improving access to internships or research opportunities, and sometimes just professors suggesting classes that you might want to take or books that you might want to read. One big advantage at a smaller school such as Carleton is that it is usually easier to get to know your professors. However, transferring means that you leave the professors and the friends that you were starting to know and need to start all over again.

There is a tradeoff between “chill” and “intellectually rigorous”. Highly ranked schools which are intellectually rigorous often are quite academically demanding, which takes away from the “chill” aspect. I am for example thinking of Stanford as having some sense of “California chill”, but I also remember piles of homework and very frequently (probably most of the time) doing homework on Saturday afternoons there, which sort of limits the extent to which it could really be called “chill”.

Also, Carleton College is a very good college. To me it is already very high on the “intellectually rigorous” and yet also somewhat “chill” list. If I am remembering correctly there are multiple Pulitzer Prize winners who graduated from Carleton, and you can do very well with a degree from there.

And moving to a new college or university is always a very significant disruption in a student’s life. It does take some time to get used to this change.

Looking at suggestions above, to me Cornell does not seem “chill”, although the location is beautiful. “Academically demanding” is perhaps how I would describe Cornell. UVM does seem to have some combination of academically strong and chill. It is larger than Carleton which would imply a wider range of potential majors. UVM is a bit expensive unless you qualify for a very good merit aid, and I do not know whether this is available to transfer students. To me Williams seems unlikely for acceptance as a transfer student, and not particularly chill. U.Wisconsin reminds me a bit of UVM, but is a bit higher ranked for my major (mathematics) which probably should not matter at all to you.

All of which makes me wonder whether perhaps you might want to stay where you already are and take some more time to find your way there. Carleton really is a very good college. I have read that they have a beer Olympics which I might personally try to avoid, but otherwise it seems like a good place to be for four years. I am confident that employers and graduate schools throughout the USA know how strong Carleton is.

And no college or university is perfect. You will find some annoying people and probably a few bad professors just about anywhere. You will also find quite a few academically strong students and many good professors at any college or university mentioned in this thread, and also at a few hundred other colleges and universities throughout the USA and abroad.

5 Likes

I wonder if they mean “non-competitive” between students, and yet intellectual. I think that can easily exist. There are also schools where “I work harder than you” isn’t a badge of honor. I suspect maybe that is what OP means by chill? could be wrong though.