<p>Well… both my daughter’s liked Mt. Holyoke, but they are quite different people, so what they liked was different. A list combing both their visits include:
- Really lovely campus – beautiful buildings, large trees, river near campus
- The students we met were serious about their academic pursuits. It seems like academics are a high priority for almost all the students on campus, and like my kids could find like minded, smart fellow students in their majors (Political Science for one kid, STEM interests for the other).
- My kids liked the large dorm rooms and nice living spaces, and the somewhat relaxed feeling of the single sex environment. No one jostling to impress the opposite sex. Less chance of freshman men throwing up in the halls.
- D1 liked that she could have take Finnish classes at U Mass - Amherst if she wanted to.
- D2 liked that there was sidewalk chalk about Sherlock all over campus when we visited.
- D1 liked that all the freshman read a common book before coming to campus in the fall, and the book that year (several years ago now) was Paul Farmer’s “Mountains Beyond Mountains”, which she had already read and loved.
- D1, who is interested in international relations, liked the diversity of the students she met on campus (quite a number of international students).
- D2 loved the science building. It is fairly new and airy, and they have sort of mosaics of neurons embedded in the floor of part of it.
She also loved the idea of being able to attend a school where her upper level math and science classes would be all women (she was getting tired of the gender imbalance in these classes at her high school, where she was one of only a few girls in those classes). - D2 liked that the Physics department got the 2012 APS award for Improving Undergraduate Physics Education.
- D1 liked some of the campus traditions they had. I honestly can’t remember the details of those, but I know she liked that part.
- My nephew’s wife (now in her early 30s) had attended MH, and she loved it. So that made my kids more willing to visit, and once they did, they liked what they saw.</p>
<p>Neither of them ended up attending, though. D1 didn’t get any merit aid from them (I think they didn’t offer as much as they do now). She ended up taking the merit aid offered by Dickinson and loved her time there, but she says if MH had been more affordable she thinks she would have gone there. D2 picked a STEM school, but MH was in the running right up until the end for her.</p>