<p>University of Glasgow. It would be different for her. Plus it seems the British in general and the Scottish in particular are brilliant conversationalists. The low cost of education (Ireland might be another option) and the regional and international draw would insure diversity.</p>
<p>She might find Northwestern too similar to what she has now. The thought of sending her to a tech school like MIT is downright frightening.</p>
<p>The biggest diversity of ages, experiences, interests, ethnic & economic backgrounds, etc. would be found at an urban community college or commuter u. If she is looking for stories and characters, that’s where she should go.</p>
<p>I am not sure that a really strong writing program is critical, though certainly college can be a place to make connections in the publishing world. It sounds like she already has an agent, so she’s a step ahead of the game. I had a college friend at Harvard where creative writing was very much a step child of the English department. She took a creative writing class as a freshman and by sophomore year had a picture book she’d written in high school under contract and a YA novel was published her senior year thanks to a professor’s contacts. She ended up majoring in music not English. </p>
<p>I think I’d put the priority on vibrant city and intellectual students with a reasonable amount of diversity. The CUNYs and SUNYs will give you more diversity, but probably at the expense of some intellectual stimulation. (Or maybe not.)</p>
<p>I know nothing about Tufts as a place to go for creative writing, but I know my kid doesn’t think a ten minute subway ride to events happening at Harvard are hard to get to. (If he were to go to poetry readings or author signings.) He does go to hear International Relations stuff there from time to time. He also took a class at the Museum of Fine Arts last year. As far as I am concerned Tufts is not really in a suburb of Boston, it operates much more like it’s in a residential neighborhood of Boston.</p>
<p>What grade is she in? 1.5 year to apply make her HS soph?
have you heard of TASP?
if she can get in, you will find what you are looking for in one summer, six weeks, free of cost.</p>
<p>Reed College in Portland.</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/summer-programs/1164674-telluride-association-summer-program-tasp-2012-a.html?highlight=tasp+2012[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/summer-programs/1164674-telluride-association-summer-program-tasp-2012-a.html?highlight=tasp+2012</a>
just as I thought
some kid already started the game…</p>
<p>Gap year and then Bard.</p>
<p>I also have a writer for a daughter, who totally rejected many of the schools mentioned here because they were NOT, in her opinion, diverse. She was totally turned off by Oberlin, Wesleyan, Reed, Bard, and the like.
This may seem counterintuitive, but let me explain. She attended a very unique high school in that it is an urban public school, with unbelievably high achieving kids but also low achieving kids, non-selective, with kids from the price range of the OP’s housing market along with kids from public housing, 40% low income, racially diverse. Kids in head scarves attend class with kids in miniskirts. Some parents have advanced degrees and some parents (refugees) never went to elementary school, other parents may have dropped out of high school. No one thinks twice about a kid being raised by two moms or dads, single parents, married parents, arranged-marriage parents, renowned academics, professionals, factory workers, parents on public assistance - you get my point. The kids are, especially for teenagers, amazingly accepting. To my daughter, this school is NOT diverse. Why? Because there is not a single Republican. No one lives on a farm. No one lives in a small town. No one lives in a suburb. No one has a political point of view different from her own.
She craved political diversity and believed that the so-called “quirky” schools are “dominated by hipsters” (she didn’t mind SOME hipsters, but didn’t want any one group to dominate) and have few people with different political viewpoints.
She also has never had someone sit down with her and help her with writing techniques, but she really felt that she could learn from working with experienced writers and from the constructive criticism that would be available from other writers.
Her list: JHU (ED) where she was accepted. If she had not been accepted there, she would have included McGill (which hardly has any creative writing classes, but she was intrigued by it), University of Rochester, Tufts, Barnard, Macalaster, and Pitt in her list. If she had gotten that far, she may have investigated Emory and Vanderbilt. I nixed NYU Tisch based on the fact that Tisch charges more than the rest of NYU. Good luck to the OP - and try to nail down what she means by “quirky” and “diverse” because I agree with the poster who said that this means many things to many people.</p>
<p>^ Interesting point. I went to similar hs, way back when, just outside DC, when there was no STEM acromym, just when they were testing heterogeneity in classrooms. It was empowering. It was also plain old exciting to be located in a potent urban area. I don’t know how much the DC universities can offer this today, but maybe worth a look. It’s an ecomomically and culturally diverse area; though so many are so highly educated, plenty are not. Plenty of status quo folks mixed in with great activists and a spirit of contention. A great place for youth and the quirky facets of rural life are just a car drive away.</p>
<p>I went to college in a rural area and grad school in another major city- something about the compactness of DC works. And, that everpresent dissent.</p>
<p>OP - you should have your daughter look into the Johnston Center at University of Redlands. It is filled with quirky, individual, diverse students from all over the country. The University of Redlands is in a small town but is located in Southern California and withing driving distance to LA, Orange County, the mountains, & the beach.</p>
<p>How about a place which might not be super-diverse, but where she’d be in the minority, like a historically black college? (Oops–I’m assuming the OP’s D is white, but that may well not be the case.)</p>
<p>I’d suggest Occidental college</p>
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<p>Lots of ethnic and socioeconomic diversity there: in this year’s freshman class, 20% receive Pell grants, 39% are students of color, 14% first generation college students.</p>
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<p>Occidental is basically only minutes from downtown LA and Pasadena. It is situated in Eagle Rock, which I have heard is a mixed socioeconomic suburb in LA, and has gentrifying parts and older parts.</p>
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<p>Although it’s hard to tell how caring, hard working students are from just their grades and test scores, and also if they will contribute brillant insights, the freshman class had 91% graduate in the top 1/4 of their high school class.</p>
<p>The median SAT score is 1950 and ACT is 29. Not amazingly high, but high enough. Since tests scores do correlate with income level and Occidental is committed to socioeconomic diversity, it’ll be hard to be a small school, have such a high level of Pell grant kids and then have Ivy-like test scores.</p>
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<p>Don’t know much about their writing program. Saw on the website that they do run a monthly workshop for the entire school and then have some special events and open it up to people outside the school.</p>
<p>[Creative</a> Writing Occidental Writers](<a href=“http://college.oxy.edu/creativewriting/occidental-writers/]Creative”>http://college.oxy.edu/creativewriting/occidental-writers/)</p>
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<p>Well, their core program has some very interesting interdisciplinary liberal arts courses, and this year is running a large course which involves some service work in LA called ‘California Immigration Semester’. Other interesting core courses include ‘Death in Antiquity’, ‘The American Dream’, ‘Science and You: A Needlessly Complicated Relationship’. Here’s the website:</p>
<p>[Fall</a> Seminars](<a href=“http://departments.oxy.edu/core/fall2011.htm]Fall”>http://departments.oxy.edu/core/fall2011.htm)</p>
<p>As for fine arts courses, it seems as if the school is trying to get art and art history students involved in working with museums around LA. Here’s another lilnk to their on-line magazine about this idea:</p>
<p>[Occidental</a> College :: LA 101](<a href=“http://www.oxy.edu/x11465.xml]Occidental”>http://www.oxy.edu/x11465.xml)</p>
<p>I actually haven’t even been to Occidental and don’t know anyone who goes there, but my son is interested and we live far away, so I wanted to find out as much as I could on-line before we even think of visiting/applying. So all of the above is what I gleaned from their website, and so the usual caveats apply.</p>
<p>Liberal arts with hair. No research papers. You discuss great works. I visited there last week with my daughter and I wish I could talk her into it. No notes in class. I believe there is true intelectual diversity there. 600 kids total. Excellent financial aid. -</p>