I so appreciate the feedback! We are Presbytarian. We have a small, high quality Christian CA college on our list to visit, but my guess is that she will decide that she wants a more diverse experience. I learned a little about the “markers” of faith as included/excluded from campus life when looking for D1.
One, if it is a religious school, are chapel attendance and theologically based coursework mandatory? At BC you must take 3 theologically based classes from a field of 90 as part of your core curriculum. They sounded AMAZING - who wouldn’t want to do a survey on the spiritualism of death across religious traditions? At USF, none.
Two, a “Christian” college can run the gamut. I went to University of Redlands, which was religious by founding, and did have a beautiful spiritual music program. If you weren’t in music, and you weren’t part of the IV Christian fellowship, you would never see it as religious. One of my employees graduated from Biola College, which embroiders Christianity throughout all subjects. I don’t know anyone personally who is NOT Christian who has gone there, and I am not sure they would feel comfortable. I can pretty much guarantee that anyone who knows anything about Biola knows it is a Christian school. I don’t think D2 is looking for Biola, and even Redlands might have been welcoming enough.
Three, it is tricky to figure out whether Christians (or another faith tradition) are welcomed by asking the question. That’s what I am trying to hone. I know that Santa Clara has 10 masses a week, and 8 other services from other faith traditions. That tells me that faith is embroidered into the curriculum. I know that University of San Fransisco (also Catholic) sneered when a visitor asked about faith-based activities. Sneered. That’s what I DON:T want, and I don’t think it is uncommon to literally or figuratively sneer at students who based their ethics on faith.
Eastern Catholic colleges and universities are very, very different than “Christian Colleges”. They all have a general theology and philosophy requirement but that is about it. In the 1960’s the vast majority formally divorced themselves from Rome and only one is controlled by the Vatican and that is Catholic University in DC. The schools not on the Cardinal Newman list are too liberal for the church establishment. There are only about 20 fringe schools on that list. You will find every Catholic school in the east to be very liberal especially on economic issues. Some even have coed dorms now and all have school recognized LGBT groups. They are still Catholic schools but generally the faculty are almost entirely lay persons and nothing like the stereotypes. They are very balanced politically.
while the Brown campus and that immeadiate surrounding area is lovely(the exact opposite can be said for Providence College), if you’re interested in tolerance of conservative viewpoints I strongly suggest skipping both Brown and Risd. While they speak of diversity and tolerance they are decidedly not tolerant of many conservative views .
If your standard is that no one you meet will "sneer" at religious belief, then hardly any of the colleges discussed so far in this thread will pass the test. Marist might (but I say that only because I know practically nothing about it). In that case, you should be looking at a very different set of colleges. If your standard is that there is a significant community of committed Christians at the college, who support one another and speak up to express their views, and are listened to respectfully by others (if not all others), then most of them will be fine.
If you do happen to get up to Williams, I can't remember whether anyone on this thread has raved about Mass MoCA (the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art), which is located in North Adams, the next town over from Williamstown. It is a really fun museum, constructed out of multiple old factory buildings. It has some sort of joint arrangement with the Clark Museum at Williams now. If I were only going to one museum in the north Berkshires, it would be MassMoCA, not the Clark.
Poughkeepsie may not be a "real city" anymore, but there's a striking difference in feel between a place like Williams, or Bard, and Vassar, At Vassar, there is urban decay and poverty close at hand.
Saying that Williamstown has a population of 7,000 and Amherst a population of 37,000 significantly understates the difference between them. Amherst is one of a set of contiguous towns on the floor of the Connecticut River valley, with a total population of around 100,000. There probably aren't as many as 15,000 people living within the same kind of radius of Williamstown (and it's a much hillier area - harder to get around without a car).
Both the question of religion and politics are interesting in that they are often highly and uniquely personal. To rule out a school because it is not religious enough or because it purportedly leans too far in one direction along the political spectrum, also can eliminate an opportunity for growth and for change. Brown to me is an interesting example where blow back from Conservatives and minority students over perceived “Liberal” bias and racial intolerance, led to a $100M diversity campaign inaugurated last fall and to a marked rise in activity at the school’s Republican club as well as at its Conservative newspaper. There is no wholly-sheltering and safe environment. Sometimes the better course is to engage and see where it leads…
@shoot4moon, S is also Presbyterian (led youth groups, mission trips - the whole bit) - and he has relatives who went to Redlands and Biola. His final college choices included a well-regarded (and recently-in-the-news) conservative Christian college, one of the east coast Catholic colleges mentioned above, and Vassar which, according to the Westboro Baptist Church, is the “whorehouse of the Ivy League.” His choice for the latter really came down to wanting the most diverse experience (which includes Poughkeepsie and all of its history). Although there are Bible study groups organized by InterVarsity Fellowship and a weekly Protestant service, he says he’s really been too busy with everything else to really get too involved with them, but he hasn’t been persecuted either and he reconnects with his local church buddies when he comes home. When we were at your stage in the tour process, we deliberately checked out a wide range of colleges and locales. He kept short notes regarding things like size, diversity, religiousness, overall feel, etc.(like @BrooklynRye), and gradually decided what was important to him (and that change a few times over the years). At this point for you guys, I’d suggest the same. That, and enjoy your time together!
Definitely think you should check out Bard. While I’m not knowledgeable about art at Union, it’s one of the very science-y LACs. They’re both easy given where you’re starting, and they both offer things that are different from the others in a way that might help clarify what really appeals. Schedule an interview at Union if you visit.
We found that seeing different kinds of schools (even in the same size range) brought into sharp relief what actually mattered most.
@JHS - Your point #1 is well taken. Lists of Conservative schools predominantly consist of faith-based schools, i.e., more dedicated religious schools, and tend to be in the South and Midwest. Lists of Liberal schools are primarily in the Northeast and West Coast and consist of those schools traditionally considered the elite schools in the US. However, when it comes to diversity there is somewhat of a mix between the two sociopolitical poles that I personally find very gratifying. Classic small Liberal Arts, stereotypically “liberal” colleges such as Amherst and Pomona, are deemed very diverse. But so are classic Conservative institutions such as Grinnell College in Iowa and Barry University in Miami. What I find most interesting is that some of the institutions, including certain Ivy League schools and, of course, dedicated undergraduate fine arts schools, most commonly associated with the Liberal end of the spectrum, are among the most diverse campuses in the US. For instance, Brown University noted above is recognized as one of the top 10 diverse schools in the US. Likewise, RISD (also noted above) is a top 20 school in this category. A fellow parent with criteria very similar to the OP told me that while her faith is important to her, her daughter is not looking for a religious school. Her faith is personal, independent of location and environment. I think there is something very powerful in this.
@BrooklynRye : I’m hardly an expert on religiously oriented colleges, but I know there are a number of them in California, too. Starting with Pepperdine, which has long aspired to be the Harvard of Evangelical institutions, and including any number of others for all calibrations of Christian identity.
The traditional Establishment/elite colleges in the Northeast (and elsewhere) are often mischaracterized. Sure, they skew politically liberal and nonreligious compared to the nation as a whole. But we are a pretty religious nation, and there are many, many students and faculty at those colleges and universities for whom their religious faith is an important part of their identity, and they are well integrated into the fabric of their institutions. Now, because they are diverse, they have a diversity of religious identities, too. You have a whole spectrum – all different kinds of Protestants, liberal and conservative Catholics, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists (of different stripes), Jains, Baha’i, various strains of Orthodox Christian, all different kinds of Jews, and of course people who outright reject any religious belief or affiliation.
That can be very disconcerting if you have grown up in a context where a fairly narrow range of religious identity predominates. Lots of things you take for granted may be challenged. You may well be “sneered” at from time to time, and you will be expected to tread lightly and respectfully around the beliefs of others. That can feel like a hostile environment if you have never experienced it before. But it’s really just the experience of being in a religious minority. And everyone at those colleges is in a religious minority, including the nonbelievers.
I went to Harvard and belong to a religion that takes no position on the existence of God. One of my roommates became a Lutheran minister and my best friend is an Episcopalian priest and sang in the chapel choir at the college. I’m very surprised at the sneer because usually admissions offices will tell you everyone is welcome. I don’t think you can count on every student not to sneer, but there usually is a fair amount of tolerance for all the faiths as long as you don’t proselytize.
please be aware there is a marked difference between diversity and a welcoming unbiased tolerance. You will find that most liberal schools have earned their reputation over many many years.
the difference, if other than by definition, between diversity and tolerance, is largely dependent on the environment, the student body, and the individual student. diversity provides at least a template for a varied student body and a multiplicity of ideas and beliefs. it is environments such as this that are the crucible of tolerance, not one in which everyone comes to campus with the same backgrounds and beliefs. it is the choice of individual parents and students to guide their child to a more homogeneous environment, if they wish, perhaps seeking to prolong a more insular existence another few years. parents of children such as the op (judging from the schools she is visiting with her daughter) are generally looking for a bit more, venturing into a world that, at times challenging and even off putting, nonetheless provides life lessons, hones and shapes belief systems, and leads to greater maturity. so-called “liberal” institutions (which for some reason include the overwhelming majority of top schools in the country) have earned their reputations (including as the premier academic institutions for centuries) along side those of more conservative, faith-based schools. during a tour of boston college, after much talk about mission, service and faith, a parent in the group asked if a student had to be catholic to attend bc. the tour guide answered, “not at all. we have lots of different christians here.”
well here’s another interesting stat from 2014 concerning so many schools that are so open minded , tolerant and diverse. As you can see Ivy league is well represented.
A Post analysis of the federal data found these 10 schools had the highest total of rape reports on their main campuses in 2014:
•Brown: 43
•U-Conn.: 43
•Dartmouth College: 42
•Wesleyan University: 37
•University of Virginia: 35
•Harvard: 33
•University of North Carolina at Charlotte: 32
•Rutgers-New Brunswick: 32
•University of Vermont: 27
•Stanford: 26
@stones3 - So let me get this straight. You scoured the internet for the most heinous crime you could find to demonize schools commonly deemed to be “liberal” and are apparently compounding this by claiming a causal link between reported rapes and a lack of religious tolerance. There are so many holes in these statistics (e.g., reports versus actual substantiated charges and relative frequency of such reports based on size of student body), before even getting to your colossal leap in logic. Did I miss the statistics establishing that these purported crimes were perpetrated by one religious faith upon another? To many of these school’s credit, as the article notes, every instance of a possible sexual assault is filed regardless of just about any factors including details of the assault, when the assault is reported, and even in the absence of a complaining victim. Oh so curious as to the conclusions you draw from these statistics. Please elaborate.
The methodology here (or lack thereof) is going to punish colleges which take rape seriously vs. those which do not; is going to punish colleges which follow the law in reporting sexual assaults vs. those which do not, AND is going to punish colleges (which is what I suspect is going on with Rutgers) which have urban campuses so that even a rape in an apartment building which is adjacent to campus but has nothing to do with students (i.e. neither party is affiliated with the university) gets “counted” as an “on campus” rape since the campus is essentially spread out through a large urban area.
Stones- exactly what point are you trying to make here?
@Otterma - I stand corrected. I meant to refer to schools historically associated with a more faith-based, conservative philosophy, but got off track (to say the least) with Grinnell.
wow! you people are automatically spinning this to your own ends. This appeared on the Yahoo homepage TODAY
So no, no one scoured anything to find it. However upon reading it I thought it important to share. I presume by your
response you would prefer it stay buried . Infer what you wish , just be informed. Frankly growing tired of the high horse some of these names apparently ride