Liberal Arts Colleges for a Shy Kid

Dustyfeathers
Sat, 15 Aug 2020 11:05:05 +0000

Having read the above suggestions–

1. Consortium LAC could be a good alternative. Often they are small LACs that allow a student to start at their home school and when they feel they are ready they can expand socially and academically to the other schools. Haverford is a great, nurturing consortium school. The students are very accepting of others. It’s not as small as it looks on paper because its “sister” school is Bryn Mawr. Swarthmore is also part of the consortium though further away. One problem with lovely schools like Hamilton and Williams is that they are small and insular. If they are in an area that’s too rural or isolated the students can get antsy and want to expand. Consortiums solve this problem. Other consortium schools include a) the five schools that include Pomona, Harvey Mudd, etc. I’d check them out. b) the Haverford, Brym Mawr, UPenn, Swat group. c) Amherst, Smith, Mt. Holyoke etc. These schools tend to pool activities which means that they draw students from all schools for the orchestray, potentially. Getting between campuses is included.

2. One outlet for small isolated schools are study abroad programs and with your son interested in Japan, that’s probably on his horizon. I personally approach study abroad programs cautiously as the part most parents and schools forget is the re-entry. A one-semester program somewhat limits language exposure. A full year helps with that. OTOH, if a student spends all of junior year abroad, they return to a vastly changed campus from a social stand-point. They know only one class of students. Their friends have graduated mostly. It can be rough. For your son I want to draw your attention to the JET program for after graduation. It is a Japan-government program that pays graduates to go to Japan to live for at least one year and teach English. JET students of course also polish their language skills and can move into other sorts of work from there, with appropriate attention to visa and other issues.

3. I echo that Swat is not a nurturing environment but more intellectually competitive along the lines of UChicago.

4. For schools that are fun and welcoming I echo Vassar (on the trainline to NYC allows for the students to get into and out of the City in a single day and all of the arts and music available there; also has good Japan language), Wesleyan (great music here), Skidmore actually offers a more overtly nurturing environment for their students as per their official presentation; Amherst (here is the list of Five College Consortium music offerings: https://www.fivecolleges.edu/music/ensembles ); Haverford.