Liberal Arts Schools and Close-knit Communities

blourring
Sun, 25 Oct 2015 11:13:41 +0000

I was just at a fly-in program at Bowdoin and I realized that the atmosphere is very “chill” in a sense. Everyone at Bowdoin is extremely intelligent and most probably have the ability to get into Ivies and other top-notch schools. However, I noticed that what is different is that Bowdoin has a VERY close-knit community. Everyone loves to help each other and students and professors are very friendly, and everyone is just so supportive and people rarely use their own knowledge as a way to sabotage others (like what happens at many other top-notch schools).

I also visited Notre Dame (which I know isn’t a LAC) but is also VERY close-knit as a community. I know the school sizes between the two are very different and the atmosphers at both schools were different and unique. However, I absolutely love these close-knit and supportive school communities where everyone tries to be as open-minded and intelligently unique as possible.

My main question is: Is this hospitality and close-knit community a thing that EVERY LAC has or is it just certain ones? I have a friend who attended the Williams and the Pomona fly-ins but she said that she despised Pomona because everyone was just doing their own thing and no one really cared to support each other. She said that she LOVED Williams and it’s not her first choice because she loved the friendly and caring atmosphere of the school.

It’s relatively hard to do research on school communities without actually visiting the school for a few days… so if anyone knows the answer to this question, that’d be great! If it helps, the LACs that I’m most interested in are Reed, Colby, Colorado, Kenyon and Occidental… Also, can you guys tell me if the schools Stanford, Cornell, Yale, Princeton, USC and Brown have close-knit communities? Thanks a ton!! (: