What a great thread!
We went to an 11am info session/tour on a beautiful fall Saturday. We did not see one person anywhere on campus who was not working with admissions. I’m all for partying on Friday nights and sleeping in, but literally not one person was up and about. We left after the info session and drove by Boston College on a whim, where everyone was decked out in maroon and gold on their way to a home football game. Night and day for my D.
@alooknac Would you mind sharing the schools you liked where non art majors could take advanced classes? That will be important for us too!
@mjrube94 What school were you at where nobody was around on a Saturday morning?
Fun thread to read. Am reminded of the old story about the blind men and the elephant. Perceptions depend on many factors- where/when… on campus.
@londondad Stonehill. I noticed the lack of people as we were driving in. The kids doing the info session didn’t look thrilled. The whole vibe of the place was really off for us.
We toured Cornell University on a Saturday morning, and there were no students to be found in the central campus. It felt like a ghost town.
So if kids are not around on a Saturday morning, is that a bad thing? Or a good thing, because they
actually had a social life taking place Friday night?
Or maybe you just missed all the kids taking their infamous Biology and chemistry labs Saturday morning, because the campus is spread out and their classes were not where you were?
( note: I actually got stuck taking such classes, freshman year. bio lab Saturday 8:00 am,. Chem lab Saturday 9:00am (different semester))
@Homerdog, Here’s some of what I know, not all ground-truthed:
My notes say it’s open 7 days a week, 7 am to midnight, but we didn’t visit & could have changed. I realize it’s not the same as getting into actual art courses, but for my D, just having access to studio space and materials would have been OK.
Carleton aims for 50/50 art majors/not in art classes
Lewis & Clark has an art theme dorm, you don’t have to be an art major, we did visit that but I’m not sure exactly what it included, I think photo lab and ceramic studio and something else. Materials fee of something like $100/yr.
I think all Earlham art courses are open to everyone, some art is required to meet GenEd requirements. When my D was in an art class as a nonmajor freshman, she had 24 hr access to the studio. I don’t think she anticipates any problems getting into other art courses, her problem is fitting them into her schedule.
Asking a college this question is a good way to show interest while genuinely seeking information that is often impossible to find online. Besides asking IF courses are open to nonmajors, it’s important to ask what are the chances that a nonmajor will actually get into the course?
As a backup plan, we kept in mind that D could declare an art minor if necessary to get course access. Minor could be dropped later if desired.
@homerdog Kenyon’s crafts center is not a substitute for studio classes. It is in a different building, and while somewhat quaint and charming, quite small. One reason Kenyon fell down my kid’s list was that ceramics is not part of Kenyon’s art program, and is only available in the crafts program, and he is considering studio art minor with ceramics. He toured the Kenyon crafts center and did not see it as a suitable alternative – classes are led by students and the ceramics area had only a handful of wheels. It is a lovely way for students and community members to engage with art, but it is not equivalent to studio experience. We discovered that Vassar and Oberlin also only offer ceramics through a community co-op and not as part of the studio art program.
Digging through a specific school’s art department website, including course listings, will tell you a lot about the access. And we scheduled tours of the art facility at most of the 10+ LACs my kid was visiting so he could see what the opportunities were. Good luck!
Since it’s too late to edit, I will add – at many LACs, studio class size is capped because of the physical limits – 24 easels in a studio with view of subject, 18 ceramics wheels etc. Priority in some upper level classes, particularly those which are required for the major, may be given to art majors or minors, with the remaining spots open to non-majors/minors. Emails to admissions counselor, asking who to contact in art department to get answers to those questions, or an email directly to studio art department administrative assistant – who will then put you in touch with the dept chair or someone else who can answer those questions – can help answer those questions and inform your list.
@monydad Nobody being around on Saturday mornings could also mean that everybody goes home (or somewhere else) for the weekend.
@T26E4 I missed your response before. As someone who may have attended the same liberal arts college that you attended, I have to agree with you. All kinds of stuff could be found on those bathroom walls and stalls. The mad eraser couldn’t keep up with it all. But the creativity of that student body was best expressed in comment after comment, stanza following stanza, written by my fellow students of whom it may be said, “Their scribbles were inspired by a deep exposure to the best writings of civilized thinkers.”
Dorm space per student. “Forced triples” where three students share a room originally intended for two students just seems like your “home away from home” would not be comfortable enough to hang out in apart from sleeping. And like the school is not investing in more dorms when it should be.
For my son, a high school junior, the question of whether a school has a club tennis team, that competes against other schools, seems to be becoming important to him. There’s no guarantee of making the varsity team, and he wants to play tennis several days a week and compete in matches. (If there is no club and he likes the school otherwise, then the next question is how easy is it to start a new club at the school.)
Another thing that bothered him at one school was that students were seated in a segregated manner in the dining hall-- we saw a table of African Americans, a table of Asians, a bunch of tables with all white kids. The point of diversity in colleges is that students actually INTERACT with students of different backgrounds from themselves!
Little traditions of the school are charming when you hear about them on tours.
And sometimes a tiny little detail- like one school where the tour guide mentioned they will provide you with a free car and pay for the gas if you want to go on a trip- just makes it clear that the school has the resources to provide its students with so many opportunities.
Finally, if students sound like they really love learning-- for example, by discussing a new interest they discovered in a class they had taken or raving about a professor or subject, then the school sounds exciting!
Indeed little things do mean a lot. We made a special effort to visit colleges during the Fall Break of our D’s senior yrar in high school. I allowed her to choose up to three colleges in three different cities that we could fly to in a one week period. Regrettably one of the colleges was on a break, too when we visited. The other two were in session. We would always recommend visiting when classes are in session whenever possible. It was hard to objectively evaluate a college when most of the students were away on their break.
We budgeted not less than a day and a half for our visits in each city. When our flight schedules allowed, we always tried to walk the campuses on our own making mental notes and observations. Ideally, we would do this on the afternoon of our arrival. Then, usually the following day, we took the college’s formal orientation program and guided tours.
We made the effort to eat lunch at the student dining hall at the two colleges that were in session. At the first one, it was overwhelmed with students so we ate at a sandwich shop in the student center. The second college was much more accommodating. They offered a free lunch to our D and a discount for me. It was very impressive and we got a good sense of the quality and variety of the food offerings and watching the interactions of students dining there.
Our D was only able to sit in on classes at one of the three colleges, but that was a great experience. While she was in class, I browsed the campus bookstore and waited in the lobby of their business school near a coffee shop and just observed the comings and goings of the students and faculty.
Because our D would have to fly to and from any of the three colleges she chose, our observations weren’t limited to just the campus. How convenient and accessible is the nearest airport and what transportation options are available with the campus shuttle to not only the airport, but local stores and restaurants for students without cars? Is Uber and/or Lyft available?
Dorm visits were important, too. If we could visit dorm rooms that were actually in use by actual students, and not nicely decorated model units, that was a real plus.
We made a special effort to meet privately with the Dean of Admissions or Director of Admissions at two of the three colleges we visited. This may be impractical at large universities, but the fact that we were able to meet with them and they got to learn about our D made a lasting impression and significantly contributed to our D’s decision on which one to apply to ED and which ones to apply EA.
Re#131, good point.
I remember D1 almost attended an LAC outside of Boston, she did an overnight on a Friday and told me everyone took off on Saturday, to go into the city or wherever, draining the campus of vitality.
I forgot that.
I agree on the dorm space. My d, who has not yet committed, has commented extensively on the size of the rooms. She found Penn State to have the smallest rooms of any college she visited.
My S is definitely big on the dorms. We saw several dorms that he thought looked like prison cells.
The dorms are pretty bad everywhere! My D liked NYU dorms a lot, most have a private bathroom and that was a bug deal to her.
Has the college put on a musical recently has become a little big thing for my D. Sigh.