Any Midwesterners with experience at NESCACs and other New England SLACs (I.e. Vassar)? Was it a good fit? There aren’t many students from this part of the country.
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My daughter goes to Williams where she has several friends from the Midwest. She just visited friends from the Chicago and Milwaukee suburbs. They bumped into a classmate from Iowa in Chicago. They all love Williams. One bonus is that there are direct flights from O’Hare to Albany which is the closest airport. The college runs shuttles to the airport for breaks.
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My freshman daughter has two close friends from the Midwest at her NESCAC! They’re very happy! Really, her friends and teammates are from all over the country!
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I grew up in the Upper Midwest a gazillion years ago, but even back then some kids headed east to NESCACs and similar LACs for college (less so west–I actually don’t know if I even knew about the Claremont Colleges back then).
Of course there are a lot of successful LACs in the Upper Midwest too–not as dense a collection as in the Northeast, but it adds up across the various states. And I think there is actually something about the culture of higher education in that region which explains all that. Of course it is ALSO Big 10 country, but even then the Big 10 have always been sort of academicky among publics in their own way. And then some people want an academicky but more intimate experience, and that can lead them to LACs.
Anyway, I guess my point is I have never felt like this is something a well-informed Midwestern kid should worry about. If you have good reasons in general to believe a selective LAC would be a good fit for you, I think you should feel very free to look in the Northeast for ones you like.
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My Smithie has tons of friends from the midwest on campus! Indiana, Iowa, Ohio, Illinois, Minnesota–all very well represented.
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Does Ohio still count as Midwestern? Speaking of a gazillion years ago, one of my besties was from Cincinnati and we’ve been lifelong friends ever since.
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My Bates kid had plenty of friends from the Midwest. I don’t get the impression Midwesterners are particularly underrepresented at NESCAC schools. They certainly understand cold weather 
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Here’s a map showing the home states of Middlebury students (fall 2022). Several Midwestern states are well represented.
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We’re in Michigan. I think colleges on both coasts include a lot in “Midwest” – definitely Ohio.
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Midwesterners may want to consider the relative feasibility of driving to Northeastern LACs. For example, within the NESCAC you would encounter an over six-hour driving-time difference between the nearest school and the farthest.
My kid just graduated from Midd, and we were first living in Chicagoland, but later moved to another city in the Midwest.
I will have to disagree with you on that. Although Midwest is represented in NE LACs, they are very much underrepresented, relative to the numbers of graduating seniors. Only Illinois is well represented, and that is almost certainly due to Chicago area which has a good number of people who moved there from the East.
There are more students at Midd from California than there are from the entire Midwest combined, and the Midwest has close to twice the number of people as California (1.8X as many, to be more precise). There are more students from Washington (state) than there are from Ohio, even though Ohio has a larger population and is much closer.
It is likely that Midwesterners will prefer midwestern LACs like Grinnell, Denison, Carleton, etc. LACs tend to be more popular locally than nationally, as well, and for the time being, the Midwest also has a very large number of very good LACs that have acceptance rates above 30%, 40%, or even higher. There are also more colleges on the list of “Colleges That Change Lives” in the Midwest than any other region, both proportionally and in absolute numbers. There really are a large number of LACs in the Midwest - there are more LACs in Ohio than in California.
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Not Northeast, but S22 is definitely not the only midwesterner at Haverford.
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You find some everywhere. No matter how much you try, we’ll creep in through some crack, dontcha know? The best that you can hope for is to limit it to a trickle, otherwise, Midwesterners will simply flood in, and there goes the neighborhood!
We seem nice at first, just like Tribbles . . . .
OMG! We’d be overwhelmed by niceness and people who talk to strangers! This must stop!!
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I think whether a Midwesterner would feel comfortable going to college in the Northeast depends on the student. My D23 felt like a fish out of water when visiting Northeast campuses on admitted student days and therefore chose to stay in the Midwest. Another vote for campus visits.
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Not a NESCAC, but I remember a poster @homerdog who’s D is at Colgate, very social, involved, and from the midwest. They reported a large NE contingent, esp from NJ - and this, along with a large % of athletes, meant that a lot of kids somehow knew each other, or knew people who knew others, before they even got on campus. This has made it harder to break into already established groups. The brother went to Bowdoin and didn’t experience the same issues, although was an athlete himself (I think??) and had a ready made social circle from that maybe.
I do think it’s worth doing a deeper dive on particular campuses once choices are narrowed down. What do the schools do to bring people together, and break down cliques and barriers?
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My midwest D was very happy at a NESCAC school, and had no issues socially speaking or feeling like she didn’t belong, even though many students were from the NE. She was an athlete, so maybe that helped.
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Not exactly the midwest (but not NOT the midwest either!) but we grew up in Toronto and I have a sibling who attended a NESCAC school in the early 2000s and hated it. Lacrosse bro culture shock. Granted, it was one of the more remote schools and it was 20 years ago. But I would encourage visits and deep dives.
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This is definitely an important virtue of athletics–teams are instant ice-breakers. S24 is interested in club and IM sports in part just because he enjoys them, but also because he has experienced before the social benefits.
That said, I “went East” for college, and debate ended up a similar sort of activity for me (and I had never debated in HS). My roommates met friends through a capella and marching band respectively. It is kinda amusing from an anthropological perspective–going to “war” together, on the “hunt” together, singing or otherwise making music together, it all still works to activate the parts of our brains such that social bonding then occurs.
Anyway, I guess my point is regardless of where we may come from, we are all the same species, and naturally social animals. And if you enthusiastically dive into any of the many group activities along these lines, I am pretty sure it will work out well.
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