Individual experiences vary, I understand. My daughter wanted a small school, so this wasn’t an issue for her. She had a nice and large friend group but also branched out outside of it through clubs and other interests. She said there were quite a few rich kids there but it didn’t bother her (and her friends were a mix of different income backgrounds). Academically she had an amazing experience, too. Too bad it hasn’t been great for your friend’s daughter, it’s impossible to predict how things work out at a specific college.
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I grew up in Michigan, and Kalamazoo College was well-known in my HS. My sense is at least a decent number of Chicago and other nearbyish families know about it as well. Otherwise, though, it appears to me a lot of Upper Midwest LACs are just not in the conversation for many kids, even ones doing a nominally national search that includes LACs.
And yet their students end up coming from a variety of states and countries, they place in grad programs and with employers in a variety of locations–so somehow enough kids end up finding them.
I suppose it doesn’t hurt that Kalamazoo is one of the Colleges That Change Lives–that list has a fairly devoted following (rightly so) in my experience:
Anyway, I’m glad you found it!
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Ahh- I’m glad you specified! I could see that about Kenyon. They do have a reputation for pulling in very affluent students, and I got the impression that because of the location and the culture of the school, that it could feel a bit too small by senior year for some kids. They definitely provide a top-notch academic experience, though!
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Doing a study abroad can provide a break from the smallness and the somewhat isolated (if bucolic) setting. They have lots program to choose from. Totally agree about the top-notch academics, based on my daughter’s experience.
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Under half (46.5%) of Kenyon students get need aid.
Some get merit of course (30%) and I assume some both.
But yes wealthy for sure.
Yes, it’s possible to get both.
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It doesn’t sound as if she took any semesters off. Did she?
My C17 graduated from Muhlenberg, which is also a LAC For Wealthy Kids—and she started there when they were being very open about recruiting full-pay students from wealthy families, contra most colleges that do the same thing but are much more quiet about it.
Her first year and a half or so, she really felt like the poor kid on campus, even though we’re comfortably upper middle class—but she had friends who would do things like last-minute decide to go to Rio for spring break, or fly to Park City on a random weekend to get some skiing in, that sort of thing, and who sometimes exhibited something akin to pity when C17 couldn’t join in, and that didn’t feel good.
But by the middle of her second year she’d found a much more, um, grounded set of classmates to hang out with, and the rest of her time was much less socially weird for her.
Which is to say that if it’s possible to find your people at a LAC of 2,000, it’s probably possible pretty much anywhere.
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Just wanted to quickly note I am thrilled for your daughter that she liked RIT. As she observed, it is a special place if you are interested in the intersection of art and technology, and I suspect there are other kids who will benefit from having that brought to their attention.
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When I visited RIT with D25, she thought it was ok. Ok enough to apply, but not excited. Meanwhile, I’m gushing over the maker space, the studio art facilities, the TV studio, the cyber defense contest thing that they do. I loved it. I’m hoping my very artsy-techie younger child might decide to apply. I think they want to be in a bigger city. But RIT really is something special as you say, especially at the nexus of art and tech.
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@wesbound25 THANK YOU for that amazing, detailed roundup complete with decision making re-cap. Super helpful. Sounds like your D is very similar to my D26 in wishes for a college list (except for the perplexing fact that mine seems recently to be dragging her heels on wanting to visit/research campuses). I’ve been feeling stuck about next steps and your list / descriptions helped. We are visiting Wesleyan next month, along with Wellesley and Williams. Sounds like we should add Swarthmore.
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My best advice: let them guide the way, and gently remind them that the tour guide is not the school.
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Something to maybe gently explore with your daughter: sometimes kids drag their feet in choosing schools (at the start of the process, and again after all the acceptances have rolled in) because doing so makes it all feel so FINAL.
Up until this point, it’s been a year (or a few years) of thinking about possibilities, but switching to going through the process of making decisions can feel very, very fraught and overwhelming because: that’s it.
Dragging her feet on wanting to visit or research schools might be colored by complex feelings around what choosing where to attend really represents, and that sometimes includes sadness about high school ending, worries about friendships or relationships ending and changing, worries about actually moving away, “what if I pick the wrong one?” and more.
Sometimes kids don’t realize that putting the decision off may perhaps be about a swirl of those concerns, ones they hadn’t really put into words to yet.
Good luck, it’s a very emotional time for many! Hang in there 
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I hadn’t thought of it from this perspective. Probably because I’m so excited for/proud of her. I’ve been thinking about amazing programs and beautiful libraries (hopefully not too far away! 
) But you raise a real possibility–this might indeed feel very different to her now that she’s a junior. Plus her boyfriend of a year+ is a senior hearing from schools this month. I was also thinking about that as an exciting time for him. BUT – she definitely doesn’t want to talk about that either. Maybe these two things are related. There are quite possibly some endings on the horizon sooner than later. Hmmmm…I will rethink my approach.
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@NemesisLead Most of the people who know Southern culture will probably not touch your observations at Vanderbilt with a 10-foot pole. I’m assuming you aren’t Southern. If you are, then I’d be very interested to hear it. I teach at a Predominantly Black Institution in the South, and have lived in the South a lot of my life. The behavior that you see in service employees (often people of color) is not intended to be offensive to the particular customer. It is a response to older times in the region when people of color/working-class people were expected to be subservient. I suggest not taking it personally, and remaining sweet. Actually, many people in service will warm up to very respectful treatment by customers. But in a brief interaction, this is not going to happen! It is also possible that the sheer scale of privilege of the Vanderbilt students causes resentment in the staff–but the Vanderbilt students are probably not behaving particularly poorly. I have had many acquaintances who moved to the South freak out about this aspect of culture–but there is nothing inherently wrong with a service employee not talking to you, especially in the historical context.
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It also isn’t wrong for the OP to not feel comfortable or like the vibe 
I will say, what they described would surprise me, if I experienced it. I say this because in my personal experience southerners are often openly so proud that they are so friendly (in general) and that people up north are cold. And yes that is a stereotype I hear from real people. Also, my personal experience having only traveled in the south is that people are quite friendly in service jobs. I am not sure how to reconcile that. What they described maybe felt different than other places or what their experience had been prior?
TLDR - different things work for different people
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I’m a frequent visitor to two southern states, both in quite rural areas, and I have to say, as in most instances, that it all depends. The ladies who greet you by the Walmart entrance are surely the sweetest service workers I’ve ever seen. No doubt about it. But IMHO, southern blue-collar workers are no different than workers everywhere else on the planet; they are often working two and three different jobs just to make ends meet and after being on their feet all day long, no one sees themselves as a Disneyland avatar. That’s not what they’re getting paid to do.
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The biggest truth is that every individual is different, no matter the cultural context. In working service jobs, I (a young white woman) was distant. My twin was determinedly friendly (which got her into trouble a couple of times with creepy men). It is very likely that service up North could be just the same as the South. My (individual emotional) experience of service up North is that the people doing it are in general cordial, although not effusive. Perhaps it’s the general expectation of effusiveness in Southern culture that produces the large difference! P.S. I should also specify that the states I’ve lived in and experienced university service culture there are Louisiana, Georgia, Tennessee, and Colorado. One of my grad degrees is from Vanderbilt.
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100% agree.
I don’t think anyone is blaming the workers …or I certainly wasn’t trying to shame them into being friendly - I am not actually not a fan of useless chit-chat myself in line or in this sort interaction. I am a fan of brusque efficiency in service delivery, even in fancy restaurants - lol.
I inferred this was more about how students treated and interacted with the workers and expectations based on prior experiences..I inferred the students were standoff-ish and the workers just went with it (as would I, if I was in their position. who has time for extra energy when not reciprocated?).
And really, overall I think OP was saying there was a mismatch in expectations of what OP thought it would feel like, and how it actually felt. Expectations may have been off, of course, but I think we have all been to a lot of dining halls Also, I agree there is strong class divides many places.
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Thank you for your observations @Snowball2 . I am not Southern, but I did live near Atlanta for 3 years and never experienced this. Although some would say that Atlanta is perhaps not the “real” south with so many transplants.
I had not given your view any thought and that is VERY interesting. I was honestly expecting to hear something about a labor dispute. The service people seemed like they were about to go on strike, lol.
The “silence” cut across racial boundaries, although probably 85% of the service staff were POC. I should also have pointed out that it did NOT apply to service managers, many of whom were also POC. But the non-managerial staff were dead silent.
We have done 16 or 18 college tours at this point and the Vandy/Washu experiences were the most polarizing in a sense: incredible, incredible schools with interpersonal experiences that we have not seen anywhere else.
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