<p>^^ Hopefully not from the PARENTS. They would reject me. </p>
<p>Maybe some of the other parents who have recently won high school scholastic awards…</p>
<p>vp- you must be talking about ME with my fancy National Association of High School Scholars invitation sitting on my desk at home! </p>
<p>I actually like the lit we get from Mac. D was quasi interested, but H keeps talking about how cold it is. I don’t know if it is compelling enough to sway her from her local choices.</p>
<p>I must admit that I spent some time on the Mac website this afternoon. The school doesn’t seem as quirky as Carleton. Quirk appeals to ds. Nevertheless, I see Mac is coming to town next month with another school of interest (and others) so we’ll check them out.</p>
<p>YDS- my D is anti-quirk. Although I’d classify her as socially liberal in her thoughts towards others and her surroundings, she is also very straight-laced in her own behavior.</p>
<p>I think you need to take a trip to the Mall of America and stop in at Mac since you will be in the neighborhood. We also enjoyed the Minnesota Zoo when we stopped through this area on our cross country trip.</p>
<p>I agree that Mac isn’t as quirky as Carleton. I would put Carleton and Oberlin very close together in my mind, and a little farther down the road, Wesleyan and Vassar together. Mac is more liberal, lefty, political. Which is all good, for me. 
Now that I’ve seen a Midwestern example of quirky/artsy (Oberlin), I think I prefer it to the Northeastern quirky/artsy (Vassar). Plus, Vassar still has that pesky gender ratio.</p>
<p>I’ve trimmed my current list to 12 including in-state flagship. Pitt creative writing department isn’t open to genre, either; sigh. That puts it on the same footing as UDel, where there is one elderly close-to-retirement creative writing prof remaining. I wonder if I should add Knox–have heard good things about it, know some alums, personal touch from the admissions office–but who knows what Galesburg is like? Has anyone visited and can compare?</p>
<p>Well, this thread sent me off to look at Carleton and Mac’s websites. Carleton’s is very cute. Mac’s kind of dull. The Carleton site is annoying though - can’t get back home once you enter the admissions pages.</p>
<p>Keil, what sort of genre are you thinking of? I had a friend at Harvard - while everyone else was writing angsty short stories she was writing a children’s book. The prof she worked with even helped her get it published while she was still a student. Harvard certainly didn’t sell itself as being open to what she was up to, but in fact the prof was quite amenable to anything as long as it was well written.</p>
<p>Booklady,
Thanks for the wonderful description of the Mac campus. Couldn’t have done a better job myself. (esp. since I haven’t been there!) Don’t know that S2 would have offered up as vivid a description, either.</p>
<p>If we’re talking website beauty, I am a fan of Vassar’s–the pictures change with the seasons!–although Carleton’s is cute as well. The worst I’ve seen is Grinnell’s, with poor address forwarding (grinnell.edu vs. www . grinnell.edu) and an ugly navigation bar.</p>
<p>mathmom - I write speculative fiction, fantasy/science fiction/horror. I’ve been emailing professors at each school to inquire; there are varying degrees of acceptance, but many of the “best” creative writing programs turn up their nose at genre in favor of “literary” fiction.</p>
<p>That’s too bad, except for the horror, what you write is what I mostly read. You’ve got to learn it somewhere! (Though it seems to me a large number of fantasy writers majored in history.)</p>
<p>Mathmom -
Actually the “Carleton College” at the top of the admissions pages is a link to the home page, but it’s not obvious. I’ve passed your feedback to the web team.</p>
<p>^So it is, if you wave your mouse in the general direction of Carleton College “home” appears in tiny, tiny letters.</p>
<p>CountingDown, while I’d like to take credit for the great Macalester description, I’ve never been there. You meant bclintonk. :)</p>
<p>Heh, actually I don’t write or read horror at all–but it does fall under the specfic umbrella. I don’t care about the prof being a practicing genre writer or even being interested in genre–just that the prof doesn’t actively ban it. You’d be surprised at the reactions from some, especially in the prestigious programs.</p>
<p>bclintonk, thanks for the description of Macalester. I applied there and was accepted (if I hadn’t been accepted to Dartmouth, I probably would’ve gone), and my sister is applying there this year, but since it’s a bit far to drive from the East Coast we haven’t been able to visit.</p>
<p>nothing would surprise me. I don’t suppose Ursula LeGuin teaches somewhere… She’s written some interesting essays about being stuck in the genre ghetto.</p>
<p>Le Guin was a visiting author at Beloit one year, and I think some professors still teach her books in a first-year seminar. Which is why I was so surprised that the fiction prof there doesn’t accept genre in workshops.</p>
<p>Anyone else waiting up for the ACT scores? I don’t even know if S’s score will be up at midnight but we’ll see.</p>
<p>i was … not waiting up just for that … but i am awake, so i am going to check</p>
<p>Not waiting for ACT scores, but I’m staying up because ds is pulling his first-ever really late night. His coach didn’t get them home from the game until almost 11 p.m. and now he’s playing catch-up on English and Physics. I hope the physics teacher, who was at the game tonight, will cut him and the other boys in his class some slack.</p>
<p>Good luck on the ACT scores!</p>