<p>We visited a couple of ivies and my D. decided they just weren’t a fit, nor were the other large, “name brand” east coast schools she visited. She didn’t like the “everything must be done at the highest possible level” fabulousness of Harvard. Some things are just meant to be done for personal enjoyment in her mind. The social environment at Penn wasn’t for her as it reminded her too much of the rich preppy kids at her Catholic grade school who went off to a Jesuit prep school–Penn seemed to be teeming with affluent, smart private school kids. I’m sure there are lots of other types of kids there, but those were the ones we interacted with. </p>
<p>We visited some regional liberal arts schools and she really liked the unpretentious nature of the students there, and the quality of the curriculum seemed to be excellent–lots of small classes and all taught by professors, yet some common sense applied to the basic intro classes (larger lecture and small lab/discussion) so the atmosphere wasn’t precious. </p>
<p>This is a generalization, but in our experience, the “name brand” schools we visit have very “name conscious” students. Reed’s students seemed to be just as into posturing about how alternative they were as Penn’s were into being prep. The lower profile schools seemed to have kids who were less into a particular image, and my daughter responded positively to that.</p>