<p>coureur: @ Stanford, your post is absolute PROOF that beauty is in the eye of the beholder! And my D has the same opinion you do. Personally, I find The Farm to be stunning, but I like the California/mission look. It’s a very particular style though, and not to everyone’s taste.</p>
<p>^^I like the Mission style too. And as I said Stanford is very beautiful, but it just strikes me as a little too planned and polished. There is something to be said for allowing for a little bit of natural “organic” growth. Looking at Stanford is like viewing a well-groomed city park with a stocked fish pond rather than an Alpine forest with a lake and meadow. Both are beautiful, but they have a different sort of beauty.</p>
<p>Proud Stanford degree holder here. Love the university. Hate the aesthetic – a cross between Golf Course and Suburban Shopping Mall. In Mission style, of course. With coordinated colors. Ycch!</p>
<p>Of course, the natural setting, with the eucalyptus groves and foothills in the background, is sensational, and even banal architecture doesn’t ruin that.</p>
<p>Colgate is beautiful.</p>
<p>susgeek–I concur.</p>
<p>Thanks everyone! I gave D the list compiled by CC over the weekend. Today I ask her which colleges she was interested in and she said, "None of them. I am going with my original plan. If I don’t like music performance I will switch majors in that college. Besides, (and this is the real hoot…lol) it’s shallow to pick a college on looks (duh!). However, I quoted (as well as I could) from Gwen Fairfax about "the sense of history, of proportion, solidity, and care, that comes with a beautiful campus, can be a huge part of an education. Truth is beauty, and a beauty can be an essential part of the study of truth. " She was really impressed that Gwen could put into words what she meant! So, right now we are back to plan A.</p>
<p>LOL MuppetMom. Don’t they just drive you crazy sometimes?</p>
<p>Only Sometimes?</p>
<p>muppetmom
My S is at McGill and we visited this past weekend. The music school is incredible. We listened to an orchestra rehearsal and could have stayed for hours. Just an unbelievable resource.
However, it IS an urban school - beautiful gothic buildings abound but gorgeous rolling hills, it ain’t!</p>
<p>List of some favorites:</p>
<p>Miami of Ohio has a gorgeous campus, especially in fall.
Rhodes (Menphis)
Rice is interesting, but I always thought it looked “weathered”. It may be the humidity?
Willamette (OR)
parts of UVA
William & Mary
Wooster (OH)
U DUB (U.Washington)</p>
<p>Woody,
We toured McGill this past summer and she loved it. Mind you, it was a beautiful 75 degree day, a few puffy clouds… Much Much better than the heat and humidity that we normally live in. But, she has never been in the cold like Montreal would be in the winter. She thought the school was lovely, the people were very nice and the city was great! We had toured BU a couple of months earlier, so it didn’t feel “urban” like BU. We didn’t get to hear the orchestra, so it’s nice to know they sound good. How is the housing situation for your S? That is one of my biggest concerns.</p>
<p>Freshman year in a dorm. Single room segregated wings by sex in his dorm. No food service on weekends. 2nd year in an apt. with 3 other guys. Apt was OK - less expensive than dorm but they also have to cook for themselves. This year 4th floor walk-up with one other guy - much less expensive than last year(<$500)and much less party-central than previous apt.
Apts are easily found on your own or through the housing office. Although the US$ and CAN$ are at parity right now, the exchange rate really worked in our favor for the past 2 years. Also - have you checked out their tuition rates for US students?? An excellent value.</p>
<p>It’s not on a lot of lists, but Hanover College has one of the prettiest campuses in the country, up there with U Rochester, Williams, and Dartmouth.</p>
<p>I’ve never seen a campus prettier than the the Univ. of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas.</p>
<p>lol, muppetmom, glad I helped! (unless it was harm)…</p>
<p>We visited a lot of schools and found U of AL (with all the stone pillars, gorgeous grounds) to be one of the prettiest. VA Tech never brought ‘lovely campus’ to mind, but when we visited, both son & I were struck by the gorgeous stone buildings, rolling green hills, etc. </p>
<p>I grew up near Haverford College & in the spring it’s wonderful.</p>
<p>Cornell’s often ranked as the most beautiful in the U.S., though that’s subjective.</p>
<p>Few argue with the natural beauty of the area in the gorges, waterfalls, lakes, forests, and cute city. People sometimes don’t like its mix of architectural styles, but being a premiere architecture school it has taken upon itself to test new concepts in design. You have the classic campus anchoring it all and modern styles integrated within. </p>
<p>I think mixed architectural styles are far more intellectually invigorating than a lot of campuses that stick to whatever style was trendy when the school was founded. Just think of New York City with its mix of modern and classic architecture. Shows a sense of vitality and energy to me.</p>
<p>Swarthmore, Skidmore, Hamilton (far prettier than Colgate), Cornell, Amherst, and Williams. I would rate Swarthmore for prettiest campus and Skidmore for most beautiful area that college is in - Saratoga Springs.</p>
<p>It doesn’t get much prettier than Saratoga Springs in the fall. I had a friend who got married there one October - and it was just gorgeous as was the whole drive up there.</p>
<p>I’m 100% with Coureur on Stanford - and I’m a big fan of mission style architecture - I like it smaller and cuter like Caltech.</p>
<p>My favorite campuses were Emory–the marble buildings were unique from other campuses and made the whole campus feel very garden like </p>
<p>I also loved the University of Richmond and Dickinson</p>