One of my children also needed to avoided exams-she tends to anxiety, and underperforms on the final exam, compared to her classwork. I would suggest you do a lot of research in each college (at the college I attended, the final was at least 75% of the overall grade in most of the classes I took). My D looked for schools that offered more paper-writing, and experiential credit for internships, group projects, and non-exam work. You won’t have any trouble finding substantial diversity at most colleges located in the US these days, and in 75% of American states, the majority of the populace is politically similar in voting patterns (roughly 40% for Trump, 40% for Clinton; at most, a 10% swing vote, whether in NY or NC).
Also, a student must take into consideration where they hope to get internships, and perhaps line up their career/immediate future. While a college campus may be a bubble within an otherwise conservative area, one might prefer to not set themselves up for a tough decision of being happy elsewhere, but having to leave a job opportunity in an area they hate.
For example, one of my friends who is an Aerospace Engineer from MIT got an immediate job working in the middle of nowhere in a red state. She loved her job, but hated the area (she’s very left wing, from Seattle). She couldn’t make the tough decision until somebody offered her a job somewhere in the SeaTac area.
Attacking OP’s son (by proxy) is never going to be productive.
IN ANY CASE;
I second the recommendation of St. John’s in Santa Fe, and Evergreen State College.
^This. I’m black and queer and I’m from a red state (Georgia), but an extremely diverse and quite liberal part of that state (the Atlanta metropolitan area).
I live in Washington (in the Seattle area) and I love it. However, it is not very racially diverse. (It’s very diverse in other ways.) Evergreen State College is a great school, but both it and Olympia are not very racially diverse. It also might be important to note that the average age of ESC students is 25 (from the College Board), which indicates a prevalence of non-traditional students. I’m not familiar with Olympia specifically, but I can say from experience as a black woman that I feel very safe here in the Pacific Northwest. (Oddly enough, I also feel more open to exploring issues of race and identity here, and even though my friends overall are whiter they are too. The PNW is seriously magical, y’all.)
New College of Florida is another public experimental college that relies on evaluations instead of grades. It’s also very small - only around 800-900 students - and fosters close connections. Hampshire and Pitzer are great suggestions, too, and another experimental college is College of the Atlantic - although it’s in a small town in northern Maine.
Some of the more diverse LACs are Soka University of America (right in CA), University of Richmond (VA, but Richmond is a pretty diverse and liberal city), Oglethorpe University (in Atlanta), Southwestern University (not far from Austin), Trinity College (CT), Goucher College (Baltimore), Austin College (in TX, actually closer to Dallas), Clark University (in Worcester, about an hour from Boston),
If he’d be okay with a more medium-sized place, American, Fordham, and Syracuse are all pretty diverse.
OP may want to consicer Quest U in Canada. Because of the difference in currency, the price is that much lower. Nice area. I’m not sure how diverse, but a cool school.
It works on the block plan which may also help – https://questu.ca/academics/the-block-plan/
Please remember the student’s interests, as described by the OP:
I see a lot of suggestions of colleges with non-traditional curricula (e.g. Evergreen State, St. John’s, Hampshire). Their academic offerings need to be inspected carefully to make sure that they are suitable. This means sufficient biology (including more advanced courses) and other courses (e.g. organic and physical chemistry, physics, calculus, statistics) needed to prepare for PhD study in biology (subarea human genomics), and sufficiently high level Spanish courses.
Note that Evergreen State (an open curriculum college) and St. John’s (a college where the core curriculum is the entire curriculum) are polar opposites in terms of curricular organization.
Actually when I was first applying to colleges back in 2010/11, Goucher, Evergreen, Clark, Whittier and also Eckerd were all recommended as places that might be suitable for a student who doesn’t thrive in the clinical, test-ridden environment of some universities. I don’t know anything personally about their test policies, but they all seem to be more open-minded.
Active co-op programs can provide a nice alternative to traditional testing, too. That is one thing you might look for.
@dragonmom3 The OP is not unique in being fearful these days. There are many segments of the population who feel unsettled as of late.
You might want to ask about alternative assessments as well. Often, the disability office will know about how prevalent they are at a college and whether they can be accessed by those without disability. One of my children did much better on foreign language tests conducted orally rather than written. It wasn’t an accomodation, as everyone in the class was tested that way routinely, but it was something I now ask about at colleges.
Thank you, everyone, for so much thoughtful feedback. You’ve given me ideas and thoughts to ponder. I’d already ruled out Sarah Lawrence (not good for bio/genomics), NCF (too small), and Evergreen State (found similar racial diversity info as @juillet) and have on the list Earlham, Kalamazoo, Knox, Hampshire (will inquire more about bio and Spanish courses through Five Colleges Program), Goucher, Whittier, Pitzer. It’s been very validating and reassuring to know that schools I’ve identified for him for other reasons are also schools that you recommend for I went to Oberlin and it was quite racially diverse then but sadly much less so now. Plus he doesn’t want to go there bc it’s my alma mater - trying to individuate from his mother! I will look into some of the other schools mentioned by people. Thanks!
As for the safety issue, I am not wanting him to attend school only in a blue state. As one person mentioned and I agree, there are “red” areas in blue states (and vice versa). I do believe that Trump’s campaign and now presidency has created an environment nationally (and more prevalent or extreme in some areas) where some people believe it is permissible to perpetrate hate crimes and not just permissible but that they will get away with it. I believe my son will be safe on the campuses of the schools that we have identified so far, but it is off the campus that I have less certainty, in part because I don’t know the area. We are not ruling out Earlham or Kalamazoo (the 2 schools that sparked my comment about safety) because of their location, but I do want to know more (hence my comment to MidwestMomofBoys, and thank you to wustl93 for comments/insight) and look more closely at the communities immediately outside those schools and in the cities nearby.
We have spent time at both Kzoo and Earlham. Kalamazoo is a very arts-oriented small city, and students seemed very comfortable circulating around town. The college is right next to Western Michigan University – a large regional MI public campus, so there are thousands of students in Kzoo the city. There was a shooting within the past year or two in the city, with multiple victims, which was awful and shocking. It did not appear to be race related.
Richmond IN is hardly a cosmopolitan center, but there there is a small downtown with coffee shops etc. a few blocks from campus. The Earlham student body is more diverse than many small liberal arts colleges; our public high school has sent a number of African American students to Earlham, and the school has a high percentage of international students. My kid was looking at playing his sport in college, and he really like that Earlham’s team had a number of African players, as he had grown up playing with African athletes in his sport. Richmond itself seems pretty subdued, but I would think that the community is accustomed to co-existing with its Quaker college neighbor. Science facilities at Earlham have all been renovated/are being renovated or constructed new, over the past several years, and the opportunities for students in research seem impressive.
While I can’t speak to exam focus at Grinnell, it might be another school to explore. Classes are capped at 25, so there is a lot of opportunity for student/faculty engagement. Sciences are superb, and Grinnell works to actively create a diverse community in terms of race/ethnicity/socio-economic factors. Grinnell’s popularity has exploded since we started doing college research about 5-6 years ago for our eldest, and the acceptance rate has dropped to below 20%, with test score ranges competing with some of the best liberal arts colleges back east. If a student’s test scores keep them competitive, a great one to look at.
I hope MomofKZ is watching the local news Bay Area news right now. There’s a very violent protest going on at UC Berkeley, with demonstrators trying to shut down a Milo Yionoppoulos speech. Lots of rocks and M-80s being thrown at the police standing outside of Zellerbach Hall. Protesters are also ramming barricades into windows.
Unlikely this kind of violence is going to happen at a rural Indiana university.
I’m not sure it is that odd. Places like Seattle and Portland tend to be less racially segregated at the neighborhood level than typical cities in the US, particularly some of those in the midwest (see https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-most-diverse-cities-are-often-the-most-segregated/ ). Since white people are the clear majority there (and no other group is particularly large), it is likely that “group status threat” is not something that white people feel, unlike in places where the white population is around 50% (i.e. under “threat” of no longer being the majority group, or having already lost that status numerically but not having adjusted to the idea of not being the majority, as in California in the 1990s to early 2000s when racism was higher than before or after). I.e. white people in the PNW urban areas are more likely to have some social interaction with non-white people, and are less likely to be triggered to feel “threatened”, compared to those in highly segregated areas where there is a large population of non-white people “on the other side of the tracks”.
@simba9 You mean the protesters that were part of a local anarchist group that came to what was an otherwise peaceful protest? It’s a pretty odd incident, but it’s certainly an event that has no bearing on diversity issues within the UC berkeley population/area. Not even really worth mentioning unless you’re trying to spark a debate imo.
@MomofKZ You should definitely check the actual area of the school and not base anything off of how the state voted in the last election. You have Knox on your list which you would see as being from a blue state. Please know that most of IL votes red - it always ends ups blue due to Chicago and areas near St. Louis - neither is where Knox is located. I’m not saying he’d have a problem at Knox, I doubt that’s true, just noting the flaw in your system.
I’m responding to MomofKZ’s belief that going to college in a red state puts one at risk of violence.
If such a criterion matters to you, I think that looking at the area where the college is located is more important than the state itself. - how did the city/town/county break?
Looks like OP is coming up with a good list. If test-taking is of concern, you may also want to see not whether the school has a lot of exams as assessments but how accommodating they are if extra time is needed, etc.
Some honor code schools allow kids to make their own exam schedule and take the tests anywhere which could help with anxiety. Check out Haverford and Connecticut College. Not sure what their current policies are. Both probably meet other criteria as well.
Hampshire is 5-college consortium so you should be able to find the amount of bio that your child needs. Free busing among the campuses.
I’ve known several Hampshire grads who have valued their experiences there and have done well in their fields, all of whom in some ways are path breakers.
It seems to be an excellent school for people who are well directed. People who have a focus that they want to pursue seem to do well in its environment because it allows them the space to do just that.
As with many schools, it has to be the right fit for the right person.
We are a bit off topic of finding schools that have classes where tests and exams are deemphasized, but @simba9 I do want to clarify that I am not of the belief that going to college in a red state puts one at risk of violence (or that one is not at risk of violence in a blue state).
@MYOS1634 “looking at the area where the college is located is more important than the state itself” and @smakl70 “check the actual area of the school and not base anything off of how the state voted in the last election” - yes, I agree, and have found info from Midwestmomofboys to be helpful in that regard. Knox is on the list (along with Earlham and Kzoo) not because it’s in a red or blue state, and I do want more information about the area around Knox. I lived in St. Louis for a few years in the late '80’s, traveled to/from Chicago, and am aware of the differing perspectives/voting in the urban versus non-urban areas of Illinois (and Missouri), which is why I want to know more about the area around Knox.