<p>I wasn’t blaming Tulane- however for some kids to go from a city where drinking age is 21 and heavily enforced to go to a city where you can get a “go” cup, and you can always find an open liquor store, seems to be a strong temptation for kids who don’t have the best brakes on their impulses.</p>
<p>I was disappointed in Hampshire, but I think only because it reminded me too much of home: throughout high school I took classes at The Evergreen State College, which in terms of academic structure and student body is much like Hampshire: hippie, eclectic, very free. It’s almost what I want, but not quite - there seemed to be a lack of sustained - or perhaps I should say structured - intellectual rigor.
The students themselves exceeded my expectations, however: open, friendly - some intellectual, but not uniformly. A group of Hampshire girls talked to me non-stop on the Five College bus to U-Mass. A Hampshire couple talked to me non-stop on the way back. So, in that respect I was very pleased.</p>
<p>My son felt that both Tufts and Colby were nice enough places, but lacked a certain spark of feeling.</p>
<p>zahra- did you get a ‘not really intellectual’ but like a feigned intellectual sense from there? like a bunch of slacker students trying to pass off as ‘intellectual?’ my friend visited and thought that…but i’m still considering going.</p>
<p>zahra- did you get a ‘not really intellectual’ but like a feigned intellectual sense from there? like a bunch of slacker students trying to pass off as ‘intellectual?’ my friend visited and thought that…like it wasnt an actual…SCHOOL…but i’m still considering going since they scholarshipped me.</p>
<p>whoa. sorry for posting that twice…</p>
<p>Like upon noticing my feet were tan she remarked " Oh, I wish I could stand to lay around in the sun, but I always have to be doing something, I just can’t help it"!</p>
<p>LOL LOL LOL!!!</p>
<p>That sounds SO familiar to me!</p>
<p>Loved the “tanned feet” line as well!!! 
But my mo-in-law, who is as Irish as Paddy’s Pig, and who continues to LOVE life even at age 95, would have told me…“I think you’ve been spending too much time in the confessionals…you need to go out and get some sun!” as a reaction to my VERY pale skin…in spite of the fact that she considered me one of those “I-talians” (with the accent on the “I”) that her son married.</p>
<p>My Comments on U Chicago, Penn, and Other Urban Campuses - First, being a male does give one a different perspective about safety concerns at urban universities like Chicago and Penn. With that said, I also feel I’m reading in this thread a touch of paranoia about safety that can end up shutting one off from the energizing, diverse communities (and larger city) that surround these universities. For instance, I attended the University of Chicago in the mid-70’s when crime and personal safety concerns were heightened (a graduate student had been murdered the year before in a hold-up a half-mile or so off-campus). However, despite the crime concerns, the Hyde Park-Kenwood community (where U of C is located) then (and now per a visit back a couple years ago) was a vibrant multi-racial and cultural environment where urban life was raw, exciting, and at times scary. I loved to walk throughout the Hyde Park-Kenwood (a couple square miles) and bike throughout the city of Chicago’s neighborhoods. In Hyde Park at the time lived Elijah Muhammed and his family (Black Muslims) with a string of handsome new townhomes and a beautiful new mosque; Jesse Jackson preached from PUSH headquarters on radio; a bastion of the legal community, the American Bar Association, had its national headquarters in Hyde Park, and the nation’s largest co-op supported by thousands of citizens of every stripe (with its own huge grocery store) flourished in Hyde Park. And I saw and tasted it all through my walking and biking jaunts. Yes, I was careful where I went at night (and sometimes during the day), but once you took the usual precautions as an urban resident, the diverse and wonderful world of urban Chicago was at your feet for the taking. </p>
<p>On the too safe and paranoid side, I knew students who literally shut themselves into their dorm and would rarely venture out off-campus over several years. They missed out on a lot that a vibrant urban locale can offer.
The surrounding neighborhood buildings may not be new and the streets may have potholes, but keep looking and you’ll see the unusual ethnic restaurants with names and food you can’t pronounce; the churches, synagogues, and mosques of every religion; and the neighbors of every ethnic origin.</p>
<p>My same points hold for Carnegie-Mellon University and the incredible ethnic variety of Pittsburgh (where I went as a freshman); and West Philly (U Penn) which was just east of where I grew up in a working class suburb. Be cautious, but have fun too!</p>
<p>Nah…living in Pittsburgh and attending Carnegie Mellon…words could not express nor describe the feeling of elation, wonderment and awe that my D and I experienced when we went through the tunnel and saw the magnificent panoramic vista of downtown Pittsburgh (we screamed like little girls on an amusement park ride in our rented vehicle) when she went to visit CMU for sleeping bag weekend. Then we drove down magnificent Forbes Avenue, the heart of culture and art and saw the Carnegie Museum complex, the Cathedral for Learning, and the immaculate CMU campus…not a blade of grass out of place!!! Sorry…can’t compare any of that to West Philly. You can’t help but learn SOMETHING at CMU…even if just by osmosis. NAH…it’s SAFE and gorgeous!!!</p>
<p>nor can it compare to University of Chicago, I might add, that we also visited.</p>
<p>Whoa ! 231 posts with great information. Thanks ALL. I dont have anything meaningful to add because D, H and I havent been anywhere yet but Im posting to keep this thread marked. :)</p>
<p>kenyon–it was so pretty when I visited. The people seemed so laid back. Well, now I go there and I’m trying to transfer. ALso…Bard. I wanted to love that school so much but I just thought it felt too much like summer camp, while acting oddly rigurous in structure.</p>
<p>Amherst – came across to S and me as ‘snobby’ – don’t know why but it hit us both at the same time – he went to Williams!</p>
<p>I echo lonestardad’s comments re U of Chicago. My daughter is completing her freshman year there, and reports that, while one has to take the same sort of sensible precautions one would take in any city, she doesn’t feel threatened on campus, and uses the mass transit system weekly to spend time downtown. If you compare the crime rates of the areas surrounding the leading urban campuses – at least those reported on a reputable website as of a year or so ago – you’d find that crime was most prevalent in Cambridge (around Harvard and MIT); crime was half as prevalent as Cambridge’s at Yale and Penn, and about half of Yale and Penn’s at Columbia and Chicago.</p>
<p>My life would have been a whole lot easier if I could have liked Bryn Mawr, but…the very appealing picture created by the brochures and my tour was a contrast to the reality I experienced there.</p>
<p>Also LOL about the post upthread about the homely students at BMC. There’s definitely a self-selection element at work there.</p>
<p>My son loves NYU and I really want to like the school but since we used to live in the city, I wanted him to experiance a campus element. That said, I think it is still a wonderful place for someone who is interested in experiances the wonders of NYC. </p>
<p>I loved UCLA, I loved the area, I thought the campus was beautiful but my son didn’t care for it. He didn’t like the detachment. And when it came down to it, I didn’t like the way the application gave “points” to whether you had hardships, single parent home, etc and didn’t really seem to see the kid. 9/11 played a big part in creating severe hardship in our life, but my son was reluctant to mention what we went though on any of his college applications and on the UCLA one he could have gotton extra consideration. Looking back, he was right, why go to a school where you have to talk about all your hurdles, instead of your accomplishments?</p>
<p>er222 – citations, please?</p>
<p>I just reviewed the data for 2001, 2002, and 2003 at the Office of Postsecondary Education’s Campus Security Statistics site (<a href=“Campus Safety and Security)%5B/url%5D”>Campus Safety and Security)</a>, comparing U of Chicago and MIT. While the on-campus statistics are very, very similar between the two institutions (except for on-campus vehicle theft being higher at MIT), the biggest differences were a much larger incidence of robbery and motor vehicle theft on “public property” around U Chicago, higher numbers of aggravated assaults and burglary on “public property” around MIT, and zero incidents of any kind of criminal activity “non-campus” at MIT, with forcible sex offenses, aggravated assault, robbery, and burglary showing up in the “non-campus” area around U Chicago.</p>
<p>Really, neither of them shines in this evaluation. They’re both in cities and they both have some criminal activity nearby. But crime is by no means “most prevalent” in Cambridge, and is certainly not four times that of Chicago.</p>
<p>My sister dreamed of attending Harvard since since was little. She hated it when she visited. She’s at Yale.</p>
<p>D and I visited Stanford during spring break. It continues to be
D first choice. The plane ride was a disaster (5 hours) for me. Maybe that started my downward view.</p>
<p>It was cold. The California weather touted as great all year was missing,
we turned on the heat in the hotel room-- in April.</p>
<p>It is too spread out. We considered calling a taxi to go to dorms from Chemical Engineering Building. We discovered the shuttle and the only animated and fun person on a bus full of students was the Bus driver?</p>
<p>She loved the professor who taught a ChemEn class with humour and fun. The kids seemed disconnected and detached. Class 2:30pm 10 students out of 45 were engaged, the rest looked Type A scary and tense.</p>
<p>Everywhere,everywhere, wheels, bikes, skateboards, wheels of some kind. Very little / no strolling and conversations. Too many students were in groups of two or alone. Quiet campus. </p>
<p>I hope that D will choose a non Type A school even though she will major in Engineering. She is a fun-loving, very social nerd who needs good clean fun in her down time.</p>