<p>“I actually don’t have a Smith award letter yet so that makes my decision even more difficult”</p>
<p>Transfer students aren’t notified until June 1st re admission decisions. Aid awards won’t be forthcoming until after then. If Mills has a deadline to accept before you hear from Smith, I suggest you call the financial aid office asap.</p>
<p>Mer, the PC-ness of Smith is probably my D’s biggest negative comment but on the scale of everything, it’s small stuff. She doesn’t often engage with it and just lets the silly stuff roll off her back. Someone once chewed her out for declining to use a PC term for something or another…and then apologized to her the following day.</p>
<p>Bea’s post #30 and Arianne’s #29 bear repeating…but I’ll just recommend y’all read them again. Ditto for MWFN’s #37.</p>
<p>I’m aware of many good reasons to go to Smith, very few reasons not to. I’ve known a few young women that I thought might be overwhelmed and some for which their academic interests aren’t among Smith’s strengths. But most of the tentative reasons for considering <em>not</em> going to Smith have been, imo, illusory. </p>
<p>The acid test is in the results. Having met dozens of current students and dozens of alums, I’m convinced.</p>
<p>“Ditto for MWFN’s #37.”</p>
<p>Oh, shoot. So everyone can re-read my typos? :-)</p>
<p>Despite the problem with PCness (which I am largely accustomed to anyway), I have decided to attend Smith. The good appears to overwhelm the bad, but I hope I don’t regret my opinion.</p>
<p>“If you’ve already accepted Smith’s offer of admission, there’s no purpose in trying now, after the fact, to decide whether or not you fit”</p>
<p>It’s not too late. There are 5 days left. Better to decide now you made a mistake and send a deposit to the college you feel would be a better fit. Smith would rather refund a deposit than spend scarce aid dollars on an unhappy student that will transfer or drop out anyway. It doesn’t behoove the students or the college to have women attending the college that would be much happy elsewhere</p>
<p>MWFN, I didn’t notice any typos but I assure you that if you had made some, they would have added a certain elegant je ne sais quois to your eloquent posts. </p>
<p>Arianne, you really will encounter a high degree of PC-ness at many colleges, it’s not something unique to Smith. Smithies just tend to be more articulate with perhaps a measure of obstinacy thrown in. </p>
<p>Oh…and welcome to Smith.</p>
<p>Hi folks
I’m from Paris (france), and my D is very probably going to Smith next fall. She is very excited, but also terrified, having no experience of US education and not being totally confident in English. How difficult is it for a foreign student to fit in? She is also nervous about the no-guys situation, as she has no friends/family to introduce her to people off campus. She is also scared that french girls have the reputaion of being “easy”, and that any boy will assume that she is OK with casual sex? Any info/advice?
PS: thanks to cc, I have the impression that I am starting to understand the way American college works, although I’ve still got many many twighlight zones</p>
<p>Bienvenue a Smith College. </p>
<p>I know at least some Smithies who would look forward to practicing their French with someone who’s “really French.”</p>
<p>As for guys, there are all sorts of attitudes, some good, some not good. Some guys will find a French accent exotic and interesting. I don’t think the French have a particular reputation for being “easy.” “Sexy,” maybe, mais c’est nais pas le meme chose.</p>
<p>is there anything not in the brochure that she should know about? As she is taking her French baccalaureat, she won’t be able to visit before pre-orientation, and the web discussions take place at 2 Am french timr, so she can’t join in</p>
<p>Lost, first, have her set up a Facebook page as soon as she gets her Smith email address. A lot of rising first years “meet” there before they meet on campus. </p>
<p>Second, having a French accent isn’t going to make her vulnerable to unwanted sexual advances; being a woman does, though, and I think Smithies are pretty tough when it comes to holding the other gender at bay, if necessary.</p>
<p>Third, not knowing your daughter and her command of English, I cannot say whether she will find an American education overwhelming. I do know that, once a week, there’s a French table at one of the houses. Only French is spoken. I suspect that she’ll also find a few Francophones from Canada on campus.</p>
<p>A liberal arts education tends to be discussion-based, with the emphasis on critical thinking and the open exchange of ideas. Rote memorization, while important, plays a secondary role to analysis and interpretation. This kind of critical learning will allow your daughter to tackle a wide variety of problems and subjects throughout her lifetime. Yes, she will learn facts and be tested on this knowledge, but she will also be able to <em>connect</em> facts. (And this is one reason why an American education is in such demand abroad.)</p>
<p>IMO, pre-orientation is a must because it allows the first years to establish a small circle of acquaintances before the hectic schedules of orientation and the beginning of classes. </p>
<p>Even the American students are afraid when they first arrive on campus. It will be a new experience for all of them.</p>
<p>Thanks mwfn. This is a great website for American-system-challenged people like myself. I’ll certainly mention facebook to her. Her major problem, which led to a heated debate between Smith or French university is that she has attended an all-girls’ school since first grade and she thinks she needs a little masculine stimulation. Being clueless, she applied to and was rejected from Harvard and Yale, and only added Smith to the list because of Sex and the City, one of the most popular soaps on French TV. She hadn’t even grasped that it wasn’t coed.</p>
<p>“only added Smith to the list because of Sex and the City, one of the most popular soaps on French TV”</p>
<p>haha, I love your daughter.</p>
<p>100 percent true… On the other hand, Smith was the only college that sent her letters explaining what the procedure was, and they even called her school in France to say how pleased they were she had applied. Smith is great! (harvard didn’t even send her the pin code to access the website until we had made three extremely expensive and annoyed transatlantic phone calls)</p>
<p>“they even called her school in France to say how pleased they were she had applied.”</p>
<p>She must be an exceptional young woman. </p>
<p>I would say that a majority of current Smithies have grappled with the same sex/coed questions before deciding to attend. I think that, for this reason, most Smithies are extremely ambitious, having decided to forgo a traditional social life for the specific academic challenge that Smith offers.</p>
<p>“only added Smith to the list because of Sex and the City, one of the most popular soaps on French TV”</p>
<p>That’s how i first found out about smith too! Well i wasn’t in france at the time, I was in belgium but still. (It was my love of gilmore girls and sex and the city which led me to research the school and fall in love with it myself)</p>