Hi all!
I’m new to the community! I am a female senior who has gotten into these three schools, and I’m having trouble deciding which one to enroll in. I am interested in studying Political Science and Spanish. I visited all of the schools and loved them, but am having trouble narrowing it down. I am LGBT and fairly politically active. I want to do study abroad, and have to opportunity to do so my first year at Wake Forest in Denmark. I know that Macalester has language housing. I also know that Smith has a tendency to be more left leaning and LGBT friendly.
Does anyone have any insights into what I should choose?
I’d pick Smith and Mac as most LGBT friendly. Did you have a preference between those? Smith is more intense politically and socially (too much for some people, but not everyone).
Agree with #1. Wake and Smith have excellent, excellent academics, and COMPLETELY different cultures. One I think of as a relatively conservative campus, the other very liberal. One very nice with a country club vibe (to me), the other very nice with more of a hippie, “crunchy granola vibe,” again, to me. Mac is certainly an academic peer to them. Different environments too: Wake a stand-alone, beautiful campus, close to Winston-Salem but does involve getting transportation; big-time ACC sports; Smith immediately adjacent to a very nice college town, one of my favorites; Mac obviously an urban school. Wake obviously would have much better weather. So great choices, which of these things is important to YOU? Good luck!
Based on your shared profile, Smith College should be a great fit for you. In second place, I would suggest liberal Macalester College as WFU is quite conservative.
Macalester is left leaning and LGBT friendly, but maybe not as front-and-center as Smith. With Mac’s historically strong international relations focus there are probably many ways to combine Political Science and Spanish studies with study abroad.
Agree with the others: you won’t go wrong with either Mac or Smith.
D’s final decision was between Smith and Wake Forest, which she made on May first two years ago. She is left leaning, but not LGBT. She had a STRIDE scholarship at Smith, no merit at Wake Forest and In the end she chose Wake Forest. The politics at Smith were a little too in your face for her and she thought it might distract from her studies. She also determined (from her Smith admitted students’ day overnight stay experience) that she wanted a more varied social life. Her mom and I loved Smith, but now realize that Wake was a better fit for her. Smith is definitely more LGBT friendly; Wake is probably more LGBT apathetic. The students at Wake study so much that I don’t think that social (or political) differences are a big deal. I have heard that the Global AWAKEenings program is amazing.
They are all great schools. Congratulations on your choices.