Social Life? Geographic Diversity?

humphrey
Tue, 09 Feb 2010 14:31:28 +0000

As a mom of a freshman, I would like to add that Davidson is not always a moderate place. “Work hard” for some students means unhealthy workaholic perfectionist toil. “Play hard” for some students means binge drinking and frantic hook ups with multiple partners on the same weekend. This has been a surprise for my daughter who was drawn to Davidson for the OUTSTANDING professors. The classroom experience has exceeded her expectations. However, the intense academic demands sometimes create a climate of on-going stress, especially for students who are not fast readers or who have other time demands. It is common for kids to blow off steam on weekends. If you read this website and others, students commonly express at least a fleeting interest in transferring due to the workload. Some feel “trapped” due to great financial aid; others feel their Davidson GPA’s are too low to be attractive to other schools. In the end, very few leave; Davidson has one of the highest graduation rates in the country. As background, my daughter went to one of the country’s top 100 public high schools, graduated with 9 AP courses, and had an 800 on the critical reading section of the SAT. Sometimes she feels that her workload is crushing.

The Davidson Outdoors summer orientation program should have given her a hint of what she was getting in to. The Davidson website said that kids who do moderate exercise on a regular basis should have no trouble. The first day of the trip, the group walked 12 miles straight up a mountain with a heavy back pack!