The Wild Rumpus Ends! Puget Sound Wins!

Parents Forum
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Within a couple of hours of my child Sasha’s setting foot on its stunning campus in Tacoma, Washington, Sasha’s first choice for college was the University of Puget Sound. The UPS students we met were bright, engaged, diverse, and just plain nice. The college’s academic offerings appeared to be robust. The music offerings were outstanding. The campus was lush, green and peaceful, yet conveniently located between two nice commercial areas in a surprisingly interesting medium-sized city, with Seattle only a short drive away. The surrounding region was almost intoxicatingly beautiful. We visited several other wonderful colleges, but all of our family’s subsequent college-comparison discussions focused on where Sasha should go if UPS said “no.” Happily for us, after Sasha applied “early decision,” UPS said “yes” (as did the three colleges to which Sasha applied “early action”).

In the next few posts, I’ll describe UPS in more detail and then talk about some of the alternatives Sasha considered. My hope is that at least a few people perusing College Confidential in the future will find Sasha’s and my observations useful in deciding which colleges to visit, etc. Every kid is unique, but I suspect that quite a few families look for similar schools every year and would have similar reactions to ours. These posts are basically revised versions of notes that I wrote to myself over the past year. As I revised them, I was surprised by how much I learned through the process and how much my views on different subjects changed over time.

When we started the college application process in earnest during Sasha’s junior year, Sasha decided to search for a small liberal arts college located in a major city. Sasha is an urban kid who rides public transportation and likes to explore different neighborhoods. Sasha is fairly studious, musically talented and a good but not spectacular high school athlete. When our quest began, Sasha was especially interested in Occidental and Macalester. By the end, those colleges had fallen down Sasha’s list, behind not only UPS (which gave Sasha a huge merit scholarship) but also Beloit College in Beloit, Wisconsin (which also gave Sasha a huge merit scholarship and probably was Sasha’s second choice), Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin (a real hidden gem that also gave Sasha a huge merit scholarship), and Willamette University in Salem, Oregon (which also gave Sasha a huge merit scholarship and might well have surpassed Beloit and become Sasha’s second choice if we had visited it).

This week seems like a good one for me to post these observations. Our family is ecstatic at how the college admissions process has turned out. Other families we know are feeling pretty dejected right now, as many kids got deferred or rejected from their first choice colleges. If any of those families asked for my advice, it would be that they should keep in mind the fact that there are actually a lot more terrific options out there than most people discuss. Many applicants are making the college admissions process far more stressful than it needs to be. If Sasha had done what most of the kids in our community do—and applied early only to the most selective college that conceivably might say “yes”—then our family also would probably be gearing up for another two weeks of essay writing and form completing, to be followed by three-an-a-half months of anxious waiting. But Sasha concluded a while ago that “more selective” did not necessarily mean “better,” at least for Sasha.

When we looked at the stats for the colleges Sasha liked the most, we saw that they accepted a very wide range of applicants, including students with far lower grades and test scores than Sasha had as well as students with far higher grades and test scores (i.e., grades and test scores that potentially would qualify an applicant for admission to some of the country’s most selective colleges). A lot of high school seniors who are enduring miserable Decembers may have much happier Aprils if they expand their horizons a bit, and look for colleges that attract plenty of smart kids but also attract plenty of kids with only average credentials. Some of those colleges may actually be better fits.

I’ll give fairly detailed descriptions of UPS as well as Occidental, Macalester, Beloit, Lawrence and Willamette. Then I’ll comment in less detail about Wooster, Kalamazoo, Knox and Earlham (all of interest to Sasha, but of less interest than UPS, Beloit, Lawrence and Willamette); Reed and Lewis & Clark (intriguing because they are in Portland but not on Sasha’s list in the end), Grinnell, Kenyon, Oberlin, and Whitman (eliminated from contention early in the process, primarily because of their small-town locations), Skidmore, Vassar, Wesleyan, Connecticut College, Bard, Bates, Swarthmore and Haverford (eliminated even earlier in the process because Sasha did not want to attend college on the East Coast, where Sasha has lived since birth), Pitzer and the Claremont Colleges (eliminated for a variety of reasons), and the University of Michigan Residential College (eliminated because, though it has many great features, the “liberal arts college within a Big Ten university” isn’t really a liberal arts college). The last comment is not a criticism of huge research universities—they’re great for many people, just not Sasha.

Incidentally, “Sasha” is not my child’s real name. As I wrote this post, the sound of “Sasha” resonated with me more than “Ashanti,” “Ming,” “Pat,” “Peyton,” “Skyler” and all the other gender-neutral names that came to mind.

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Impressions of UPS

The UPS campus was the most beautiful campus we visited. The grounds are green and lush, with fir, beech and other trees flourishing everywhere. You can see Mt. Ranier on a clear day, but the natural scenery is lovely even on a rainy day. (We stayed for two days and experienced many kinds of weather.) Most buildings were made of red brick and designed in an unusual gothic-Tudor style that I don’t recall seeing anywhere else. UPS’s campus reminded me vaguely of Cornell’s, Swarthmore’s, Haverford’s, Wesleyan’s, and Bowdoin’s campuses, all of which I admittedly saw some time ago—we didn’t visit any of those as part of our recent college search).

The UPS student body seemed diverse. There was no dominant UPS style. We saw clean-cut pre-professional looking students. We saw nerds. We saw artsy students with blue hair. We saw outdoorsy environmentalists. We saw lots of buff athletes wearing “UPS Loggers” clothing. We saw people with Birkenstocks on their feet and lefty political slogans on their t-shirts. There were quite a few “quirky” students. The LGBT population was varied and quite noticeable. Most memorably, we saw a young person, apparently not biologically female, in a very tight mini-skirt and knee socks; I don’t know whether “male” properly would describe this person in this day and age, but [insert appropriate pronoun] had broad shoulders, a Justin Bieber haircut, no makeup and no bust, yet the person seemed perfectly well accepted as [insert same pronoun] strolled around campus engrossed in conversation with more conventional looking students, attended class (which Sasha also attended), etc. We also met a few fraternity brothers and, to my relief, none of them seemed like stereotypical frat boys. If these guys were really misogynistic drunken idiots, they hid it well. They mostly wanted to talk about choral music and their camping trips in nearby national parks. All of the UPS students we met were quite nice, enthusiastic and happy to chat.

UPS seems to attract and accept students with a wide range of academic abilities. The top of the class arrives with extremely strong high school records, but the bottom not so much. UPS students seemed bright and engaged but not particularly competitive. This appeared to be true of science majors, liberal arts majors and performing arts majors. We didn’t meet anyone from the Honors Program, which may attract more intense students.

I predict that getting into UPS will become somewhat more difficult in the coming years as word spreads about the unique liberal arts experience that UPS offers. For many decades, UPS saw itself as a regional university. It wasn’t really competing with liberal arts colleges around the country. But for the last 25 years or so, UPS has seen itself as a national liberal arts college focused on undergraduate education. UPS sold its law school to another university and converted its business school into an undergraduate program emphasizing leadership as well as business. At this point, UPS awards very few graduate degrees and barely qualifies as a true “university.” If you compare UPS’s academic offerings, faculty and culture to those of other institutions, UPS no longer closely resembles Seattle University, Portland University or Gonzaga University, and instead shares many qualities with the likes of Occidental, Macalester, Grinnell, Lawrence, Beloit, Earlham, Wooster, Oberlin, Franklin & Marshall, Skidmore, Bard, Wesleyan, and Bates, as well as Pacific Northwest neighbors like Whitman and Willamette.

UPS recently has experienced a surge in applications, probably because its new marketing materials and YouTube videos are very compelling and because it recently was listed for the first time in a book called “Colleges that Change Lives” (“CTCL”), which many people consult when looking for small liberal arts colleges. (More discussion of CTCL will follow.) You already can see UPS’s ranking in US News and World Report rise as the percentage of applicants who are admitted declines. Normally the USNWR rankings don’t change much from year to year because they become self-fulfilling prophecies, as the rankings are heavily influenced by recent selectivity numbers, which are heavily influenced by slightly older rankings, which were heavily influenced by slightly older selectivity numbers, and so on. UPS jumped 9 spots in the USNWR rankings this past year, tied for 72nd. In USNWR’s opinion, UPS earned the same ranking as Lewis & Clark, Allegheny and Knox, and was a little behind Willamette, Lawrence, Beloit, Wooster, and Earlham. (Incidentally, I’m pretty skeptical of USNWR rankings since they seem to measure selectivity and endowment size as much as anything else, but I have to admit that I’ve looked at them more than once.)

Though the UPS student population seemed very diverse, it definitely skewed toward natives of the West Coast. Sasha regarded that as a positive feature of the college because Sasha has always lived on the East Coast and wants to try someplace different. Most students we met were from Washington, Oregon, California, Colorado and Hawaii (is that West Coast?), but we also met people from the East Coast, Midwest and South (not many from the South).

We saw quite a few people of color, but there were proportionately more Latino and Asian students than African American students, at least as compared with the student populations at the other colleges we visited. A UPS admissions staffer commented to our group of visitors that UPS is trying to do a better job recruiting underrepresented minorities.

Sasha cares a lot about music but is not a conservatory caliber musician. UPS has a music school, which to my untrained ears and eyes seemed indistinguishable from a conservatory. I think the majority of students taking classes at the UPS music school are enrolled in it, but many non-music school students take classes there as well, and quite a few also perform with music school students. We were told that the easy accessibility of the music school sets UPS apart from another similar liberal arts college with a conservatory, where musically talented students who enroll as non-conservatory students may later find that conservatory resources are largely unavailable to them.

Overall, Sasha had very positive impressions of the school itself. And then there was Tacoma and the Pacific Northwest.

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Impressions of Tacoma, home of University of Puget Sound

Tacoma is only about 45 minutes away from Seattle by car and you can travel between the two cities by public transportation. But Tacoma is an interesting small city in its own right. UPS is nestled between two nice shopping areas: the Proctor District, which appears to be frequented primarily by families, and Sixth Avenue, which appears to be frequented primarily by younger urbanites and is more economically diverse. The UPS admissions office directed us to the Proctor District, which is rather tame. Proctor District highlights include a small movie theater, a Starbucks and the Rosewood Café. To get there you have to walk ten to fifteen minutes north from campus, through a residential area filled with well-maintained century-old houses. Sixth Avenue is about ten minutes south of campus and is a higher energy place than the Proctor District. If you want to find ethnic restaurants, bars, “Legendary Donuts,” a bike mechanic, tattoo parlors or state-approved marijuana dispensaries, head to Sixth Avenue.

Downtown Tacoma is about three miles from campus. It feels like many small cities’ downtowns. There are a couple of nice museums and a couple of nice theaters that attract some concerts and national tours of Broadway shows. The University of Washington (“U Dub”) also has a campus there. (The main U Dub campus is in Seattle.) Downtown Tacoma is not very busy at night, but students might venture there once in a while. My guess is that people who live in or near downtown Tacoma are just as likely to seek out evening entertainment on Sixth Avenue, near UPS.

We had heard some negative comments about Tacoma, but Sasha and I both liked it very much. We were surprised by how much one could get to on foot from UPS’s verdant campus, which doesn’t really feel like an urban campus. I’ve struggled to compare the relationship of Tacoma and Seattle to other pairs of cities. One possible pair is Providence and Boston, but the distance from Tacoma to Seattle is much shorter than from Providence to Boston, and Providence has far more to offer than Tacoma. Another possibility is Newark and New York, but Tacoma is safer and more interesting than Newark, and Tacoma feels more like Stamford or New Haven than Newark. Anyway, Tacoma feels like a part of the Seattle metro area but is still its own city.

We almost fell out of our chairs during the UPS admissions presentation when the admissions staffer declared that only three schools in the entire country are able to offer a complete liberal arts college experience along with a broad urban experience: University of Puget Sound, Occidental College in Los Angeles, and Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota. When we heard that statement, we had just arrived from Oxy the night before and were about to depart for Mac the next day—an itinerary we had chosen precisely because we had reached the same conclusion based on our own research.

As the UPS admissions staffer noted, though, UPS also offers easy access to nature, and in that way is more like some liberal arts colleges in northern New England and other rural locations that are much farther from major cities. As part of UPS’s freshman orientation, in addition to giving new students a few days of training on how to succeed as college students and spending a few days showing the new students around Tacoma, UPS sends all new students on overnight canoe and backpacking trips. The photos from the trips (which can be accessed from the UPS website) are jaw dropping. Incidentally, we were told that the overnight trips are tailored to the students’ individual abilities.
You can get from Tacoma to Seattle by bus, and maybe train, but we didn’t actually try any of the public transportation options. There’s a ferry terminal at Point Defiance Park, which is a huge urban park on the Sound a couple of miles from campus, but I think the ferries go back and forth between Tacoma and Vashon Island rather than directly to Seattle. If you can get to Seattle by ferry, that’s news to me. (Incidentally, the University of Puget Sound is not on the water and is a fairly long walk from the Sound.)

We were pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to drive between the Seattle-Tacoma Airport (“Sea-Tac”) and Tacoma. The drive took less than half an hour and the roads were not crowded when we were there. Of course, if you’re coming from the East Coast, the flight to Sea-Tac is a long one.

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IF YOU WANT TO RESPOND TO WHAT I JUST WROTE ABOUT PUGET SOUND, YOU WILL BE ABLE TO FIND PRETTY MUCH THE SAME POST ON THE UPS FORUM.

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If You Believe Occidental Has an Urban Campus, I Have a Bridge in Brooklyn to Sell You

When the process started, University of Puget Sound was not on Sasha’s list. Occidental and Macalester were the early front runners because they are co-educational liberal arts colleges, have excellent academic reputations, and are located in major cities.

Oxy has a lot to offer and impressed us in many ways, but overall our visit there was disappointing. Part of the problem was Oxy’s student culture. Oxy was the only college we visited where Sasha felt like Sasha would be at serious risk of not fitting in. Part of the problem was Los Angeles car culture. Sasha wants an urban environment where people can and do walk to fun destinations, and Oxy doesn’t really provide that. Eagle Rock is more like an ethnically and economically diverse suburb or, less charitably described, a nondescript expanse of sprawl where there are plenty of places to get your oil changed as well as a few scattered places where you can find a good omelet, burger or taco, or watch a game on TV.

Sasha came away thinking that Oxy was dominated by mainstream pre-professional students who were bright but not very friendly or interested in the arts. There were a few quirky and artsy kids at Oxy, but seemingly fewer than at the other colleges we visited. Each of the other colleges we visited seemed to have a larger group of students who were interested in music or other creative or artistic endeavors, and each of the colleges’ student center bulletin boards reflected an abundance of such activities on campus. The conversations among Oxy students did not seem very lively and the students did not seem especially nice to one another or to us. Except for the tour guides (who were very warm and funny and interested in theater, but who all seemed to come from the same sorority), not one Oxy student approached us or spoke with us at any length.

The Oxy students may not have been all that welcoming, but they certainly looked good. They tended to wear more fashionable clothes and have nicer haircuts than the students at the other colleges we visited. Many Oxy women also wore noticeably more makeup, although I would say that a few of the men at the other colleges wore more makeup than any of the Oxy men we saw. (We know a young woman, now enrolled at Skidmore, who had a similar reaction to ours, commenting that she was surprised by the number of female students who wore dresses to class.) We truly were impressed by Oxy’s racial diversity, but the college seemed rather homogeneous on one other type of diversity that few people discuss very much: body-type diversity. Most of the students (other than the ones from the sorority I mentioned) seemed very thin.

Los Angeles is supposed to have wonderful weather, but we were uncomfortably hot almost the whole time we were outdoors during our visit to Oxy, which was in March. The campus has very few shady spots. In addition, the area in East Los Angeles where Oxy is located is not much fun. It is possible to walk from campus to nice restaurants in Eagle Rock and Highland Park, but the walks are not pleasant. The auto body shops in those neighborhoods vastly outnumber the restaurants. Students without cars seem to feel stranded on Oxy’s campus.

Sasha will not have a car in college and was frustrated by Los Angeles car culture. We heard that many Oxy students without cars go months without leaving campus. The need to get into a car every time you want to do anything in Los Angeles—even in your own neighborhood—was a real turnoff. The drive between Venice Beach and Oxy took us slightly over an hour, and we don’t think the traffic was unusually heavy that day.

This is not to say that Oxy was all bad. We know recent alumni whom we respect very much and who speak very positively about their Oxy experiences. (Unlike Sasha, one of them strongly preferred Oxy to UPS.) Much of the campus is very pretty in a desert-climate kind of way, and some of the older buildings are truly beautiful. You can see California hills or the lights of Los Angeles in almost every direction. Some of the nearby restaurants are cheap and terrific. (We loved our breakfast at Auntie Em’s Kitchen, which attracts everyone from LAPD officers to Oxy students to guys who work in the auto body shops.) Pasadena is walkable, fun and interesting, and is only a 10 minute drive away. Of course, Los Angeles offers an incredible number of cultural and recreational diversions if you can get to them.

Oxy’s academics seem strong and interesting internship opportunities abound. Oxy students have lots of opportunities to work on independent research with professors. Also, it did appear that the political science students, at least, were very invested in what they were doing. The political science building was buzzing with activity. We also saw two creatively presented political demonstrations in the main quadrangle—one protesting the treatment of Palestinians by the Israeli government, the other protesting the treatment of African Americans by U.S. police officers. I never really reconciled in my own mind the fact that Oxy clearly has students who are passionate about political and social causes with the impression I got that many Oxy students seemed passionless and almost chilly on an interpersonal level. Maybe I just don’t “get” Los Angeles culture.

The sports teams we saw at Oxy could probably beat plenty of Division I teams on the East Coast. The last point might be a selling point for some people, but not for Sasha. Sasha is a reasonably good high school athlete, but there was no way Sasha could conceive of continuing to play a varsity sport at Oxy. (Interestingly, the athletes were far better at Oxy than at Beloit, but the crowd was bigger and far more enthusiastic at Beloit.)

Oxy seems to do a very good job recruiting students from varied socio-economic backgrounds. The student body included many minority students. And our group of visitors included many high school students from across the country, although Sasha did not “click” with most of them. The one visiting high school kid Sasha really liked was from suburban Minneapolis and said that she might not apply to Oxy, even though the academics were a good match, because, in her words, Oxy “lacks the quirk factor.” She said that, after visiting about a dozen liberal arts colleges from coast to coast, her first choice was Carleton, which was slightly frustrating to her because Carleton is very close to her home. (She wouldn’t apply to Macalester, she said, because it was just TOO close to her home.)

In sum, though it started out in first place, Oxy fell completely off Sasha’s list.

IF YOU WANT TO REPLY TO WHAT I JUST WROTE ABOUT OCCIDENTAL, YOU WILL BE ABLE TO FIND THE SAME POST IN THE OXY FORUM.

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Macalester Impresses in Many Ways, but Not All

Sasha far preferred Mac to Oxy but far preferred UPS to Mac. When Sasha applied to four colleges, we discussed whether it would make sense to add some “better” (i.e., more selective) colleges to the list. Given Sasha’s criteria, Mac was perhaps the most obvious choice, but Sasha concluded that, even if Mac would be “better” for many people, UPS (along with Beloit, Lawrence or Willamette) would be better for Sasha.

Like Oxy, Mac was very diverse. But unlike most of the Oxy students we saw, most Mac students seemed to be truly interested in their studies. As we walked around campus we heard a lot of conversations about the substance of what was being taught. The classes Sasha attended were terrific. Sasha thought that Mac’s students generally seemed passionate about what they were doing without being pretentious. Sasha noticed that many Mac students also had great senses of humor. In addition to being serious about their studies, many students seemed to take advantage of the many internship opportunities and public service opportunities available in the Twin Cities. Mac puts a lot of resources into internships, study-abroad programs, and public service, and has a whole building devoted to those activities. Mac also has great art and music facilities, although we didn’t see that many people using them while we were there.

Mac was the only college we visited that offered an urban experience better than UPS’s. Mac is located in an interesting neighborhood, with commercial areas and pretty residential streets in multiple directions. The campus directly abuts a nice shopping area. There’s a Middle Eastern restaurant owned by an Israeli guy who’s the son of one Jewish parent and one Palestinian parent. There’s a bookstore owned by Prairie Home Companion radio host Garrison Kiellor. (“Never heard of him,” said Sasha, who has little affinity for public radio but nevertheless acknowledged that the bookstore was nice.) There are cafes, restaurants, bike shops, jewelry stores, music stores, etc. If you can afford to shop there, it’s hard to beat the convenience of having a Patagonia store selling high quality winter clothing literally fifty feet from campus. In addition, the downtowns of both Minneapolis and St. Paul are accessible by public transportation, as are many other fun neighborhoods. The Twin Cities are undeniably cold in the winter, but the cultural life offered by the cities is spectacular. People are out on the streets—going to cafes, bars, clubs, shops, theaters, museums and so on—twelve months a year.

Though Sasha liked Minneapolis and St. Paul very much, Sasha found Mac’s campus to be a little drab compared to the other campuses we visited. (As we were leaving, Sasha commented that we might have to come back to the Twin Cities for another visit someday because the University of Minnesota might be a great place for graduate school.) Mac has one gorgeous Romanesque building at the center of campus (“Old Main”) and also has built a spectacular new arts building (the Janet Wallace Fine Arts Center). The building devoted to internships, study-abroad programs and public service also is new and pretty nice. But most of the campus is flat, lacking in trees (at least compared to the other campuses we visited), and unremarkable architecturally. The new gym is a monstrosity, though a very functional and comfortable one. The science building is a bit worn and also ugly. The Dayton Campus Center is bright and airy but definitely could use a facelift.

It didn’t help that we were seeing Mac right after UPS. The Twin Cities are still chilly in March, and there wasn’t a blade of green grass to be found.

In Sasha’s opinion, Mac also lacked school spirit, at least compared to UPS, Beloit and Lawrence. I strongly disagreed, but I agreed that Mac can’t keep its school colors straight. Relatively few people seemed to be wearing Mac clothing on campus. Some people we know who live nearby commented that they did not know what Mac’s official colors are, even though they walk though campus all the time. Are Mac’s colors orange and blue, like the team uniforms? Maroon, like the school insignias scattered around campus? Pastel yellow-orange and lavender, like some brochures we saw? I actually found the Mac students to be very spirited in their own understated way. The Mac students we met seemed very proud to be Mac students, even if they did not announce their pride on their sweatshirts. And we saw many Mac athletes wearing blue and orange “Mac” gear. But Sasha was not convinced.

Unfortunately, I think Sasha’s less-than-enthusiastic reaction to Mac may have had less to do with Mac and more to do with the other high school students, and the parents of other students, who were visiting Mac the day we were there. Sasha was almost physically repelled by a few of the families touring the campus with us. Mac clearly attracts many very highly credentialed students, including quite a few who also apply to extremely selective colleges like Carleton, Swarthmore, Bowdoin, Brown, Chicago, Columbia and Yale. Without going into detail, I’ll just say that a few of the visiting high school students, and their parents, had a tendency to use subtle and not-so-subtle methods to communicate the kids’ impressive credentials to others in the group, and Sasha wanted nothing to do with them. If I had been choosing a college, my first choice might well have been Mac, even if Mac attracts a few more hyper-competitive kids than UPS or Beloit, and even if Mac’s campus isn’t as pretty as UPS’s or Beloit’s.

Frankly, most of the students we encountered who actually were enrolled at Mac—in contrast to a handful of the ones who were visiting with us—struck me as friendly, bright and a lot like students at colleges that Sasha preferred. But Sasha was the person whose opinion mattered and Sasha did not want to go to Mac.

IF YOU WANT TO REPLY TO WHAT I JUST WROTE ABOUT MACALESTER, YOU WILL BE ABLE TO FIND THE SAME POST IN THE MAC FORUM.

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Beloit and Lawrence Would Have Been Excellent (but Colder) Alternatives to UPS

We have no close connections to Wisconsin and knew very little about either Beloit or Lawrence before starting Sasha’s college search. We had met a very small number of people who had gone to Beloit and we had never even heard of Lawrence. But, by the end, Beloit and Lawrence were two of Sasha’s top four choices. After visiting them, I completely understand why they both have very devoted fans and why many students choose them over more selective colleges that may seem like more obvious choices. I realize that many people from Wisconsin (and neighboring Illinois and Minnesota) apply to Beloit and Lawrence due to their close proximity to home, but Sasha was very impressed by both of them and preferred both of them over nearly all other possible choices, near and far.

Beloit probably was Sasha’s second choice. Beloit had remarkably friendly students with varied interests who come from all over the country, including a large number not only from the East Coast but also the West and Pacific Northwest. The college seemed to have a non-competitive-but-still-serious culture that appealed to us. Beloiters frequently talk about how exceptionally collaborative and collegial the school is, and we could see the collaboration and collegiality with our own eyes. We constantly encountered Beloit students walking, talking, laughing and studying in groups. Many of them stopped what they were doing to introduce themselves to us. They spoke very affectionately about their learning experiences and professors. Many of them talked about the self-confidence going to Beloit had given them. We also noticed that athletes and non-athletes seemed to spend time with one another and support one another. While we observed a significant number of “quirky” looking kids at every college we visited (with the possible exception of Oxy), Beloit may have had a slightly higher percentage of quirky kids than the others. To our surprise, a few of the quirky kids belonged to fraternities, along with more conventional looking kids, and they all seemed to get along well.

The Beloit students we met all seemed very excited about their classes and their extra-curricular activities. The arts offerings on campus were plentiful, though not quite as plentiful as at UPS or Lawrence. The campus has many performance spaces, large and small, formal and informal. There are also lots of athletes on campus—the school has a large number of teams given the small size of the student body. (Beloit has the smallest student body of the colleges Sasha considered.)

The Beloit campus is pretty. It’s slightly hilly, with wide open spaces and an eclectic mix of old buildings, plus a few new ones. The dorms were the nicest we saw. The new science building is very attractive inside and out. Generally, Beloit’s campus reminded me more of small East Coast college campuses than other Midwestern college campuses.
Beloit, Wisconsin is not a great city, but its small downtown has been redeveloped in recent years and now has several nice places to go to eat, get coffee or hang out. Older posts on College Confidential say that there are no nice places to go in downtown Beloit. Those comments may have been accurate when they were written but they’re not quite accurate now. Still, Beloit is a much smaller city than Sasha wanted and doesn’t seem to offer much nightlife. On the plus side, Chicago and Madison can be reached by public transportation. Madison is an hour away, and after talking to students, Sasha thought that music lovers like Sasha really do end up going to concerts in Madison from time to time.

Sasha also liked Lawrence. Appleton, Wisconsin is bigger than Beloit and surprisingly interesting. The campus music and art scene is very strong, benefiting from Lawrence having a conservatory, much as the UPS music scene benefits from the UPS music school. The Lawrentians we met seemed very nice. Lawrence attracts quite a large number of very serious students, as well as a few who were not very serious. Overall, the students were more diverse and came from more places than we expected. I think Lawrence and Beloit attract similar students (and similarly varied students), but there may be more intensely serious students at Lawrence, and there clearly are more intensely serious musicians at Lawrence. Lawrence also seemed to have a somewhat higher percentage of clean-cut Midwesterners than Beloit.

Lawrence’s campus is attractive, with many nice old stone buildings and a beautiful new student center. Downtown Appleton’s main street, College Avenue, separates Lawrence’s main campus from the conservatory. People from all over the region head to College Avenue for restaurants, nightclubs, etc. Appleton was a pleasant surprise and in most ways more appealing than Beloit, but we found Appleton to be less interesting and less attractive than Tacoma. Unfortunately, getting anywhere else from Appleton is hard. Madison and Milwaukee are each about two hours away and Chicago is about four hours away.

Lawrence is not as well known on the East coast as is should be. People seem to confuse it with Sarah Lawrence and St. Lawrence. Given its highly respected faculty, smart student body, terrific record of graduate school placement, vibrant arts scene, attractive campus and interesting small-city location, Lawrence should receive far more applications than it does.

Overall, Sasha thought that living in Beloit, Wisconsin an hour from Madison would be preferable to living in Appleton, Wisconsin two hours from Madison, especially since Sasha really liked the quaint feel of Downtown Beloit and several of its cafes. While Sasha preferred Beloit College and Beloit, Wisconsin to Lawrence University and Appleton, Wisconsin, both schools seemed terrific, and I completely understand why plenty of people prefer Lawrence to Beloit. I also can see why some people (including Sasha) prefer both Beloit and Lawrence over Oxy and Mac, even though Oxy and Mac are in major cities, are better known across the country, and are harder to get into. I also can see why some people prefer Beloit and Lawrence to better known colleges like Oberlin and Grinnell, which Sasha also briefly considered (discussed below). Beloit and Lawrence are really hidden gems. And, I should add, they were both extremely generous with merit aid in Sasha’s case.

IF YOU WANT TO REPLY TO WHAT I JUST WROTE ABOUT BELOIT AND LAWRENCE, YOU WILL BE ABLE TO FIND THE SAME POST IN THE BELOIT FORUM.

8

Why UPS Came Out Ahead of Willamette, Wooster, Kalamazoo, Knox, Earlham, Reed, and Lewis & Clark

Sasha was very interested in Willamette in Salem, Oregon. Though we never visited Willamette, Sasha applied there because it’s in the Pacific Northwest, which Sasha loved during our visit to Puget Sound. Willamette might well have risen to second place, behind UPS but ahead of Beloit, if we had visited Salem. I doubt it could have risen all the way to first place because Willamette lacks the music offerings of UPS and Salem apparently is less interesting than Tacoma.

Willamette should work on its marketing. Willamette gets positive reviews from many guidebooks but we decided not to visit because it was very hard to get a sense of the place from its brochures and videos. The materials we received from Willamette after Sasha was admitted were far more informative and enticing than the materials we were able to find on the internet or the materials we received before Sasha applied. Downtown Salem appears to be bigger than downtown Beloit, smaller than downtown Appleton, and less than an hour from Portland. Willamette also gave Sasha a boatload of merit aid. Dammit, we should have visited Willamette. (“Willamette” rhymes with “dammit,” we learned.)

College of Wooster, Kalamazoo College, Knox College and Earlham College were also on Sasha’s list, but we never visited them, either. We just didn’t have time to visit every college we wanted to see. Those colleges have reputations similar to Beloit’s and Lawrence’s, but we inferred from various comments and descriptions that the music scenes might be a bit better at Beloit and Lawrence. Sasha would have applied to some or all of those other Midwestern liberal arts colleges them if Sasha had not been admitted anywhere early.

Despite Sasha’s enthusiasm for the Pacific Northwest, Sasha had no plans to apply to Reed College or Lewis & Clark University, both in Portland, Oregon. Reed did not seem to offer the well-rounded college experience Sasha wanted, with sports teams, etc., and we were warned that Reed is almost as intense academically as Swarthmore and the University of Chicago. (A friend of Sasha’s loves Reed.) Like Reed, Lewis & Clark is within the boundaries of the city of Portland, but after looking at a map we realized that Portland’s urban attractions are not actually within walking distance from Lewis & Clark’s campus. In fact, there appeared to be no more than one or two restaurants within walking distance of Lewis & Clark.

9

UPS comes out ahead of Grinnell, Kenyon, Oberlin and Whitman

The University of Puget Sound appealed to Sasha in ways that several more famous and more selective liberal arts colleges could not match. Many people suggested that Sasha apply to Grinnell College, Kenyon College or Oberlin College. Those fell off Sasha’s list because the towns of Grinnell, Gambier and Oberlin all appeared, to Sasha, to be too small and isolated. (Of course, there is no guaranty that Sasha would have been admitted to any of them if Sasha had applied—generally speaking, they are more selective than UPS and the other three colleges Sasha liked most.)

I personally have been to Grinnell, Iowa and Oberlin, Ohio (both without Sasha). Grinnell has a couple of nice places to go but, in my opinion, might get boring very quickly, even though many of the college students there have a wide variety of interests and many come from major urban centers like New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. I think Oberlin is a somewhat different story. Oberlin is large for a liberal arts college, offers an unusual number of extracurricular activities and attracts an unusual number of students who like to perform on stage. The town of Oberlin is also a little underrated. Somehow, although there are only a handful of stores and restaurants there, many or most of them appealed to me. Many places are open late, too. Overall, Oberlin, Ohio seemed a lot more interesting to me than Grinnell, Iowa, although I could go either way in terms of which college I would prefer, since both seemed fantastic. I don’t know anything about Gambier or Kenyon except that Gambier is supposed to be even smaller than Oberlin and Grinnell, but Kenyon nevertheless attracts a lot of nice, interesting students from our area.

A few people also suggested that Sasha visit Whitman College. Walla Walla, Washington might not be too small for Sasha—Sasha couldn’t be sure from what we read about it—but, unlike the city of Beloit, Walla Walla appears to be very far from other fun cities, and getting there from our home on the East Coast would take something like 10 hours. Whitman also fell off Sasha’s list.

10

UPS comes out ahead of Skidmore, Vassar, Bard, Wesleyan, Connecticut College, Bates, Swarthmore, Haverford, Pitzer and the other Claremont Colleges, and University of Michigan Residential College

Sasha didn’t want to apply to schools in upstate New York because Sasha wanted to leave the East Coast, but if we had been looking closer to home, Sasha would have added Skidmore College to the list as well. I think many people who like Skidmore also would like UPS, and vice versa. Saratoga Springs is a nice size, pretty and interesting. There are lots of opportunities to hear live music there. We know people who go to Skidmore and love it.

Like Skidmore, Vassar never made Sasha’s list, even though Vassar is beautiful and has a great campus arts scene. Poughkeepsie, New York is similar to Beloit, Wisconsin, albeit with less of a downtown/center. However, we heard that Vassar students are rather competitive and that the environment is very pressured. Bard also was quickly cut from the list. Bard may be incredible, but it is in the woods, and Sasha did not want to go to college in the woods.
Earlier in high school, before Sasha decided to look exclusively in the Midwest and West, Sasha also did quick unguided tours of Wesleyan University, which was very appealing, and Connecticut College, which we both found very isolated and boring even though it is near a small city. Bates College also looked good on paper but was never seriously considered, primarily because, by the time Sasha heard about it, the no-East-Coast-college rule was firmly in place.

We also stopped by Swarthmore a couple of years ago. We decided to take look even though we knew that Swarthmore probably would be too rigorous and too competitive for Sasha, and that Sasha’s grades and test scores were probably not Swarthmore caliber. Physically, Swarthmore was glorious. While Swarthmore and its sibling Haverford both seem like great colleges filled with nice, smart people, and both are close to commuter rail stations with trains to Philadelphia, both seem surprisingly dull.

As I mentioned, we visited Occidental in Los Angeles. Before flying out to California, we concluded that Sasha probably would prefer Occidental over the Claremont Colleges, primarily based on advice we received from people who know Sasha and who also know Occidental and the Claremont Colleges. The Claremont Colleges were described as being very remote, both physically and socially, from Los Angeles. The phrase “country club” came up a lot during discussions with friends about the Claremont Colleges.

We also had concerns about the whole concept of the Claremont consortium. Realistically, Sasha could not possibly have gotten into Harvey Mudd or Pomona, and Harvey Mudd would have been an awful fit culturally even if Sasha’s credentials were Mudd material. Claremont McKenna is reputed to be very competitive and pre-professional. One of Sasha’s best friends goes to Pitzer, but, unlike Sasha, that friend has no interest in math or science. The idea of being enrolled in one of the easiest-to-get-into colleges in the Claremont consortium but taking science and math classes at Mudd (reputed to be filled with geniuses) or Pomona (similar) seemed very unappealing, even scary. Also, we were concerned that Pitzer was reputed to have a very intense recreational drug scene, even when compared with other liberal arts colleges, many of which are famous for their relaxed attitudes toward recreational drugs. (By the way, we have heard similar things about Bard, Skidmore and Wesleyan.) Might Pitzer have worked out for Sasha if we had visited? We will never know. After visiting Oxy, Sasha became rather disenchanted with Southern California car culture, so we decided to relax in LA instead of driving out to Claremont.

Sasha also considered the Residential College at the University of Michigan. Even though Sasha loves big college towns like Ann Arbor, Michigan and Madison, Wisconsin, Sasha eliminated the “RC” because the university seemed too big, and RC students still take many or most of their classes with the rest of the tens of thousands of students enrolled as undergraduates at the university. For Sasha, this would be a real drawback, since Sasha expects to take many lab-based science classes and introductory classes in more traditional disciplines. For some people, though, the RC seems like a great way to join a small community within a much bigger school.

11

A huge “Thank You” to the People at Colleges that Change Lives!

We learned about many great colleges, including University of Puget Sound, from a book called “Colleges that Change Lives.” CTCL colleges are usually small and strong academically but not necessarily hard to get into. They also tend to be very friendly. Many CTCL colleges admit highly credentialed high school students, quite a few of whom matriculate even though they have other options, as well as high school students with much weaker records. After five college visits, Sasha realized that the three Sasha liked the most (UPS, Beloit and Lawrence) were all listed in the book. The two Sasha liked the least (Mac and Oxy) were not listed (perhaps because they’re too selective). We strongly recommend the book. If you don’t want to buy it, you still can check out www.ctcl.org, which contains much of the information from the book.

Some people are reluctant to apply to CTCL colleges because they are “too easy.” I think it is important to distinguish between two kinds of “too easy.” If the classes are too easy for you, and the students aren’t bright enough to stimulate you, then you should look elsewhere. I can imagine that quite a few Swarthmore or Harvey Mudd students might not be sufficiently challenged at UPS, Willamette or Beloit. But I think quite a few people shy away from CTCL colleges because they are “too easy” to get into, not because they would not be challenging academically. Avoiding CTCL colleges for this reason strikes me as unwise, to say the least. A lot of very smart students—a cohort that includes Sasha—decide that they prefer CTCL colleges to more selective options because of their friendly and collaborative learning environments and for other reasons.

Of course, some people apply to CTCL colleges because they want intellectually serious college experiences but can’t get into the more selective colleges or don’t think they would thrive in highly competitive environments. It’s reassuring to know that there are many small and affordable colleges other there that can meet such applicants’ needs. That’s the main point of the book.

I definitely agree with those who point out that a college of any size can “change lives” just as much as a liberal arts college. Unlike many people who preach the “Colleges that Change Lives” gospel, I’m actually a huge fan of big research universities. For students who are self-directed and confident, big research universities can be great. I even would take the defense of big research universities one step further. Many people don’t realize that, in the upper level classes (and a few lower level classes), big research universities often provide incredible individual attention, just as liberal arts colleges do.

When I was in high school, very few big state universities were considered highly selective. These days, several big state universities (Michigan, Virginia, Berkeley, etc.) have become very selective. However, several big state universities remain accessible to students who have only so-so high school records. They can provide very unusual opportunities for students who have the skill and motivation and skill to find them.

That said, I thought Sasha would do better at a liberal arts college, and Sasha agreed.

So. . . Tacoma, here we come.

12

Wow! That’s quite a treatise! UPS is extremely high on my son’s list (probably top 2 right now), and he’s contemplating a very similar list of schools. Their music is a big draw for him, as well. Thanks for all the great info!

I’ll confess to also being quite interested in your daughter’s stats and the size of her merit scholarship, because I’d love to get a sense of what we might expect for my son. If you don’t want to share it in the main forum, I’d be most obliged if you’d pm me. If that’s a bridge too far, no problem. Congratulations to your daughter!

Oh, and one other thing – I’m going to have to call BS on UPS’s “we’re one of only 3 LACs in cities” spiel. What about Barnard in NYC? Lewis & Clark or Reed in Portland? Trinity U in San Antonio? Trinity College in Hartford? Rhodes in Memphis?

13

What the heck is this? Who writes a novel on a forum?

14

I have the complete opposite view to romani, which is not usually the case. Fang Jr, before his ill-fated college adventures, was looking at a lot of the same schools. I would have loved to have read this discussion of the various schools he was considering. I’m sure there are plenty of other parents with kids like Sasha, who will love to read this.

15

Then a nice summary is fine, but the immediate reaction of the vast majority of people who open this thread is going to be:
-See wall of text
-See multiple walls of text
-Close thread

Any useful information will be lost by the sheer volume of writing here. That’s just how forums work, unfortunately.

16

I thought it was interesting. I know Lewis & Clark (College, not University) quite well. But yes, it’s pretty isolated. They’ve improved off-campus access a lot since I was there, though, with a regular private shuttle (the Pioneer Express) that keeps a steady run going. S has Macalester high on his list, quite unexpectedly. Our tour experience was pretty much the opposite of what @WildRumpuser described, though. I don’t think stats or anything ever came up, either with the parents or the students. Everyone was quite gracious. His interviewer mentioned an arts event taking place that night on campus, so we adjusted our plans to attend, and it was wonderful. It was definitely cold, especially for our California selves, but we both enjoyed the trip immensely.

I know UPS from growing up in the NW and having friends attend there. Tacoma’s come a long way from the 1980s, to be sure - it looks like it’s become a pretty interesting and diverse city in its own right now. S considered Seattle, but didn’t see himself at UPS, so didn’t look into it much. It’s great for some students, but not all. Same with Willamette. I have family who attended there and loved it, but S is a city kid, and Salem’s just to small for him. (I’m surprised that St. Paul wasn’t.)

I enjoyed reading this, although it did strike me as being a little judgmental in more than a few places, especially about the campus communities overall. No college is perfect for every kid, and every kid will ahve some degree of fit (or not) at a variety of schools. We’ve toured schools that aren’t good fits for my S, but that doesn’t mean they’re not wonderful for others. My kid’s just a human being with different interests - just like all of our kids. It’s fun to read the visit tours (btw, OP - each college’s page has a place to post recent visit info, and your posts might be more useful and longer-seen if they’re incorporated there) - but this reads more like pontificating. In fact, is the OP a professor, perhaps, at one of those big research universities?

I’m glad it sounds like Sasha has found the right school. It would be interesting to read her/his perspective of the school selection experience, too, as the person who ultimately has to live with (and at :wink: ) the decision.

17

In reaction the OP’s appreciation of the ctcl book and website, I wanted to add one other category of student for whom these schools fill a much needed niche: full pay kids whose parents don’t relish the idea of shelling out $60K+ per year for college. Virtually all of them provide generous merit aid, even to kids with merely good but not spectacular stats, and that makes them very attractive indeed to a particular type of family.

My only reservation with the ctcl list is there are some very comparable and equally great LACs that are not on their list, and I feel like they don’t get as much attention as they deserve as a result. But that’s a quibble, not a condemnation.

18

I vote with Romani. :slight_smile:

19

@romanigypsyeyes – you are probably right about most people, but I am one of the ones that found this long narrative very compelling. Wow, after reading about UPS, which I have not visited, I kind of want to persuade DD to put one more application out there!

I loved reading this. Many of the colleges mentioned are familiar to me, and I found the commentary enlightening and interesting.

I have to confess though, that I really don’t understand this statement:

I question that. Maybe I don’t understand what a complete liberal arts college experience is?

20

@WildRumpuser, I’m with @mstee – I very much enjoyed reading your posts. Thanks for taking the time to record your thoughts and observations. I didn’t find your posts to be judgmental in the least-- you were quite upfront about the subjective nature of your comments.

My D, a junior, is very interested in several of the schools @WildRumpuser described, and the postings will help us flesh out the picture we are getting from our own research. This is very helpful as we decide which schools to visit. Since we are also on the East Coast, the travel cost/distance precludes us from visiting all the places that our D likes. And the school- specific forums on CC have far fewer posts than the more highly ranked/East Coast schools, so this thread helps fill the gap.