I think you would have eventually eliminated Richmond for the reasons I explained. I spend quite a bit of time driving to and from it as a convenient jumping off point for other destinations in the region including, Washington, DC, and the Carolinas. I’ve gotten lost there several times and the gentle lady on my GPS device has sent me on many a wild goose chase through various neighbourhoods. It’s extremely suburban for, I’d say, three-quarters of its total land mass. What locals refer to as “downtown” is really the historic district where someone has gone to a lot of trouble to preserve its architectural past and IMO, done an excellent job of it. It is the only place for miles where you can park your car and walk on an actual sidewalk. There are some nice restaurants and art spaces (I wouldn’t call them galleries, exactly), but it no longer functions as a business center or even as a place where people actually live. To be quite honest, I think Middletown, CT has more buzz, at least during the daytime. I get the feeling that there are a ton of cool things to do in and around the mall areas, and that they function as the real town square - or squares. In that sense, Richmond’s resemblance is not to a traditional eastern city, but, rather Los Angeles which until very recently didn’t have a real downtown either.
Really appreciate your reviews Rumpus. That said…
Rhodes College in Memphis is coed.
I’m also not sure why “nonsectarian” is a consideration for a LAC either. I’m an agnostic scientist and would never send my kiddos to colleges like Liberty that teach faulty science, among other things. However, there are plenty of LACs that were founded by a christian group and are excellent. Having nonsectarian be a filter for choosing a LAC removes some of the best… and for no good reason, IMO.
Thanks for the clarifications, @WildRumpuser. If nothing else, the conversation/controversy has revealed a good list of LACs that are close to urban centers (whether or not they qualify as walkable/restaurant-filled) for future readers.
I did want to clarify a couple of misconceptions: Trinity U in San Antonio is entirely secular (despite the name). I haven’t checked the restaurants-near-campus density (which I think is a fabulous metric, by the way!), but it is only 3 miles from the heart of downtown San Antonio and the famous Riverwalk. When I said UPS was one of my son’s top contenders, Trinity is another. It doesn’t have a very high profile nationally, but it is very well regarded in Texas and seems like a terrific school by every metric I’ve been able to uncover. They have an enormous endowment (on a par with top-10 LACs like Bowdoin), which translates to fabulous facilities. Trinity doesn’t show up in places like the USNWR LAC list, because, for some reason, they decided to classify themselves as a “Regional University”, even though, with 2500 undergrads and roughly 100 grad students, they are very similar to other LACs with a handful of grads like UPS and Wesleyan. They probably do it because they are number one in the South on USNWR’s Regional University list, but I think it means that some LAC seekers may miss them entirely. Finally, Trinity would also very nicely satisfy a kid looking for a rich arts environment in conjunction with good sports teams. I know this is all moot in the case of your daughter, but just thought I’d put it out there.
Also, Rhodes is co-ed.
Nice explanation @WildRumpuser of your and your daughter’s thought process. What I find funny is that people complain when kids just apply fairly blindly to the top 25 schools and here you have a pretty specific reasoning process and you get criticized for it! I may not like all your criteria but I appreciate seeing how you and your daughter worked through finding suitable schools for her.
Colorado College may have dropped off your radar simply because they have an unusual setup with the Block plan. Students take one course (block) at a time. Each course lasts about 4 weeks (maybe a little less) with a 3 day break between blocks. Not everyone likes this system. In fact, only two colleges in the US really do the block plan so very few people probably even know about it.
So a school has to be in a city with a specific population to to fit the definition? That certainly does leave out many schools, but I think most people understand that an urban school can be in cities which dont reach that population criteria and don’t have picture perfect downtowns.
Btw, Tacoma has a population of 200,000 and that’s not a “major” city by any criteria. Colorado Springs is twice the size.
I’m not even going to get into what a “complete” liberal arts college is. Many hundreds of LACS fit that definition.
I’m very glad your kid found the perfect fit college for him/her but honestly, I see your treatise as one big justification for your student’s choice (not that there is anything wrong with that.) Choosing a college is a very personal thing and I think your proclaiming certain things about specific schools is equally as subjective.
Well of course it’s subjective! Doesn’t mean it’s not useful and interesting! I really appreciate the effort @WildRumpuser put into writing down impressions and thoughts for the rest of us to read, or not, as we see fit. That’s what CC’s all about.
And I also appreciate the follow-up clarifications and discussion about certain specifics.
Not so much with slamming the OP, though.
Oh, one more thing: while Whitman is undeniably far from other major cities, and Walla Walla doesn’t exactly qualify as a bustling metropolis, I did think it was about the cutest and most accessible-to-campus town of any of the schools I’ve visited with either of my kids. If you’ve been to Skidmore, it’s quite reminiscent of Saratoga Springs (but even easier to walk to from campus): about 30K in population, kind of upscale, lots of nice cafes and restaurants, and a decent amount of cultural offerings. I was thoroughly charmed by it. If you’re looking for a nice college town, but don’t require an actual city, Walla Walla is tough to beat.
Well, it just goes to show, you shouldn’t believe everything you read, especially if I wrote it. Very sorry about the mistakes regarding Rhodes and Trinity. I’ve met Rhodes graduates (all women, by happenstance) and they loved it. I also have met a graduate of Trinity in Texas (very smart, very nice and, by happenstance, an evangelical Christian) who loved Trinity. I don’t know much about Memphis but San Antonio is nice and, at least in the downtown area, very walkable.
Yesterday I called a distant member of the Rumpuser family who lives in the Pacific Northwest. This relative has two kids, one a recent Reed grad, the other a recent Whitman grad. Both kids had terrific experiences. The Reed kid worked harder. The Whitman kid spent more time outdoors.
D who went to UPS, was a little miffed at me for downplaying Whitman, which she states would have been a very good school for her. In the dark ages, when I got to know the NW, Wallawalla was never thought of as much of anything, and I didn’t want her in too much of a backwater far from a big airport. Times change.
Her sig other went to Trinity in Conn, and received a great education.
I live in NYC. If UPC qualifies as a LAC–it doesn’t by any normal definition–then certainly Eugene Lang qualifies.http://www.newschool.edu/lang/
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Best of luck to Sasha at UPS…sounds like a great fit and you certainly did your research!
EXCEPT for one small thing. I really feel like you missed out on not visiting Claremont,since you were out there to see Oxy anyway. Granted, as a CMC alum (from the '70s,…oy vey!) i admit i am biased…and, also granted, they are all very tough admits…i wouldn’t have a prayer of getting in there these days…for reasons too varied to get into now, i really feel that Claremont is, hands down, the best place for undergraduate work in the country.* Sometimes, people get bogged down in preconceived ideas and stereotypes…i do hope you and Sasha at least get a chance to visit, perhaps when/if she makes it down to see her friend at Pitzer.
Nothing against Oxy (my girlfriend at the time went there), but - even though they’re only around 30 miles apart, IMO, they’re not even remotely similar.
Best of luck!
*i have anothe cc post entitled ‘4 of the 5 most selective LACs in the country are in Claremont.’
(only non-claremont school is Swarthmore,#3 in this category).
OOPS…this is efinitely getting into minutiae, but since this site is filled with bright, academic types, i thought it
best to cut/paste the exact title of my other cc post, before i get excoriated, , .itt is ’ 4 of 5 most selective LACs in Claremont’
(eliminate ‘the’ and ’ in the country are.’…LOL!
I enjoyed your description of the college selection process as “The Wild Rumpus”!
My D has applied RD to UPS and liked it very much.
A couple of things since I live not far from Oxy - no one needs a car since the advent of Uber. Plus it’s a two mile walk or super cheap Uber ride from campus to the Gold Line Metro station in Highland Park which gets you to DTLA in no time. Why anyone would never leave the campus is more about them than about their transportation options. I will agree with you on the student population and that’s why my D who is a perfect fit on paper decided not to apply.
We visited Whitman which is a beautiful school and Walla Walla is cute but that drive from Seattle seemed endless and it went off our list for that reason.
I appreciate the posts, I admit skipping around to what caught my eye 
The LAC-in-a-city thing made me think of Flagler in St. Augustine for some reason. Small college, such a walkable city. IDK how artsy it is overall but two good artist friends of mine used to teach there.
Somewhat off-topic, but it’s too bad that UPS is completely unaffordable for a lower income student. I think my D17 would love its location and vibe. However, the NPC shows a net cost of over $29,000 for a family with a FAFSA EFC of 0! Compare that to an LAC close to us here in PA (Franklin and Marshall), with a net cost of $6643. From my research, it appears that only the mega-selective schools on the West Coast (e.g., Stanford) are West Coast possibilities for families such as ours.
Very interesting synopsis of a lot of colleges. Some of them have wildly varying admissions standards, however, and aren’t really in the same ballpark as UPS, e.g., Reed, Colorado College, Oberlin. Depending on a students grades and scores, the latter might not even be accessible. UPS, Lewis & Clark, Willamette, Beloit have much higher acceptance rates.
I can imagine two different explanations for this (assuming it’s true, which I haven’t independently verified).
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Small LACs are unlikely to be affordable for students with EFCs of zero. Small LACs are unlikely to have enough money to be able to let students with EFCs attend for virtually no money. This is true for all small LACS. There are not very many small LACs on the west coast.
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Small LACs in the east are more likely to be affordable for students with low EFCs.
Do you have a feeling for which one is true?
I think small not-super-selective LACS with small endowments are unlikely to be affordable for low income students because they are, if anything, using their money for tuition discounts to attract nearly full-pay students.
There are small LACs that are extremely generous to low income students - Amherst, Williams, Middlebury, Wellesley, Swat, etc and some are west of the Miss - Pomona, CMC, Grinnel, Macalester, perhaps some of the other Claremonts.
I don’t think it’s a matter of the size of the school. Amherst, for instance, has only 1800 or so students but has one of the highest endowments per student in the country AND chooses to use it to support low income students. I think to be affordable for 0 EFC students, most LACs need both of those things, the money and the mission.
@“Cardinal Fang” In my experience and from my research, none of the Western LACs and smaller private universities except for possibly the Claremont schools (haven’t run those NPCs because my daughter is not THAT strong of a student), are affordable for lower income families. LACs in the East, Midwest, and South vary greatly in how much need-based aid they are willing to provide. Of course, the “meets 100% need” schools are usually the most generous for poorer families but they are generally the most selective schools. Among the somewhat to much less selective schools, there is wide variation. The College of Wooster, approximately equivalent to UPS in terms of average SAT/ACT scores, shows a net cost per NPC for us of about $12000 (doable with student loan and work and a small contribution from family), $17000 less than UPS. So I guess the answer would be that some LACs in regions other than the West can be generous.