Are you willing to name the “dream school” ?
Why was this your daughter’s dream school ?
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Sorry, I am not the one who is familiar with Middletown. Paging the wrong person.
Oops, apologies!
Hey, I’m with you. I could have sworn JW lived in the Middletown area.
People appear to be thinking of @Bill_Marsh.
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Ding, ding, ding, ding! Tell him what he won, Don Pardo!
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I ask because Villanova, Colgate, & Wesleyan are very different schools and it would help to know the dream school in order to point out similarities and differences.
(Since your daughter wants to study film, I suspect that USC or NYU was her dream school.)
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TBH There’s not really a “dream school”. By dream school I mean something that is like Wesleyan but bigger.
Didn’t apply to NYU. USC yes but not to the film school. USC is too big!
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Congrats on the acceptances to such great schools!
My oldest is a Boston College, but Nova was his second choice so we spent time visiting and researching it. My high school junior is very interested in Wes so we’ve visited and read a lot about it too. To me, these schools have a different vibe.
Wes has a more artsy, creative, lgbtq+ friendly, progressive, quirkiness. I wouldn’t use any of those words to describe schools like Nova or BC. I’m sure you can find it through clubs on campus to some degree, but at Wes, it is more front and center. At our Wes tour/info session, the student speaker was asked to pick one word to describe Wes students. The one word they picked was “weird” and that was meant as a positive. There certainly are non-artsy, more sporty, preppy kids at Wes as well, but we loved how Wes embraced the quirky, queer kids looking for a place to thrive in college.
Nova, like BC, seems less progressive, more traditional, especially with the Catholic college aspect at both.
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Then Brown University & Yale University might qualify as your daughter’s “dream school.”
Based on the information posted in this thread, it is difficult for me to understand Villanova, Colgate, & Boston College as these schools are almost the polar opposite of Wesleyan, Yale, & Brown in terms of student body characteristics.
Several Colgate alums have shared serious concerns about the campus culture and its treatment of female undergraduates. Search the web for various college sites and you should find the comments.
Your characterization of Villanova is accurate in that there is a regional provincial culture at this school. Different from Colgate in that one is a huge party school (work hard, play hard) and the other is not.
For the study of film, there is only one choice among your daughter’s three options.
Do not be swayed by a single visit to any school. Make a list of priorities and preferences before deciding.
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Somehow I missed the point in the thread when you mentioned your child is a film/theater person. If that’s the case, it would really be hard to imagine turning down Wes.
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Colgate and Villanova are both DI. If you are looking for DI sports, because you want to attend big-time DI sports events, Colgate is not for you.
If you are into DI basketball, Villanova is the place (though not as much for other sports).
I have visited Colgate, and SIL went there. Live near Villanova. Both are good schools and students can have a great experience at either one. If it is between these two schools, it should be up to the student as to which one is a better fit.
However, I see the intended field of study to be part of the discussion, and it sounds like Wesleyan would be the best bet for the area of interest.
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Wow. That was a lousy cut-and-paste job on my part. I meant to say Colgate and Villanova are DI and Wesleyan was DIII.
Correction made on original post.
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Thank you. Which is work hard, play hard, please? Colgate?
Thank you for saying there is only one of the 3 options for film.
Yes Brown and Yale would have been amazing!
Congrats to your DC - those are all great schools.
Can’t speak to Wes…hear it’s a great school but would not have been a good fit for my kid so we didn’t visit.
Son was considering and applied to both Villanova and Colgate (among many other applications). The students at Villanova and Colgate felt similar (to me at least)…more mainstream/pre-professional/preppy. The main difference is that Villanova had a more religious vibe but not in an overbearing way - we are Jewish but my son attended a Catholic high school. DC ended up applying ED to Colgate and was admitted and is now a freshman.
We really liked the area around Villanova (how could you not) although I would far from call it a vibrant party school vibe or the area feeling like a college town. Felt like a very nice suburb area of Philadelphia. I did get a work hard play “kinda hard” sense from the students…we’re from the west coast and it did feel like it had a more local feeling and one student we met did mention that there were lots of kids Freshman year from the Philly area or within a two hour drive and decent amount of them went home on weekends - just one student’s perspective. One student defensively said that while the school sometimes had a “Villanofun” reputation, he was actually have a great time. We were there on a nice spring day and there were lots of kids out and about and it felt vibrant to us.
I don’t think I’d call Colgate a huge party school…and my freshman would absolutely not call it that. Curious about someone mentioning the treatment of female undergraduates - i had not heard about that and have many friends with daughters at Colgate that would push back hard against that. The fraternity/sorority culture is present and my son will likely go through that but it is a much different greek vibe than you would experience in large state schools - to me it feels all pretty mellow (and my son would say more mellow than he expected). The education and academics have been excellent and he has been working very hard and is realizing he’s surrounded by really smart kids. The college setting is beautiful but it is remote and the school is small (large by SLAC standards but much smaller than Villanova).
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Colgate parties hard. Was listed recently by one source as one of the top 7 party schools in the US.
Beautiful campus. Excellent academics. Very preppy. Social life dominated by Greek houses. Lots of successful alums in the finance field.
P.S. The administration at Colgate has been trying to reel in the party culture of the fraternities at Colgate for several years, but there isn’t really much else to do there during the cold weather months.
Colgate has D-1 sports.
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Does Colgate remain under active consideration?
Thank you! Very helpful perspective. How do the sporty, preppy kids at Wes do, I wonder? I would describe my DC as more traditional than quirky.
We are still hoping to visit it.