By tradition, I don’t mean things like Villanova Nice or having a sandwich at midnight. I mean organised events, like at BC there is Marathon Monday, where there are no classes and the kids gather to watch the Boston marathon run through their campus. Concerts on campus–not just student bands but famous ones. Retreats, so kids can camp and have some reflection. I just haven’t heard of these types of things from Wes, as much as I like the school.
Coming from the UK we didn’t know about tailgate parties, but they sound fun. We obviously have our equivalent with Premier League matches and the like. I guess when DC was working on a college list we had an assumption that all the colleges would have fun traditions. But now I’m realising they can be really different depending on the college’s resources and culture.
And Nova will have its things. It doesn’t have a world class marathon - but it will have stuff.
It will or has had top flight basketball, it will have other things.
Every school will have its things - and Nova is no slouch.
I think you’re over estimating the “traditions” like you are discussing which are rare (Marathon Monday, a once a year day off) - and the four year experience your student needs / deserves. These kids are going to school, participating in clubs or jobs or greek life, going to the cities, getting drunk - whatever it is - it’s by and large the same no matter where - these are young people, students.
If the school is the right place for your student for four years, it’s the right place.
Your student told you they found the right place.
You are trying to force a square peg (your student) in a round hole (your desire for them)…I keep hearing that through the posts…just my opinion.
There really is no choice here. The Boston Marathon is on Patriots Day which is a state holiday in Massachusetts. That day, everything in Boston is about the Marathon.
I wouldn’t select any college in Boston based on a Marathon Day!
Every single college will have tremendously fun traditions. Every. Single. One.
It sounds like you are really unfamiliar with colleges in the USA, and so I am wondering why you and your child want her to come here? I don’t mean this in a snarky way, I am just really puzzled about your priorities. If it was film, then why not more film schools? If rah rah, then why not more rah rah schools like SMU, let alone Alabama or Ol Miss? Why do you want to pay multiples of what you’d be paying in the UK, to attend a school no one there will have heard of? How, in your research, did you not investigate the culture of these schools?
You don’t have to answer these questions, but these are all things I don’t understand about what you have written.
Big fans of Wesleyan and the quirky/excellent Middletown retail and restaurant scene. However, I’m not sure I would characterize it as “rah rah” or preppy (if that is what you are looking for) unless one is a varsity athlete. Socially, there exists a bit of an athlete/rest of school divide, as at all NESCACs - and this is a slight overgeneralization as well.
If someone is truly committed to Film, there is a clear choice. Perhaps it is more of an interest than a true focus at this point - which is OK, and your kid is ranking other factors more highly.
DC has great choices…the reality is that none of them really resonate when it comes to the college party/tradition experience of a larger state universities or a sports-driven school (in general) the way.
A lot of the culture also resonates around football games and tailgating in the fall when the weather is still nice and 70,000 people pack a stadium. Or maybe around basketball for some teams. There are smaller schools that have this also (TCU, SMU, Syracuse) but your boy isn’t going to any of those. Ironically - one of my son’s close friends is at Boston College and complains that he wants to transfer because he finds it boring and he wants an experience closer to his friends at larger schools and complains that he wishes BC had fraternities or a college town that was walkable nearby…his other three friends at BC are loving it (different strokes for different folks).
From a cultural experience standpoint, of your choices, feels like Nova is the closest to what you might be looking for. Larger student body…a very good basketball team culture with large fanbase, more “stuff” happening and more activity/diversity happening in and around campus.