Which of these wonderful LACs to choose? Advice desperately needed

Compare College Acceptances
42

Appreciate your vote, we are keeping track of all the recommendations folks are making on this thread, and trends are developing, so thank you.

1 Like
43

Thanks for highlighting Bard’s music offerings! Our daughter is a band kid, she has been since elementary school, so this is super helpful to know.

1 Like
44

This is extremely helpful, thank you, getting an accurate read on a school’s culture/vibe is probably the most difficult thing to do from a distance. So all this is very good to know.

1 Like
45

Thanks for this. The “Boarding School Geography” angle is not something we’ve heard of before, and it’s an extremely useful bit of information for us to have. My wife and I don’t come from the boarding-school world so that’s all new to us.

1 Like
46

Ha great to hear Carleton = D&D. It’s so difficult to get a good culture read of a school just from Googling. Thank you.

1 Like
47

Thank you for suggestions here, we are compiling all the data points being so generously offered by everyone on this thread, and there are clear trends (like crossing Wake and W&L off our list).

2 Likes
48

Thanks for advising that the full-blown Admitted Students Day is not necessary; we’ve probably been focusing on that too much.

Our daughter claims not to have a geographic preference, but I suspect our upcoming visits may clarify her opinion? Some of these schools are quite remote. We’ll she if she cares.

As for writing, it’s the thing she probably does best and likes the most HOWEVER she truly doesn’t know what she wants to major in, other than her preference for the humanities over STEM.

1 Like
49

Thanks, I think we’ve been overly focused on trying to squeeze in all the Admitted Students Days, it’s reassuring to know that a regular campus visit may be just as insightful.

2 Likes
50

Thanks for all these specifics; these links all provide some extremely helpful tidbits of information.

Kenyon checks all our boxes but heartbreakingly it doesn’t appear to have any on-site bouldering facilities, and the closest climbing wall is over an hour away. Our daughter tried many sports and finally found her thing in climbing, and we are super torn about whether or not we should be crossing Kenyon off our list because of that.

(She participated in quite a few Zoom info sessions while applying, so we’re really eager to get some in-person exposure.)

1 Like
51

Thank you for this, very enlightening information about Hamilton and Reed!

1 Like
52

Thanks for looking at this from a very practical geographical/travel perspective, this is something we have to considered, given the limited time we have.

53

Thank you! Yeah Carleton vs. W&M is a tough one for sure. We are leaning on keeping both these schools on the visitation list. Thanks for your offer to answer questions about W&M, we may just take you up on that!

1 Like
54

Thanks for this recommendation; we think we’ve probably been overly-focused on just the Admitted Students Day and you’re right, a private tour, if possible, probably would prove just as informative.

1 Like
55

Thank you for this. Our daughter claims to have no real preference when it comes to location (or weather), but we suspect she may change her mind when she sees, first-hand, the rurality of some of these places.

1 Like
56

You and the student may have to evaluate whether choosing a more expensive college will impact:

  • Your retirement or other financial goals.
  • College funding for any younger siblings.
  • Funding for the student’s professional school if desired (or supplemental money if a fully funded PhD program’s idea of “fully funded” is a bit too tight on the living expenses stipend).

It depends on how much money you actually have, and whether the difference will make a material effect on your personal finances (see the considerations above). A family with plutocrat wealth may find $100k to be pocket change, but a family for whom an extra $100k would affect the things listed above may be more hesitant about spending it.

1 Like
57

Nope, none of these schools have been visited, not yet. Her list of schools was/is all over the place because she really doesn’t know what she’d like to study, even what kind of school she’d like to attend (i.e., large university vs. small liberal arts college). Now that she’s gone through the application process, she has a somewhat better idea (she developed a preference for LACs, obviously), but her original list-making involved a lot of controlled chaos, lol.

1 Like
58

Thank you for these specific recommendations, and for some interesting data points! We’re keeping track of what everyone’s saying on this super-helpful thread, and some clear trends are emerging, that will help us cut down this list to something manageable.

59

I would really just add a caveat though to campus newspapers - they are typically staffed by students with very strong personal views or bents, ones that reflect and reinforce the particular vibe of that student newspaper, but not the student body as a whole.

While there are certainly many excellent examples of journalism in many student newspapers, by and large the newspapers can be akin to campus clubs, clubs that just happen to be very publicly vocal. You wouldn’t necessarily put extra weight evaluating a school based on the ideas of its debate club, or the basketball club team, or the organic gardening club - you’d intuitively understand that they’d reflect a self selected group of students. My advice would be to take the campus newspapers with a similar grain of salt.

1 Like
60

Grateful for your time and your thoughts! These are some highly useful questions/points. We hadn’t considered the athlete angle, that definitely would help us build out a better culture picture.

61

My two cents is at this phase, when you are talking about actual offers in hand, you can and really should start being brutally ruthless about getting to a short list. Some kids start focusing on things like dining, housing, transportation details, spectator sports . . . anything that might matter to the kid is a good enough reason to cut a school as long as you end up with a short list of affordable schools the kid remains very excited about.

So to me, what you described is in fact a good enough reason to cross off Kenyon at this stage, given this is actually important to her. Of course it is a wonderful college, and might well be the top choice of another kid in this position. But so are many others on your list, and she can only attend one. And Kenyon will be fine.

9 Likes