nonpressure cooker/well adjusted yet prestigious schools
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Anonymous
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yes, I am concerned about prestige, but we also want a school that is nice, friendly.
Do they exist? When I Google I find things about the best special services but that clearly doesn't mean it's a healthy environment |
Anonymous
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Nice and friendly, yes. Stanford, e.g., or Rice. Many others depending on your definition of "prestigious."
Non-pressure-cookers, no. Not by any common definition of "prestigious." |
Anonymous
| So no schools in the top 25 or so that are NOT pressure cookers? Really? |
Anonymous
Really. |
Anonymous
By nature of being the top 25, of course they are pressure cookers. |
Anonymous
| I don't know about that. I am old, but went to HYPS. I am Type A and was even more so then. I wouldn't describe it as "laid back," but it wasn't a pressure cooker. |
Anonymous
| If your kid is laid back, they will be laid back anywhere. If your kid is high stress, they will be high stress anywhere. It's not the college, it's the kid |
Anonymous
I've flagged the relevant bit for you. |
Anonymous
There's truth to that, but everyone has a range, and where they operate in their personal range is heavily influenced by their environment. |
Anonymous
Agree. |
Anonymous
There is a reason they are T25. the kids that go there are achievers and stivers |
Anonymous
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In the T25 I think Brown, Vandy, UNC, UVA, maybe Emory are your best bet for what you’re looking for.
In the T30 UF, UC Davis, USC |
Anonymous
This 100% |
Anonymous
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Every top 25 school is going to have some pressure. But there's a difference between what is internally driven and what is externally driven. Most of those kids expect a lot of themselves and that has its own dynamic.
But some schools really seem to ramp the stress up. I'm thinking Carnegie Mellon. I'm thinking Cornell engineering. Some schools are difficult and stressful for everyone. MIT. CalTech. Some schools are an easy glide. Harvard. Brown. Some schools are walking on egg shells all the time kind of schools. Stanford. Berkeley. And some schools are difficult and challenging but work on creating a healthy environment. Rice, Yale, and Notre Dame come to mind with their residential colleges. The most balanced schools seem to be the three above - Rice, Yale, Notre Dame - and Princeton, Duke, Northwestern, and Vanderbilt. The pressure is there. No avoiding that. There's no slacker school. But there's a difference with how each school manages things. |
Anonymous
This is true to a certain extent. And, my kid self-reports and appears to be more relaxed in relaxed environments. NOT party environments. So maybe not Uva, although thank you for the poster who had that list!! How do you find out what the laid back schools are outside DCUM? |