Tell me about Connecticut College

[Anonymous]

DS and I also visited. We sat with a couple of professors at the lunch, and they impressed him. DS liked it and is applying, but it is a super-safety for him. The student who showed us around was lovely. She's studying to be a teacher. (My thought: her parents are paying a lot of money for her to become a teacher.) She told us that she knew she wanted to go to CC because the cherry blossoms were in bloom when she visited, and it was beautiful. An alum who was on campus that day stopped us and reminisced about his pre-college visit. He saw bunnies playing on the lawn and knew he wanted to attend CC. The lovely student who showed us around said that people tend to stay on campus on the weekends. She asked how large DS's high school is (larger than CC) and offered that her high school had less than 100 students. I don't recall seeing anyone who wasn't White.

My takeaway was that it is an expensive, cloistered environment where the students don't typically hop on the train and go to NY or Boston on the weekends despite the proximity of those locations.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DS and I also visited. We sat with a couple of professors at the lunch, and they impressed him. DS liked it and is applying, but it is a super-safety for him. The student who showed us around was lovely. She's studying to be a teacher. (My thought: her parents are paying a lot of money for her to become a teacher.) She told us that she knew she wanted to go to CC because the cherry blossoms were in bloom when she visited, and it was beautiful. An alum who was on campus that day stopped us and reminisced about his pre-college visit. He saw bunnies playing on the lawn and knew he wanted to attend CC. The lovely student who showed us around said that people tend to stay on campus on the weekends. She asked how large DS's high school is (larger than CC) and offered that her high school had less than 100 students. I don't recall seeing anyone who wasn't White.

My takeaway was that it is an expensive, cloistered environment where the students don't typically hop on the train and go to NY or Boston on the weekends despite the proximity of those locations.

Based on your reply he is high stats and likely to be accepted - but to be clear: no school with a 38% acceptance rate is a "super-safety" for anyone. Especially a school that only admits 2500 people and has a slightly lower RD rate (30% for males last year). I

The intention of this post is not to throw shade on your kids chances, but rather to avoid people mis-qualifying safeties. I wish him luck and hope he gets his first choice.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Campus is pretty. They have an arboretum. When we were looking at it, they were trying a new format of degree requirements, and I am not sure how that worked out. The other applicants looked overwhelmingly preppy. Town itself is next to Mystic, which is nice, but the actual downtown of New London is VERY grungy (and not in a charming way). It does have an Amtrak station, which is convenient for going home. According to posts online, binge drinking (followed by hookups) dominate the weekend experience, in a way that many women do not appreciate. We declined their acceptance but they seemed to put sincere effort into recruiting ethnic minorities (including Asian-Americans).

So, like the vast majority of colleges and universities. I wonder if women realize: no one is forcing them to binge drink and/or hookup afterwards?
- a woman

The posters complained that there were not alternatives.,

You reply is irrelevant and hostile

No alternatives to binge-drinking and hooking up? Give us all a break and get real.

From UNIGO: "I would say that Conn's most negative quality is the pervasive drinking culture."

From NICHE: " If you choose not to drink or party, it can be annoying, because everyone is on campus so it is impossible to avoid.

"As some one who doesn't drink, the emphasis on drinking makes me a little uncomfortable. I respect other people's right to make different choices than my own, but sometimes the noise level and presence of drunk people makes it hard to sleep or study. I don't feel like there is a lot of peer pressure to drink, but sometimes it feels like there isn't much else to do. Drugs are less visible than alcohol, though certainly used. Floralia (Spring Weekend) is particularly bad if you don't want to drink or use drugs, because campus can get crazy and there's no alternative activities."

"Conn is great school but the social life is its main downfall, it is a bar school which sucks and there is not much to do around campus"

"The school is decently lenient about drug use and underage drinking."

"The party scene at this school revolves around partying in cramped singles, heading off to "Ridge" or "Winchester" housing (which either gets broken up or shut down by people blacking out and going to the hospital), or going to "Cro Dances", which feel like a quintessential middle school class on drugs. "

So, PP can protest all she/he wants. Such descriptions, while not expressed by all students, were enough to turn my DC off to the place.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Interesting place. The Cornell of the NESCAC, in that the other schools tend to make fun of it and treat it as if it doesn't belong. Preppy AF, rugby shirts and lax bros abound, yet extremely left wing, which is a peculiar dichotomy. No frats, more chicks than dudes, DIII sports with very little fan support. It's probably ranked about where it should be, but a kid who knows how to schmooze and network can make more valuable connections there than at similarly ranked schools (e.g., Centre, Furman). It's one of those schools where "fit" is invaluable, so your best bet is to arrange an overnight or at least visit the campus.

The Cornell comparison makes no sense. I went to Yale and Cornell was well respected there especially their STEM and Engineering programs. No one made fun of it

[Anonymous]

It’s 62% women, that made it a non-starter for my daughter after visiting.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It’s 62% women, that made it a non-starter for my daughter after visiting.

yeah that's brutal. they need to work on getting the gender balance fixed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Interesting place. The Cornell of the NESCAC, in that the other schools tend to make fun of it and treat it as if it doesn't belong. Preppy AF, rugby shirts and lax bros abound, yet extremely left wing, which is a peculiar dichotomy. No frats, more chicks than dudes, DIII sports with very little fan support. It's probably ranked about where it should be, but a kid who knows how to schmooze and network can make more valuable connections there than at similarly ranked schools (e.g., Centre, Furman). It's one of those schools where "fit" is invaluable, so your best bet is to arrange an overnight or at least visit the campus.

The Cornell comparison makes no sense. I went to Yale and Cornell was well respected there especially their STEM and Engineering programs. No one made fun of it

That's because the people you knew at Yale had brains, unlike many in this forum.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s 62% women, that made it a non-starter for my daughter after visiting.

yeah that's brutal. they need to work on getting the gender balance fixed.

It’s a negative for young men too. My DS didn’t want to be surrounded by too many so-called beta males.