LACs with the WORST locations
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Anonymous
When I went in the 1980s, Claremont was smoggy as hell, the town of Claremont was boring, and it was difficult to get anywhere else. Definitely not the "sun and fun Southern California experience" many students expected. Maybe it's different now. |
Anonymous
| Claremont Colleges are beautiful and located in a very cute town. The train to LA is basically on campus and the beaches, mountains, and desert are under an hour away. |
Anonymous
Gosh, encourage the kids to at least take a walk into “town”: they will live in their car the rest of their lives. |
Anonymous
Davidson |
Anonymous
Something tells me there isn’t actually a town to walk to for some of these colleges. My campus was pretty self contained. It wasn’t really walking distance to anything, despite being just outside a city. We had to drive to anything off campus. We definitely did order take out from time to time, though, so I think being close enough for pizza and Chinese food is worth thinking about (as a pp noted) |
Anonymous
| Bennington - the area is pretty, but the town has a small and there isn't much to really do. |
Anonymous
Still the same issues. Bad air quality during the first month or two. |
Anonymous
So what was your school? Some mid-size unis and SLACs alike can be wholly isolated from their communities (rural or urban). I mean, most college kids in the United States have grown up in communities with nothing in walking distance. If you can’t take a walk off campus to get a darned slice of pizza or a coffee while in college, when can you? The vast majority (90% or more?) of residential colleges are not isolated, auto-dependent silos — so avoid those that are. |
Anonymous
The bottom line of this thread is that none of these largely trivial considerations should disqualify a school, but since schools are a heck of a lot more fungible than the rankings-worshipers would suggest, there's not a lot of harm in creating your pool with these small things in mind and deciding between similar quality schools on the small stuff. And, of course, limiting this to LACs is just an anti-LAC troll post. There are plenty of non-LACs in locations that people don't like and without the neighboring amenities that people have convinced themselves are important. |
Anonymous
We had a Pizza Hut counter in the student center and I imagine there is probably a Starbucks on campus now (I was there before they took over the world) But really, our campus wasn’t in a walkable area. The main gate was off a highway/main road and it just wasn’t a walkable location. I visited another school in the same state with my daughter that was very similar. Could you walk off campus? Probably. But it just wasn’t an easy walk. There were busses at the main entrance to take you places, though. And I believe it actually was within city limits, so it’s close to things, just not a leisurely stroll away |
Anonymous
all still true. |
Anonymous
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Williams is the one that stands out to me. No way I'd go there over Amherst or Swarthmore growing up in an area like DC.
Vassar's location probably used to be a lot better and then used to be a lot worse. Now it is just ok. The Maine schools are probably fine but just get too cold IMHO. |
Anonymous
Friend of mine had a son who transferred from Williams because of this as well as the cliquishness of the other students. |
Anonymous
It's....Worcester. |
Anonymous
Gettysburg College |