College for academic student

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Mine loved Princeton. If they didn't study, they flunked out.

but I don't want them to study because they are afraid to fail out, I want them to study because they love to learn.

[Anonymous]

University of Chicago. While the composition of their student body has diversified somewhat, the commonality is a love for learning. Their reputation for rigor would not be attractive otherwise. A great education supported by small classes with active discussion and a fast paced quarter system both of which encourages class attendance. The environment has also proven out to be super supportive from both faculty and peer perspectives. There is a LOT of interesting work. That's the trade off although kids can elect to manage schedules so they can party 7 nights a week

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Mine loved Princeton. If they didn't study, they flunked out.

but I don't want them to study because they are afraid to fail out, I want them to study because they love to learn.

Yeah, but that isn't your choice is it?

Now if you said, "I want her to be around people who ____"... it still wouldn't be your choice. The point is to find the right fit for your child, and she has to figure that out.

[Anonymous]

I have a kid for whom an essential component of fit was classmates who are there for the academics and whose eagerness to learn was broad-based rather than limited to a particular field. Personally, I thought this was a weird stake, but it is what DC wanted, so the question OP is asking strikes me as a reasonable one. And the fact that s/he's asking it doesn't make it less so. Sometimes parents help kids with their research on colleges and seek out information in places where their kids would never look. I'd rather have the parent ask than to think a HS student is spending time on a site like DCUM. The level of venom and misinformation here is pretty high and the signal to noise ratio pretty low.

FWIW, my DC's answer to this question was UChicago (which I posted previously, so this is not another "vote" for U of C), but I'll add (what I didn't mention earlier) that DC has been really happy with the cohort/faculty accessibility/ethos there.
But I do think a kid really has to believe in/want the core and be willing to put in the hours for U of C to be a happy-making choice.

[Anonymous]

No doubt there are kids like this and also party/less serious kids everywhere. The serious kids don't often make the news. Plenty of really serious, intellectually curious kids at Yale -- many of whom were deciding between Yale and Chicago.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"Most"? yes, most college students are attending class and interested in learning.

Most are interested in getting a degree. At some schools, many are concerned about maintaining a good GPA. Kids who are actually interested in learning per se are rare. It's shocking, for example, how little of the reading gets done. My Freshman Year (in which an anthro prof goes undercover to do fieldwork on undergrad culture) is an interesting read on this topic. And while some might be tempted to write off her state school as unrepresentative, having taught for years at two top 20 private Universities, I can tell you that elite schools aren't that different wrt the whole love of learning thing.

Yes, I agree with this. There is a difference between being smart and being intellectual. DS1 is very interested in learning; he complained in high school that most of his peers in AP classes weren't actually interested in the material, they just were interested in taking AP classes and getting good grades. (And DS1 was one of those kids sometimes--he did not have a love of learning chemistry, e.g. Of course, that's why he opted not to take AP chemistry, lol.) And most of these kids were very bright, hard-working students who have gone on to good colleges.

This is the main reason why I wanted DS to go to a small college where professors are focused primarily on teaching and he would have plenty of opportunity to get to know them. And this has exactly what has happened--DS is one of those students who stays behind after class to ask questions, etc., and he's gotten to know several of his professors very well. There are more kids like him in college than there were in high school, but as PP above notes, there are still plenty of kids in college who just want to do well and get a degree and who aren't that interested in discussing issues/problems outside of class.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My DS is very academics-focused, loves his classes and works very hard. He is on a merit scholarship at a "second tier" SLAC (one of the Colleges that Change Lives"). There are kids like him at every college/university in America.

Yes, but I want a school where most of the kids are like this. And especially experiences joy in learning. The learning is not something you do to get a degree, the learning itself is the goal.

PP with the DS who is like this. As I said above (and the college professor above said as well), the reality is that there aren't tons of these types of people in the world, and even fewer among the 18-22 year-old set.

I'd focus on small schools, little to no greek life, and make sure when you visit schools your kid sits in on some classes to help get a feel for the intellectual climate. We also felt that schools with fewer business majors (or that didn't have a business major) tended to seem more intellectual and less pre-professional. (I know this is a gross generalization, but given that there are hundreds of schools to choose from, one needs some easy ways to narrow down the list.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:William and Mary.

Agree--I'd choose W&M over UVA for a kid like this.

[Anonymous]

FWIW, opportunities to get to know profs well aren't just a small college thing. DH, DC and I all had those opportunities as undergrads (and I provided such opportunities *to* undergrads) at major research universities -- a total of 5 different ones. It's really exciting to work with profs who are doing interesting research rather than primarily focused on educating undergrads. And having grad students around not only gives academically-inclined undergrads more people to talk shop with, it also tends to mean larger departments, more faculty, and a greater variety of course offerings.

[Anonymous]

Swarthmore. Then Chicago for grad school. There's a well trodden path connecting the "ville" (i.e., downtown Swarthmore) and Hyde Park. There were about a half dozen Swatties on my block in Hyde Park when I was there for my PhD.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:FWIW, opportunities to get to know profs well aren't just a small college thing. DH, DC and I all had those opportunities as undergrads (and I provided such opportunities *to* undergrads) at major research universities -- a total of 5 different ones. It's really exciting to work with profs who are doing interesting research rather than primarily focused on educating undergrads. And having grad students around not only gives academically-inclined undergrads more people to talk shop with, it also tends to mean larger departments, more faculty, and a greater variety of course offerings.

That may be true, but it's also true that there are plenty of university programs where the exciting and interesting work is done exclusively by grad students and undergrads aren't particularly welcome.

And isn't the potential trade-off between large university settings and small colleges WRT research really an issue mostly for the hard sciences?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:FWIW, opportunities to get to know profs well aren't just a small college thing. DH, DC and I all had those opportunities as undergrads (and I provided such opportunities *to* undergrads) at major research universities -- a total of 5 different ones. It's really exciting to work with profs who are doing interesting research rather than primarily focused on educating undergrads. And having grad students around not only gives academically-inclined undergrads more people to talk shop with, it also tends to mean larger departments, more faculty, and a greater variety of course offerings.

That may be true, but it's also true that there are plenty of university programs where the exciting and interesting work is done exclusively by grad students and undergrads aren't particularly welcome.

And isn't the potential trade-off between large university settings and small colleges WRT research really an issue mostly for the hard sciences?

Not just hard sciences. I was a soc sci/humanities major. Profs who are invested in research and who attract grad students are constantly rethinking, being challenged, moving forward, and paying close attention to what's going on in the discipline as a whole. By contrast, if you're teaching undergrads in a small department, it's easy to stagnate intellectually because few, if any, of your students have independent sources of knowledge about the field and you're stuck teaching the same intro courses year after year because there's no one else around to do it.

I haven't witnessed the "undergrads aren't welcome" thing. Have you? If so, where? I'm willing to believe it exists, but I'd like to hear people referencing particular experiences. So often people seem to assume/assert that Harvard is like this, for example, but neither DH nor I encountered that (quite the opposite and with different profs/departments) and you'll certainly find Harvard grad students who think that the profs favor the undergrads.