Funky schools with academic rigor
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Anonymous
| DC is an out of the box type -- crunchy, alternative -- not sure how best to describe. He is also strongly academic. He wants a college that has similarly inclined students but doesn't coast on the academics. Thoughts? Hampshire is a bit remote, he wants urban or suburban. Swarthmore has been floated but I also hear it has a competitive vibe. Also Sarah Lawrence is mentioned. Reed. Bard is probably also too remote. |
Anonymous
| Maybe UC Santa Cruz, if he doesn't mind being across the country. I had a family member who went there and liked it. |
Anonymous
| Brown? |
Anonymous
| Carleton, Tufts, oberlin |
Anonymous
| Skidmore. It's not that urban, but Saratoga Springs is a nice town. My DD sounds a bit similar to your DC and she really liked it when we visited |
Anonymous
| Grinnell |
Anonymous
Read! Carleton is in a wheat field. Oberli is close. Tufts is urban enough but am not sure it meets the def of "rigor.". |
Anonymous
== super remote |
Anonymous
Carleton is 45 mins from Minneapolis. Some people commute from Northfield to MSP. So it fits OPs suburban request. There aren't that many crunchy urban schools. The OPs son may need to look a little farther afield. |
Anonymous
| I think you're going to find most of the crunchy + academically rigorous schools are a bit remote. Take Grinnell as an example. It's crunchy, quirky, academically rigorous, and the environs are great. But if you want to be somewhere "city-ish" you're going to be driving. |
Anonymous
| Drexell? |
Anonymous
|
Reed and Oberlin. Although yes to the corn fields around Oberlin, which we've heard can create a sort of naval-gazing atmosphere.
I disagree with PP about Tufts--the academics seemed rigorous enough but the kids we saw on the tour and the kids we know who got in all seemed really, really preppy. Almost as if they were trying to prove something to that crimson-colored university down the road. Tuft's literature is all about how they appreciate quirky kids, though, so there's that. |
Anonymous
| Macalester? It's in St. Paul so has an urban feel. |
Anonymous
Yes -- sorry, I missed the urban/suburban thing. Hmmm . . . you're looking at a pretty small pool. |
Anonymous
| University of Colorado Boulder |