Reply to Is W&M bro-y?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]and by aspirations, I meant kids who wanted to have big horizons in this world - not make money or win prestigious prizes, but become people who had broad and interesting world views and experiences however they defined those for themselves.
Since we are talking about impressions, mine was that it was rather vanilla, overall, as a culture. That doesn't mean I am a bad person to not think it's a place that felt engaging to me.[/quote]

I don't think you're a "bad person," but I still hold my original impression that you may not be perceptive to nuance and may not be great at seeing outside yourself. This isn't about whether you/your kid found WM engaging, but how you talk about people/culture.  I hear echoes of a script from a bad 80s teen movie: the misunderstood teen who feels more creative than generic people with their 2.2 kids.  Sounded like something I would have said as a 13 year old punk rock kid  (and by 18 would have been embarrassed by how ham-fisted and cliché it sounded). Writing "generic people" and "rather vanilla" doesn't trigger for me an impression of someone who has broad and interesting worldviews and can recognize them in others. Rather it's a red flag to watch out for a cheesy type who fancies themselves more interesting than everyone else. My bias of course. And you're responding to a thread titled "Is W&M bro-y?" so there's that too.

My DH does short form documentary filmmaking for his work so he's used to quickly getting a sense of place and generating open-ended conversations with various people, and so sort of approached college visits that way. We found WM to have a really interesting culture.  Students seem outwardly to be more stylistically and politically moderate compared to some of the other schools we visited and Greek life/party culture was also sort of moderate--not absent like some LACs, but not very dominant like others.  But every conversation with a student/group of students held surprises.  [b]We were struck by how articulate, broad-minded but diverse students were in their thinking whether they were talking about college life, marine science, international relations, fashion, academics, music --whatever. As a group, compared to other schools of similar academic caliber, they had distinctive insights--but seemed less certain and more flexible and open in their thinking and views.   They seemed very aware and curious about the world. I personally value this combination highly and wondered what the school did to cultivate it. [/b]

Tldr: our impression of WM was not "bro-y" nor "rather vanilla"  but an interesting, open-minded place. [/quote]

This was the exact thing that impressed us with the students- and we talked to a lot of them- from the panels, to just random students we saw in the cafeteria.  We asked questions and they were so thoughtful with their answers.

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