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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I love the suggestion of Villanova, and what about St. Mary’s College of MD, William & Mary, and Mary Washington?  I’m also a fairly anxious person who thrived at a CTCL and now am a tenured prof at a flagship university.  Having spent a lot of time in both environments, I’m a huge proponent of SLACs, especially for an anxious kid who will benefit from personal attention from profs, a strong support network, more flexibility and forgiveness with assignments, and fewer high-stakes exams.

If I were parenting an anxious high schooler (my kids are younger), I’d encourage her to target SLACs within driving distance where she is likely to be in the top quartile of students, which makes it likely that she’ll get merit aid and just takes a lot of the pressure off because she can keep up with the other students without trying too hard.  And a SLAC will offer her plenty of options for independent work if she wants to challenge herself further.

And to the poster upthread who said they’re looking at “national universities” for their biology interested kid: I assume you meant R-1s?  Those are the worst places for an undergrad who wants to get involved in research.  That’s what we have grad students for.  I’ve been at my institution for 11 years, and I’ve involved undergrads in my research once, for one semester, and it was because I had some tasks that were too simple for grad students (and no money, so needed undergrads who would work for course credit).  And I’m not a mean person.  I like undergrads.  But our whole incentive structure is set up to favor doing research with grad students and just ushering our undergrads through large lectures.  So, by all means, send your kid to the state flagship for all the good reasons—athletics, alumni network, internships, etc—but not because you think your undergrad is going to get a bunch of lab time. [/quote]

William and Mary is a bit of a pressure cooker, isn’t it?[/quote]

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