Reply to Intense vibe schools

Forum Index » College and University Discussion

Reply to "Intense vibe schools"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My DS graduated from Swarthmore.  Sure, he worked hard, but I never heard/felt major stress from him. To those parents who think they see this INTENSITY when they tour, what are you seeing?[/quote]

I asked about this on a Swarthmore thread. I visited with my DS this summer and maybe because we had a very outgoing and funny tour guide, my kid came away very enthusiastic. But everything I read here claims it is an "intense" school - how do we know that? what does that mean? How are we supposed to know if a school is too "intense" for any particular kid?[/quote]

You can never know for sure.

People come away from tours with certain impressions, accurate or not.  When visiting Dartmouth, we met several students, including our very accomplished tour guide, who politely said that academics were intense. They actually came out and said it. While it was never described quite as plainly elsewhere, we got the same vibe at Williams and Georgetown. We visited other colleges like Middlebury where we got the distinct impression that our tour guide was an airhead and lots of other students we met were there to have fun and not study - and the admissions person we heard did nothing to dispel that view.

[/quote]

Interesting. We had the opposite impression. At Dartmouth we saw a lot of frat boys and athletes who didn’t seem particularly interested in academics or intellectualism—more into having fun. My friend’s daughter who goes to Middlebury is intensely focused on academics. Guess you’ll find both at every college.[/quote]

Just curious - how you are so sure those “frat boys and athletes” you saw are not ALSO interested in academics or intellectualism?

Do you genuinely think that kids who have a lot of fun in college aren’t ALSO super committed to the substantive part?

For example, the kid we know at Dartmouth is brilliant, deep, and intellectual. If you were to talk with him for two minutes about his classes, internships, or ideas, it would be clear how substantive and thoughtful he is.

Though he was more introverted and maybe a little awkward in early high school, he’s now 6’3” and looks like a frat boy. Which he is. At Dartmouth.

The either-or stereotyping on this board amazes me sometimes. About both boys and girls, alike.

Kids can be good-looking and social and ALSO intellectual and committed to their academics.

Both things can co-exist. Our kid is looking for schools where they often do! [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics