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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]It’s a very liberal school with vocal population of activist students. It used to have a sizable Jewish population (north of 20%) and was a good alternative for kids who were also looking at Brandeis. That has probably changed. Boston weather can be terrible if you are not from the NE, but the area is considered to be a desirable place attend college. Since they have won some DIII championships recently. So, you might see a slight uptick in school spirit. It has a number of cultural housing options and centers for different affinity groups.  It has a decent engineering program and lots of kids major in international relations and study abroad. The campus is ok and people seem to get excited about things like dance groups, theater or acapella. It is very expensive but poor people can probably get 100% need-based aid. Not a great school for UMC kids who don’t have stats for lots of merit-based scholarship money. They might end up with a lot of student debt. The endowment used to be terrible. Something like only $160m in 1990. It’s around 1.9 billion now, but for comparison Notre Dame’s is 12bn, Emory’s is like 7 billion, Williams and Amherst are around 2.5 bn. For a school that wants to be considered a world-class research university that low endowment limits what the school can do. If you are interested in med school, dental school or vet school, doing well as an undergrad probably confers some benefits for admission to those programs, but you would have to check that. There are so many colleges/universities in Boston area. Tufts is certainly worth considering, but other area schools might be also be a good choice assuming if they can get in to those schools. There are a lot of really wealthy people and international kids who come from money but not a lot of people who seem to make their money after going to Tufts. In terms of the there there…maybe the best way to describe it is to say you don’t really hear about a lot of wildly successful graduates. There some notable names but those seems more like the exception. More often you see people doing well or even really but not really elite or at the top of their field (law firm partner but not superstar), musician but not rockstar, key adviser to well-known politicians, but not the politician, very good doctor but not world renowned surgeon, accomplished author but not NY times best seller, Olympian but not a medal winner etc.[/quote]

Yours is an interesting take. Personally, I’d rather my child go to an exceptional school that doesn’t put excessive focus on famous alumni (BTW, Tufts has several notable alumni) but has a solid culture and record of training students who give back to their communities in meaningful ways - professionally and in service. Seems Tufts is doing a solid job in that regard. And, we all know it’s not a school to which everyone applies, so if it’s running an 11% accept rate that means it has a core group of aspiring students who value what it offers. Not sure why others feel the need to disparage schools that are clear on and transparent in pursuing their mission. If you are not impressed, feel free to focus elsewhere…[/quote]

Fair points. Wasn’t meant to be disparaging just some honest (and probably biased) observations. It’s in the NESCAC but 2-3 times as big as most of the others and the only one with professional graduate programs. So it doesn’t have that tiny liberal arts idyllic campus feel.  The doing “good” wasn’t a knock but I don’t think many appreciate how central that is to basically everything. They spend so much time on social impact and global engagement and civics etc…so everybody seems to do non-profits, ngos, overseas development work, democracy building orgs, federal government programs, Capitol Hill work, academia etc. You don’t see a lot of people going into jobs with the Big Four or big consulting firms or investment banking/finance or with tech startups in Silicon Valley or the entertainment industry. Some but those are exceptions to the rule.[/quote]

I’m a PP whose DS is interested in Tufts and that honestly sounds great. I’d rather he do democracy building work or go into academia than to a big 3 consulting firm or I-banking. [/quote]

Totally. Nothing wrong academics and do-gooders. Not everyone wants to be an investment banker or high powered lawyer. Back to culture, with this being an awesome important theme, how does that translate into how the kids are? I have heard crunchy, nerdy, quirky. But what’s it’s like there socially?[/quote]

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