Vanderbilt, Rice, Northwestern.

MIT, CMU

The Colleges That Change Lives all do, but you may feel that they are not selective enough for your child. He or she would likely get a free ride there.

Mount Holyoke seemed to have a nice sense of community.

Anonymous wrote:Pomona and Swarthmore for sure.

Swarthmore seemed drive in an unhealthy way to us.

Bowdoin seemed more community-oriented.

I would avoid places with an over-representation of prep school kids.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here’s the catch.

You know how kids around here have been groomed for top schools their whole lives?
There is a culture in NJ/NJ/CT/MA where kids are groomed socially their entire lives, taught who to associate with and who not to, taught how to choose friends like they’re making business connections...not based on friendship, but based on who has access to what. They don’t care so much about academics, and aren’t that competitive about it, but it’s creepy as hell how calculating these kids are by the time they are in college.

I think I prefer the academically competitive crowd down here.

Funny, to me that is a description that fits the DC area to a perfect tee. There’s a reason everyone makes jokes about DC and its residents’ obsession with the “so what do you do?” question.

Utter horse-sh--. You think "what do you do" is limited to the DMV? I guess maybe if you're in the ballet-fundraising-during-a-pandemic crowd, sure. For most of us grunts, it is simply a way to know people (as well as an obvious question). And "grooming" them for business connections almost had me rolling on the ground laughing. I know not a single person who does this with their kids. From all walks of life, areas of DMV, all races/sexes, etc. Not one. So that broad, sweeping generalization is, in truth, mostly limited to a small subset of over-privileged types in NW DC, Great Falls, and a few other places.

What are very nice and very smart options if you want to stay on the East Coast? Amherst? Williams? Wesleyan? Bowdoin? Middlebury? Haverford? Swarthmore? Vassar?

Or is the answer "Go take a tour (virtual tour) of some colleges in places like Minnesota and Oregon"?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My son got into Yale and felt like it would be too much of a "frat-bro" environment and chose Stanford instead. After spending a weekend at Yale he told me "I feel like I'd accidentally be friends with guys who date rape girls but don't think of themselves as rapists."

DD got into Brown and chose Berkeley instead. Both kids felt like California kids are smart and strive to do well, but without pushing other people out of their way.

Silicon Valley is the complete anthesis of this...especially Stanford.

Yeah, my sister teaches at Stanford and said most of her students are tech bros.

What's a tech bro?

Seriously? Hint: It's the college freshman who hit me up on LinkedIn with the "job title" of "Master Coder and Future Venture Capitalist."

Calm down, lady. The kid sent you a connect request. You consider that “hitting you up?”

37 different kids from 37 different towns and schools. A decent little sample. No reason to believe there not plenty of other nerdy vals from plenty of other places also headed to those schools.

Anonymous wrote:For what it is worth...someone on reddit calculated where all the 140 valedictorians from a region right outside of NYC we're headed and just over a quarter are headed to ivies with almost all stem majors. Don't usually associate stem majors (with more then half female) with privileged frat bro jerks but maybe times have changed.

Those 35 students, divided over 8 ivies, are not necessarily representative of the overall population of kids at the ivies they are headed to.

Are NESCACs nicer than Ivies or just smaller?

Anonymous wrote:MIT
CalTech
Rice
GA Tech
Carnegie Mellon


DCUM types can't handle hardcore engineering.

Which explains why they put UVA on a pedestal. . .

Perhaps. From that list hyp seem to lean heavy to nerdy females.

Anonymous wrote:For what it is worth...someone on reddit calculated where all the 140 valedictorians from a region right outside of NYC we're headed and just over a quarter are headed to ivies with almost all stem majors. Don't usually associate stem majors (with more then half female) with privileged frat bro jerks but maybe times have changed.

STEM is a *really* wide field. S, E, and M majors generally aren't stereotypically frat bro jerks. But the T fields... yeah. Times have changed.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I had a similar kid. She looked at schools in these groups:
1. British and Canadian schools (more transparent admissions requirements = less gaming of the system).
2. Great state flagships (a greater range of students = the cutthroat factor doesn't dominate campus culture)
3. Midwestern/non coastal mid-size and SLACS (i.e. Notre Dame, Carlton and Rice)
DD wound up going to McGill, loved every minute of it, got a world-class education AND it cost me about 1/3 of the others on her list.

I was just going to say McGill. I think McGill has a reputation for being more relaxed than U Toronto, too.

McGill grads are way weaker in stem than U.T and Waterloo.

in 2020, McGill grads work for Waterloo grads.