Each time the topic of Tufts comes up on DCUM I am reminded how folks on this forum have a propensity to talk about things for which they have little direct experience or knowledge. Let’s take the recent topics brought up here:

Antisemitism: yes, there have been incidents on the campus - but very, very few. The sad truth is antisemitism is on the rise across US campuses. Tufts is a relative campus of tolerance. That said, any incident of intolerance is too many.

“Waspy profile:” again, nonsense. Tufts draws primarily from the northeast and mid Atlantic - and for that reason there are certainly a strong contingent of preppy kids, but there are also a larger proportion of Jewish students than at many other eastern seaboard schools. Tufts also pulls from across the country and internationally as well. Educational media has written extensively about how this year’s Tufts freshman class is the most diverse in its history. Additionally, the school has grown in popularity such that they couldn’t even predict their own melt - and have a freshman class 20% larger than anticipated. There is no typical Tufts profile, Tufts has intentionally built a mosaic population.

Stereotypes that ring true: There are only two observations that I think are accurate are (1) the particularly high level of creativity and self confidence among their undergrads. As has been noted,
Tufts draws an abnormally large number of students from their ED pool - these are kids who know they want to be at Tufts. Contrary to the misinformation, there are few students at Tufts who wish they were at Harvard or MIT. Brown, maybe - but those aspiring but not making it to Harvard and MIT don’t end up at Tufts. (2) the student body is affluent. While it is true the student body is becoming more economically diverse, the school simply doesn’t have the resources to be need blind. They’ve also invested heavily in infrastructure and programs and their tuition reflects it. Those who can pay full freight do. Those who cannot are admitted as resources allow - funds generated from the full pay families.

Rankings: finally the topic everyone loves to harp on - Tufts’ ranking. Again we need to remember the disproportionate number of students who are accepted off of an ED application. They - and quite honestly most of the other matriculated students as well, couldn’t care less about Tufts’ rankings. The obsession over them is from those who never had a chance of admissions to the school with an ax to grind.

I’ve had two kids at Tufts and have known many over the past 8 years who have attended. It is not a school for everyone but a bast majority of those who attend are enthusiastic about their choice and speak highly of their experience. In the end, that’s all that matters…

I find all this Tufts being WASPy, non-Jewish discussion to be strange. It's been ages since I was an undergrad/recent grad in Boston, but all my HS friends that went to Tufts were Jewish, so were the Tufts friends I met travelling in Europe the summer before junior year, and the Tufts grads I met at my Boston-based job after graduating. I didn't know a single "WASP" at Tufts. And all of these friends partially chose it because they felt the Jewish community there was robust enough that they wouldn't be alone. I never heard a single complaint.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Tufts's peers are New York University, University of California Santa Barbara, University of Florida, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and Wake Forest University. If you think those schools are only a little step below the Ivy League, well... OK then, have at it.

Honest question. How many kids who applied to the University of Florida or Santa Barbara apply to Tufts or even visit and vice versa? These rankings create really odd “peer” groupings…

If you’re thinking more vibe-wise, Tufts is probably peers with schools like Denison, Skidmore, U of Rochester, BC, W&M, Brandeis and Tulane. I’d also throw in UNC and Wake Forest from the previous list. And many kids probably do apply to both NYU and Tufts.

Brandeis, UNC, Tulane, Denison, Tufts and Wake Forest have the same vibe?

Maybe some kinds of classes are similar, but, in my opinion:

- Tulane has big-time basketball, hurricanes, and students who’ve made existential choices about drinking.

- Tufts and Brandeis are hyper-serious humanities-oriented schools near Boston. But Tufts has a whiff of old-time WASP flavor, and Brandeis has a secular Jewish flavor.

- UNC is a serious school with serious sports and deep roots in North Carolina. But it’s as deeply, mournfully Old South as you can get. Some of the alumni must have died in battle with alumni from Tufts.

- I’ve never been anywhere near Wake Forest, but it sounds like it must be a sober, moderate, business-like place with a much different, less conflicted relationship with the Old South than Tulane or UNC.

- All I really know about Denison is that it’s been spamming high school kids for at least 40 years. But, however lovely Columbus, Ohio, might be, I don’t see how a school 25 minutes from Columbus can have anything like the same vibe as Brandeis or Tufts.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Don’t go there if you are Jewish. Lots of antisemitic and anti Israel incidents. I wouldn’t be caught dead there.

I googled it.

It looks like there was an incident in 2017, another this past May, though that is unclear who the perpetrator was/is, and then the silencing of Max Price. in February.

I think the Max Price case is the most troubling, because that is a silencing of a student who was doing his job under the school's constitution. The other ones, troubling, could have happened and does, anywhere. Am I missing something?

If a vocal anti Jewish presence doesn’t bother you then no.

This is one instance. Where are the "lots" in the original statement?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Don’t go there if you are Jewish. Lots of antisemitic and anti Israel incidents. I wouldn’t be caught dead there.

I googled it.

It looks like there was an incident in 2017, another this past May, though that is unclear who the perpetrator was/is, and then the silencing of Max Price. in February.

I think the Max Price case is the most troubling, because that is a silencing of a student who was doing his job under the school's constitution. The other ones, troubling, could have happened and does, anywhere. Am I missing something?

If a vocal anti Jewish presence doesn’t bother you then no.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For what it’s worth, at my NYC intense prep school everyone knew about Tufts and it was considered a little step below Penn and Cornell. No one had heard of Carnegie Mellon. Not that that should matter and CMU is a great school but people are oversestmsting the respect it gets in NE circles.

Was this in the 70s? There are significant perception differences between the schools. CMU is considered intense and one of the most challenging schools in the US, Tufts is a solid school that has the reputation of being kind and gentle and having really nice students. Completely different vibes.

Agree with this assessment. Have a kid at Tufts and a good friend of his from HS is at CMU, pursuing similar majors. Very different environments. CMU is intense, noticeably more so than Tufts. As the previous poster indicated, Tufts kids are a friendly, outgoing, social bunch (to the extent one can make broad characterizations). In terms of engineering, CMU is certainly a cut above Tufts in terms of reputation and rigor. But if you are looking for engineering in a liberal arts setting or vibe, Tufts is a better fit.

Anonymous wrote:For what it’s worth, at my NYC intense prep school everyone knew about Tufts and it was considered a little step below Penn and Cornell. No one had heard of Carnegie Mellon. Not that that should matter and CMU is a great school but people are oversestmsting the respect it gets in NE circles.

Was this in the 70s? There are significant perception differences between the schools. CMU is considered intense and one of the most challenging schools in the US, Tufts is a solid school that has the reputation of being kind and gentle and having really nice students. Completely different vibes.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Tufts's peers are New York University, University of California Santa Barbara, University of Florida, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and Wake Forest University. If you think those schools are only a little step below the Ivy League, well... OK then, have at it.

Honest question. How many kids who applied to the University of Florida or Santa Barbara apply to Tufts or even visit and vice versa? These rankings create really odd “peer” groupings…

If you’re thinking more vibe-wise, Tufts is probably peers with schools like Denison, Skidmore, U of Rochester, BC, W&M, Brandeis and Tulane. I’d also throw in UNC and Wake Forest from the previous list. And many kids probably do apply to both NYU and Tufts.

Helpful. Thanks!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Tufts's peers are New York University, University of California Santa Barbara, University of Florida, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and Wake Forest University. If you think those schools are only a little step below the Ivy League, well... OK then, have at it.

Honest question. How many kids who applied to the University of Florida or Santa Barbara apply to Tufts or even visit and vice versa? These rankings create really odd “peer” groupings…

If you’re thinking more vibe-wise, Tufts is probably peers with schools like Denison, Skidmore, U of Rochester, BC, W&M, Brandeis and Tulane. I’d also throw in UNC and Wake Forest from the previous list. And many kids probably do apply to both NYU and Tufts.

Anonymous wrote:Tufts's peers are New York University, University of California Santa Barbara, University of Florida, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and Wake Forest University. If you think those schools are only a little step below the Ivy League, well... OK then, have at it.

Honest question. How many kids who applied to the University of Florida or Santa Barbara apply to Tufts or even visit and vice versa? These rankings create really odd “peer” groupings…

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I went to Harvard undergrad and Tufts for grad school. There was this weird saying about how the cannon on Tuft’s campus was aimed at a “certain nearby college.” So that was…telling.

No Harvard undergrad thinks about Tufts EXCEPT when deciding where to apply for grad or medical programs. Then we are all over it.

The undergrads I met there were smart, hardworking, nice. Just as smart as my Harvard peers. But I think it’s very hard living in Harvard’s shadow and feeling like you’re the less attractive sibling.

I loved my time at Tufts. If I had to do it all over again, I’m not certain I’d choose Harvard again as an undergrad. I think I would have enjoyed Tufts more.

"The [Tufts] undergrads I met there were smart, hardworking, nice. Just as smart as my Harvard peers."

Never heard that before. Maybe a small sample size.

I’m the PP who said the undergrads were on par w/ Harvard’s. I was a TA so I had interactions with many students. These are my personal opinions, naturally. I loved both institutions for different reasons. But I do think I would have liked Tufts as an undergrad. The students there typically worked more collaboratively and cooperatively as opposed to generally competitively. That would have been a better fit for my personality. I honestly felt the students were as smart. Some did the reverse and went to Harvard for grad school.

The big difference is Harvard opens more doors. Its brand recognition is undeniable. But that’s a separate issue. When I tell people I graduated from there they automatically seem to look at me differently.

This was posted on another thread, but is an interesting metric

Anonymous wrote:40-year ROI tiers:

$2 million: Stanford, MIT
$1.9 million: Harvard, Babson, Georgetown
$1.8 million: Harvey Mudd, Penn, Caltech
$1.7 million: Yale, Columbia, Duke, CMU, Georgia Tech
$1.6 million: Lehigh, Princeton, Notre Dame, Cornell
$1.5 million: Washington & Lee, Villanova, Dartmouth, Tufts, USC, Case Western, Claremont McKenna, JHU
$1.4 million: BC, Vanderbilt, Northwestern, Holy Cross, UChicago, GWU, Bucknell, Cal Poly, Lafayette
$1.3 million: Rice, Northeastern, Berkeley, Brown, Drexel, Emory, Michigan, Bowdoin, Amherst, Trinity, UMD, Colgate, Union, U of Richmond, Virginia Tech, Pepperdine, UCLA
$1.2 million: UIUC, BU, UVA, Wake Forest, Baruch, UCSD, BYU, UWashington, Wellesley, George Mason, UC Irvine, Hamilton, Syracuse, UT-Austin, Pomona, UC Davis, SMU, Rochester, Davidson, William & Mary, Stony Brook, UConn, Texas A&M, UMiami, Colby, Haverford, Williams, Delaware, Rutgers, U of Baltimore, NYU, Florida, Bates, Barnard
$1.1 million: AU, Franklin and Marshall, Middlebury, UNC, Purdue, James Madison, Wisconsin-Madison, Fordham, Swarthmore, UC Santa Barbara, Dickinson, UIC, Brandeis, Yeshiva, Gettysburg, Utah, Michigan State, Bryn Mawr, Clemson, Vassar
$1 million: U of Rhode Island, Minnesota, Connecticut College, Wesleyan, U of New Hampshire, Carleton, Georgia, UPitt, UMass-Amherst, Colorado-Boulder, Temple, CCNY, Wofford, Furman, Hampden-Sydney, Indiana-Bloomington, U of Kansas, Elon, Occidental, Baylor
900k: Howard, Arizona, Auburn, Skidmore, Grinnell, Denison, Oklahoma State, Kalamazoo, U of Vermont, U of Nevada-Las Vegas

.

My Jewish DS is there and it seems like a supportive community. There are incidents there but there are everywhere.

Anonymous wrote:Don’t go there if you are Jewish. Lots of antisemitic and anti Israel incidents. I wouldn’t be caught dead there.

I googled it.

It looks like there was an incident in 2017, another this past May, though that is unclear who the perpetrator was/is, and then the silencing of Max Price. in February.

I think the Max Price case is the most troubling, because that is a silencing of a student who was doing his job under the school's constitution. The other ones, troubling, could have happened and does, anywhere. Am I missing something?

Don’t go there if you are Jewish. Lots of antisemitic and anti Israel incidents. I wouldn’t be caught dead there.