Both are fine schools. Very different vibes, though. Many cities in CT are sketchy. Yale, Conn and Trinity are in older sketchy cities. UConn is in farm country. Wesleyan is in a slightly sketchy part of the state and has a can't get there from here location. Connecticut really has no college towns per se.
Maybe this explain why Fairfield is getting more popular.

Anonymous wrote:trinity is known as the destination for the wealthy New England prep school kid ranked in the bottom half of their class. Most are fun cool kids who don’t prioritize academics. The comment about wall street is accurate - the kids have personalities and know how to talk to people

Well the cds says 93% of freshmen were in the top half of the class, so maybe you are completely uninformed?

https://www.trincoll.edu/asic/wp-content/uploads/sites/125/2022/09/CDS_2021-2022_Trinity_College.pdf




(and by "maybe" I mean "definitely" so maybe don't post without doing even 10 seconds of googling? Then you won't look so silly.)

trinity is known as the destination for the wealthy New England prep school kid ranked in the bottom half of their class. Most are fun cool kids who don’t prioritize academics. The comment about wall street is accurate - the kids have personalities and know how to talk to people

That’s ridiculously dramatic or no one would go there. Yet their applications are way up.

Anonymous wrote:Truthfully I think Trinity is an overlooked gem in the DMV. The northeast seems to get it more. But people here are starting to figure it out.

It’s a gem that’s superglued to a violent criminal addict. You can’t get one without the other.

Truthfully I think Trinity is an overlooked gem in the DMV. The northeast seems to get it more. But people here are starting to figure it out.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I've never been to Trinity, so I can't offer a comparison. But I agree with the PP that Conn is very pretty, and you can see the sound from the main campus on a clear day. What I will say, though, is there is not a huge amount of capital improvement going on, as far as I could tell.

Well they don't have much of an endowment. And what they have, they're spending on bribing families to come with merit aid. They are on the bottom rung of the NE SLAC ladder, and it's a shrinking region demographically. This is a college that will be struggling within a decade.

You say “bribing families to come” as if an 85k price tag is a normal, natural state of affairs. It’s not. It’s outrageous, in fact.

+1. And PP's other silly comment was that "They are on the bottom rung of the NE SLAC ladder". Criticizing them for being the lowest ranked NESCAC schools is just as dumb as criticizing Cornell for being the lowest ranked Ivy.

They are exceptionally excellent academic schools to anyone who looks objectively and does 5 minutes of research. Don't believe what you read here.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I've never been to Trinity, so I can't offer a comparison. But I agree with the PP that Conn is very pretty, and you can see the sound from the main campus on a clear day. What I will say, though, is there is not a huge amount of capital improvement going on, as far as I could tell.

Well they don't have much of an endowment. And what they have, they're spending on bribing families to come with merit aid. They are on the bottom rung of the NE SLAC ladder, and it's a shrinking region demographically. This is a college that will be struggling within a decade.

I hate to say this is true, but Union College which has a similar ranking just had a bond downgraded. Trinity might be in a stronger position due to its finance connection, but schools like Gettysburg, Conn, HWS or Union are in trouble. Kids even in the Northeast are pulling away from liberal arts colleges. Someone who a decade ago would have gone to Conn is looking at South Carolina or NC State.

My kid would never look at SC or NC State because he wanted a small school and to play a D3 sport. There will always be kids who want that. I agree the number of those kids may be shrinking, and there are some SLACs that are already struggling and will be struggling. But the top 50-75 SLACs, especially the ones in NE and NY and southern Cal, will be fine.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My godfather lived on Zion St (adjacent to campus) his whole life and when he was 72 he was mugged by his front steps and beaten to the point he was in a coma for weeks and never fully recovered. This was in 2006. I honestly don’t know if it’s better or worse in the area now.

That's horrible. I guess my question is, what about Trinity appeals to students that they're still willing to risk this?

- PP

I know a bunch of kids who went there, and none of them ever had anything happen to them. The students probably know where they can go to stay safe. It's not as though you read in the papers about Trinity kids getting murdered or having the shit kicked out of them.

Of course not. But like I said, even my child could tell it wasn't a safe area.

Its the same reason Johns Hopkins is off our list. Terrible location.

I went to Trinity. It is in a bad location - campus has always seemed safe, but even a block off campus can be very unsafe. As a result, the campus is very cloistered, which reinforces a lot of what is worst about the traditional Trinity student body.

I live adjacent to Johns Hopkins. It is in a very good location and quite safe. To say it is in a terrible location reflects either a misunderstanding of where the Homewood campus is located or a reflexive fear of cities that is not based in reality or data.

I live in Los Angeles and come from London. I love cities. That part of Baltimore, which I visited many times as a patient at Hopkins was one of the most horrific things I've ever witnessed in terms of human depravity and poverty.

The part of Baltimore where Johns Hopkins patients go is about 20 minutes away from the undergraduate campus (and it's not really that depraved, though there is crime and poverty and it's definitely not a nice area like Homewood)

DD did undergrad at Hopkins, is in grad at Yale. She loved her time in Baltimore/on Hopkins campus, despite occasional issues with the neighborhood she overall loved Baltimore. She loathes New Haven, says she and her friends experience more crime there than she did at Hopkins (break ins, being followed, harassed on the street, etc) and she says Hartford is similar. Counting the days until she can leave.

When I've visited her in New Haven I've been shocked; once you leave Old Campus it often feels like some of the worst neighborhoods in Baltimore.

I don’t think it’s that diff than Yale or Hopkins in terms of not great neighborhoods. The surrounds three blocks aren’t good. But the rest of Hartford is fine and then West Hartford is beautiful (although I know no one is walking there obv). The other thing is that because it’s in Hartford there are really good internship opportunities that make it a little different than other slacs that are in the middle of no where.

I have a sibling who went to Trinity and loved it. I visited and almost transferred out of my much more competitive school because it seemed like such a fun place. We visited when my oldest was looking at schools and the campus is still very beautiful. But a block off campus is the exact opposite.

Conn coll is kind of random, Trinity is fun. I probably fit the description of some of the Trinity haters on this thread. Grew up in Fairfield County, went to an Ivy.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I've never been to Trinity, so I can't offer a comparison. But I agree with the PP that Conn is very pretty, and you can see the sound from the main campus on a clear day. What I will say, though, is there is not a huge amount of capital improvement going on, as far as I could tell.

Well they don't have much of an endowment. And what they have, they're spending on bribing families to come with merit aid. They are on the bottom rung of the NE SLAC ladder, and it's a shrinking region demographically. This is a college that will be struggling within a decade.

You say “bribing families to come” as if an 85k price tag is a normal, natural state of affairs. It’s not. It’s outrageous, in fact.

Admission applications to Trinity specifically are way up. So not sure your trend forecast about SLACs is right.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I've never been to Trinity, so I can't offer a comparison. But I agree with the PP that Conn is very pretty, and you can see the sound from the main campus on a clear day. What I will say, though, is there is not a huge amount of capital improvement going on, as far as I could tell.

Well they don't have much of an endowment. And what they have, they're spending on bribing families to come with merit aid. They are on the bottom rung of the NE SLAC ladder, and it's a shrinking region demographically. This is a college that will be struggling within a decade.

I hate to say this is true, but Union College which has a similar ranking just had a bond downgraded. Trinity might be in a stronger position due to its finance connection, but schools like Gettysburg, Conn, HWS or Union are in trouble. Kids even in the Northeast are pulling away from liberal arts colleges. Someone who a decade ago would have gone to Conn is looking at South Carolina or NC State.

Are you in your senses? Or is it late night too much?

Here are Forbes College Financial Grade:

Gettysburg - A(3.96)
HWS - A (4.01)
Conn - A (4.09)
Union - A+ (4.32)
TrinColl - A+ (4.5)