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Anonymous wrote:When we visited Holy Cross it seemed very vanilla, like there was absolutely nothing distinctive or interesting about them. Their admissions presentation could have been interchanged with 1,000 other schools, and they made great pains to make it clear they weren’t really catholic. The whole thing was totally uninspiring.

Villanova felt like the only of these three schools really willing to acknowledge and lean into their catholic values in their educational approach.

We are not Catholic but kid wanted a values based education (in the sense that education is about preparing to serve your community). Holy Cross did not seem to offer that at all or at least far less than even many of the public schools we visited.

The First Year Experience Montserrat seminars, according to Holy Cross, "Ensures that students are engaging with serious intellectual and moral questions early in their time at Holy Cross." They talk about personal growth a lot. Not that many publics do this to that extent and require studing theology and philosophy.

Our guide characterized these an as easy A and said her group just did meditation. Descriptions of other classes felt equally not tied to serious intellectual or moral questions.

I wanted to love Holy Cross, and maybe it was just our tour guide, but from the admissions presentation to tour it felt totally cookie cutter with many, many other schools. Like they wanted to appeal to everyone and in the process lost anything unique to say about themselves.

I wonder how much the guides think they are selling that place to kids who are hoping for the least amount of engagement, while turning off people who want a profound, meaningful experience and who think that philosophy and theology class are important and not just hoops to jump through.

And it shows that you can't just go by a well crafted web page.

This is unfortunate at least as far as my non-religious kid at a jesuit (HS and) college finds the theology classes interesting and challenging. He sees them more as philosopy/history/ethics classes. And never an easy A. I have no idea if the HC guide was trying to over/under sell something or was stating an honest experience. It is inconsistent with my kid's experience, albeit not at HC.

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Anonymous wrote:Is it just the one pp who barges in on any Boston area college thread to school every one on Boston city limits? So we can only talk about BU and NEU? We all know the group of colleges others are referring to without pulling out the zip code map.
BTW, HC has a T stop which is nice.

The point is, going to BC is no more like going to school in Boston than going to Solano CC is like going to school in SF

Meant Holy Cross

BC works too. It’s not really in the city.

PP: I chuckled at this because I’ve thought this as well.

This is such a weird flex. So only BU and NEU are the only schools you’re referring to? Won’t Harvard be surprised.
FWIW, my kid’s dorm this year at BC is within Boston city limits. Last year her dorm was in Chestnut Hill. Next year she’ll likely live in Brighton — all within a mile radius.

BC is a PWI in a predominately white upper middle class neighborhood. That’s not the experience that many kids expect when they say they want to go to school in a city. Yes, think more BU, NYU, GT, Cal, USF. Diverse schools in diverse urban settings. My son selected Boston as one of the cities where he wanted to go to school, applied to BU, didn’t apply to BC.

So, no Harvard or MIT either - not Boston enough !

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:When we visited Holy Cross it seemed very vanilla, like there was absolutely nothing distinctive or interesting about them. Their admissions presentation could have been interchanged with 1,000 other schools, and they made great pains to make it clear they weren’t really catholic. The whole thing was totally uninspiring.

Villanova felt like the only of these three schools really willing to acknowledge and lean into their catholic values in their educational approach.

We are not Catholic but kid wanted a values based education (in the sense that education is about preparing to serve your community). Holy Cross did not seem to offer that at all or at least far less than even many of the public schools we visited.

The First Year Experience Montserrat seminars, according to Holy Cross, "Ensures that students are engaging with serious intellectual and moral questions early in their time at Holy Cross." They talk about personal growth a lot. Not that many publics do this to that extent and require studing theology and philosophy.

Our guide characterized these an as easy A and said her group just did meditation. Descriptions of other classes felt equally not tied to serious intellectual or moral questions.

I wanted to love Holy Cross, and maybe it was just our tour guide, but from the admissions presentation to tour it felt totally cookie cutter with many, many other schools. Like they wanted to appeal to everyone and in the process lost anything unique to say about themselves.

I wonder how much the guides think they are selling that place to kids who are hoping for the least amount of engagement, while turning off people who want a profound, meaningful experience and who think that philosophy and theology class are important and not just hoops to jump through.

And it shows that you can't just go by a well crafted web page.

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is it just the one pp who barges in on any Boston area college thread to school every one on Boston city limits? So we can only talk about BU and NEU? We all know the group of colleges others are referring to without pulling out the zip code map.
BTW, HC has a T stop which is nice.

The point is, going to BC is no more like going to school in Boston than going to Solano CC is like going to school in SF

Meant Holy Cross

BC works too. It’s not really in the city.

PP: I chuckled at this because I’ve thought this as well.

This is such a weird flex. So only BU and NEU are the only schools you’re referring to? Won’t Harvard be surprised.
FWIW, my kid’s dorm this year at BC is within Boston city limits. Last year her dorm was in Chestnut Hill. Next year she’ll likely live in Brighton — all within a mile radius.

BC is a PWI in a predominately white upper middle class neighborhood. That’s not the experience that many kids expect when they say they want to go to school in a city. Yes, think more BU, NYU, GT, Cal, USF. Diverse schools in diverse urban settings. My son selected Boston as one of the cities where he wanted to go to school, applied to BU, didn’t apply to BC.

The HC booster is bordering on being almost as annoying as the NEU booster...well maybe not that bad, but still.

Worcester is revitalised with good restaurants, minor league baseball team and nice art museum. Added plus Worcester has its own airport beats the hassle of Boston Logan.

Go with Holy Cross can’t beat the student outcomes especially pre-med. But the Harvard football team will beat HC this weekend by 40 points.

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is it just the one pp who barges in on any Boston area college thread to school every one on Boston city limits? So we can only talk about BU and NEU? We all know the group of colleges others are referring to without pulling out the zip code map.
BTW, HC has a T stop which is nice.

The point is, going to BC is no more like going to school in Boston than going to Solano CC is like going to school in SF

Meant Holy Cross

BC works too. It’s not really in the city.

PP: I chuckled at this because I’ve thought this as well.

This is such a weird flex. So only BU and NEU are the only schools you’re referring to? Won’t Harvard be surprised.
FWIW, my kid’s dorm this year at BC is within Boston city limits. Last year her dorm was in Chestnut Hill. Next year she’ll likely live in Brighton — all within a mile radius.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:When we visited Holy Cross it seemed very vanilla, like there was absolutely nothing distinctive or interesting about them. Their admissions presentation could have been interchanged with 1,000 other schools, and they made great pains to make it clear they weren’t really catholic. The whole thing was totally uninspiring.

Villanova felt like the only of these three schools really willing to acknowledge and lean into their catholic values in their educational approach.

We are not Catholic but kid wanted a values based education (in the sense that education is about preparing to serve your community). Holy Cross did not seem to offer that at all or at least far less than even many of the public schools we visited.

The First Year Experience Montserrat seminars, according to Holy Cross, "Ensures that students are engaging with serious intellectual and moral questions early in their time at Holy Cross." They talk about personal growth a lot. Not that many publics do this to that extent and require studing theology and philosophy.

Our guide characterized these an as easy A and said her group just did meditation. Descriptions of other classes felt equally not tied to serious intellectual or moral questions.

I wanted to love Holy Cross, and maybe it was just our tour guide, but from the admissions presentation to tour it felt totally cookie cutter with many, many other schools. Like they wanted to appeal to everyone and in the process lost anything unique to say about themselves.

Most families we know love the school. Great alumni connections, beautiful campus, moderate political vibe, and one of the few SLACs not located in middle of nowhere.

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Anonymous wrote:And just to help out posters: Boston area schools are BC, Tufts, Brandeis, Wellesley, Bentley, Babson, Olin, Northeastern, BU, Harvard, MiT.

Worcester has WPI, Holy Cross, Clark, Assumption, and UMass Med…

All this is true but Worcester is still awful.

I have posted before. Worcester is not awful. Except when you compare it to Boston. Worcester has a lot to offer and is a robust city. Lot better than a lot of cities near other colleges we visited.

Poor Worcester. Can’t get a break. lol.

It is better than not awful. Great restaurants, lots to do for college kids, major biotech and medical center, tons of non-profits, internships. Urban environment but way safer than DC — even Georgetown.

Anonymous wrote:When we visited Holy Cross it seemed very vanilla, like there was absolutely nothing distinctive or interesting about them. Their admissions presentation could have been interchanged with 1,000 other schools, and they made great pains to make it clear they weren’t really catholic. The whole thing was totally uninspiring.

Villanova felt like the only of these three schools really willing to acknowledge and lean into their catholic values in their educational approach.

We are not Catholic but kid wanted a values based education (in the sense that education is about preparing to serve your community). Holy Cross did not seem to offer that at all or at least far less than even many of the public schools we visited.

The First Year Experience Montserrat seminars, according to Holy Cross, "Ensures that students are engaging with serious intellectual and moral questions early in their time at Holy Cross." They talk about personal growth a lot. Not that many publics do this to that extent and require studing theology and philosophy.

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Anonymous wrote:Better academically than Boston college or Villanova, historically

“Historically” being the key word. HC has not kept up its old reputation. But if kid is looking for a good small school in Boston, then sure.

Depends on how you define “in” Boston. But I don’t count Worcester as in Boston.

Worcester is the second largest city in all of New England folks.

Irrelevant to PP’s point, which is HC isn’t in Boston. It’s 46.9 miles away in Worcester. That’s like saying Pomona College is in downtown LA (it’s actually only 35 miles away but will take you two hours of harrowing traffic to get there)

It doesn’t take 2 hours to drive into LA

Of course it does.

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Anonymous wrote:My niece was lured to HC by a full ride and the promise of a 3-2 program where she could transfer to a top engineering program after three years. I tried to talk her out of it as she had better options for engineering school, but she was stubborn and really thought she wanted a small, catholic school experience. The 3-2 program turned out to be a bait-and-switch; very few students actually transfered to the engineering school and there were like 50 of them competing for 2-3 spots. I don't know why anyone would take this over a four-year, guaranteed enginering program.

She transfered out after one year. HC was VERY small, little to no diversity, little to no opportunities for clubs, ativities, etc. Plus Wooster is a miserable town. She ended up at a much larger, highly-ranked state school and is so happy there. Totally different experience for sure which goes to show that kids don't always know what they want at 18.

Physics represents the natural major for pre-engineering and Holy Cross graduated 12 physics majors in a recent year. Based on this, it's unclear to me who the ~50 aspirants to a 3-2 engineering program might have been.

3-2 programs are a bad idea because, for happy students, leaving their home institution / alma matter a year early is difficult socially, esp. at a place where many student study abroad junior year.

It's hard to understand this when you are 50+ but friend groups are REALLY important when you are 20. Your college cohort for many can also become an important career network (though that would be unlikely going to a LAC for a 3+2 engineering program).

I don't have ANY inside info on Holy Cross, but I'd be very surprised if there ended up being 50 students who really wanted spots for a 2 year masters at Columbia. For many universities, the two year masters is a big money maker and admissions standards are not crazy. My guess is that only 2-3 went on for the masters bc others decided to stay at HC/ decided they didn't care for a masters in engineering.

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