Colleges you love?

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Laura M
Posts: 1384
Joined: Thu Apr 11, 2019 11:49 am

Colleges you love?

#1

Post by Laura M »

This is way off of any topic, but some recent comments on the WSJCC board made me think about posting this question here...

My kid is now a high school senior, and I know we're way late to the game on this, but she still doesn't really have any idea where she wants to go to college. There are so many possibilities out there, and although we've been kind of looking at schools for a year or so, I still feel like we haven't even scratched the surface. Do you have recommendations--either from your own experience or from going through this with your kids--for colleges and universities that might be off the beaten path, but are excellent? Or well-known schools that live up to the hype?

Background: My kid has very good but not top-tier test scores and GPA; she's a bit of a nerd*; she doesn't know what she wants to major in except "not engineering**"; and she thinks that she would like to go to a smallish liberal arts school***, maybe on the east coast****.

*Genetically, she didn't have a choice.
**This is clearly because her father and I are engineers. I still think she might change her mind when she figures out she's good at it.
***I'm not taking this preference all that seriously. But huge sports-focused state schools would not be a good fit, certainly.
****To get as far away from home as possible, natch.

Thanks so much for any suggestions!

Edit: To be clear, I'm not asking for comments like "I think this would be a good school for your daughter"; I'm hoping for comments more like "I think this is an awesome school, and here's why." Also, of course RPI is on our list (although under protest because of the "tech" in the name), but I'd love details or anecdotes from people who went there!
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Randy
Posts: 12
Joined: Fri Aug 02, 2019 1:29 pm
Location: Georgia

#2

Post by Randy »

Well, here's one suggestion - https://www.agnesscott.edu/about/index.html

Agnes Scott College has about 1000 female students from 43 states and 30 countries. It's located in the 'village' of Decatur (east Atlanta where Emory is). The school was well-endowed by the Coca-Cola family such that there is plenty of scholarship money available.

School life:
Our daughter is the last person you'd expect to see at an all-girls school, but she discovered that there is much interaction with all the other Atlanta colleges such as Emory, Ga Tech, and Ga State. She met her husband at a Ga Tech frat party.
The webpage says the students are expected to live on campus for all 4 years, but there are ways around that after the first year.
Decatur has a walkable small downtown area next to ASC. They have a large book festival every year in which ASC is a big part. This year Sonia Sotomayor is speaking at ASC about a children's book that she wrote. https://www.decaturbookfestival.com/

Academics:
Even though it's a liberal arts school, they do teach some science. She minored in neuro-science.
Once you're in ASC then it's easy to get admitted to a larger nearby college under their dual-degree programs. It's a backdoor way into very selective schools. She went to Emory's nursing school and so has a fine arts degree from ASC and a nursing degree from Emory. I think it took 5 years.

My favorite story about the school is its 1966 upset of Princeton in the college quiz bowl competition. You can see the whole thing in youtube. After the last question was answered and just before they went to commercial before announcing winners, you can hear the whole audience gasp as they realized who the winner was. https://slate.com/culture/2018/08/agnes ... story.html
For what do we live but to make sport for our neighbours and laugh at them in our turn?
- Mr Bennet
Laura M
Posts: 1384
Joined: Thu Apr 11, 2019 11:49 am

#3

Post by Laura M »

Randy wrote: Sun Aug 25, 2019 9:31 am Well, here's one suggestion - https://www.agnesscott.edu/about/index.html
Thanks for the suggestion! I've heard good things about Agnes Scott but I admit I'd discounted it a bit as an all-girls school. It's nice to have a new perspective and we'll definitely keep it in mind! (I like the scholarship angle :-)
jmorgie7
Posts: 52
Joined: Fri Aug 30, 2019 9:59 am

#4

Post by jmorgie7 »

College these days is over-rated. you have time. work for a year. volunteer for a year. spend the year discovering whats interesting, where the passion lies. one thing i have learned over a lifetime is that for undergrad the value of any college is not correlated with the cost of the degree. grad school is a different story, but for undergrad its less about the academics per se and more about the out-of-class opportunities to be exposed and grow.
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