College Profiles: Introduction

As Dear Daughter finds colleges that she is interested in, I am doing my own research in order to learn about the schools myself and I will post my impressions here. I probably won’t bother writing much about the Ivies, since (1) anyone reading this blog has already heard of Yale and the like, and (2) I think it’s unlikely that DD will end up at one of those schools anyway. Apart from the fact that even straight A students have no guarantee of being accepted, she seems to be more interested in attending a small liberal arts college. Recently, DD has begun saying that, much as she appreciates the phenomenal education she is getting at Elite Private School, she really thinks she wants to go to college somewhere that isn’t populated by the same type of student. What do I mean by “the same type of student?” Affluent; spoiled; sophisticated yet provincial in that Manhattan kind of way; groomed for a future in law or investment banking.

Some of DD’s best summer experiences have been on challenging outdoor programs with kids from other parts of the country. She also has a strong interest in art and art history, although she has not really been able to pursue this much in high school. She is also athletic, mildly political, studious but also very social. Though she’s popular and spends a lot of time as part of the Manhattan-private-school-teenager social scene, she does not want to go to a “party school.” For all of these reasons, she is intrigued by the idea of going to a small liberal arts school that attracts smart, studious kids who are also artsy or outdoorsy. Ideally, she would also like to go to school in or near a large city rather than a small town, though she recognizes that most liberal arts colleges are more remotely located. Though she is very much a city girl, and claims that she will end up back in New York City for the long term, she is hoping to find a school that will expose her to a broader demographic than the one in which she has grown up.

So what schools has she expressed an interest in so far? Reach Schools: Yale, Brown, Penn, Williams, Amherst. Good Match Schools: Bard, Oberlin, Macalester, Reed, Vassar, Sarah Lawrence, Middlebury, Wesleyan. Safety Schools: University of Vermont [we clearly need to expand this list]. Wild Card School: University of St. Andrews, Scotland. I will profile these and other schools in the weeks to come.