Being serious for a moment, our considerations as we look into colleges for/with our DD are:

a) cost

b) academic reputation in preferred programs (tied for number one spot)

c) breadth of instructional focus (we want something broad because of DD's particular intellectual interests)

d) small size-- ideally under 5K students total

e) NON-competitive and collaborative environment-- this is critical because of DD's kneejerk reaction to that kind of environment-- she actively recoils and responds VERY negatively to people she perceives to be self-promotional, glory-chasing, insufferably arrogant gits. You know, to use the technical term.

f) NO graduate program-- or at most, an MS program. I want the focus of faculty to be on my kid-- not on the people teaching my kid.


In other words, we're actually looking for a college which is LIKE Reed, but not filled with students who feel the need to "out-compete" one another.

If we found the right regional public university program, we'd definitely do that. Touring one this weekend, in fact. My own alma mater-- which (at least in my own program) routinely sends 70-80% of its admittedly small number of graduates into tier 1 and elite graduate programs and medical schools. This in spite of being a no-name, inexpensive liberal arts college with a large focus on performance art and teaching. The STEM programs there have a reputation for turning out majors who have good common sense, are highly competent in the subject, and possess a can-do attitude in the lab. It's also not a set of programs where one can fall through the cracks easily-- the faculty really know the undergrads.


Of course, many of our criteria mean that we can't use the filters on college search sites, because what we think is important isn't readily measured. Of course. When would we do something the easy way?? smirk



Schrödinger's cat walks into a bar. And doesn't.