A Tale of Two Interviews

This, as the title suggests, is a tale of two interviews: one disastrous, one quite good.  It's a bit unfair of me to say disastrous; after doing the requisite pre-interview research, I knew for a fact that I was not going to Reed College.  Their Physics and Religion departments leave a bit to be desired.  But even setting that aside, the interview was pretty bad.  But I'm getting ahead of myself...

Preparing for the Interview!
A vital part of any college admissions interview is preparation.  At the very least, you need to know the goal of the interview.  So far I've only done admissions interviews, so they've all been evaluative; the people I've talked to are trying to figure out if I'm the right fit for their respective colleges.  Interviews come in one other flavor: informative.  These are more for the student to figure out if they're the right fit for a given school on their own.  These interviews, from what I can tell, are usually administered by alumni.
But there's so much more to prep.  Firstly, know thyself.  Seriously.  I went through my life story and reminded myself how awesome I am.  Ostensibly, this is to prepare you to answer questions like "what are your academic/extracurricular passions?" and "how do you see them extending through your college experience?" but this step is also a nice ego boost, which - if you're an anxious wreck like I am - is really nice to have.
Secondly, know thy school.  Mostly, go back through the books and read up on the numbers.  You don't want to be asking about class size or about how many books are in the library.  That shows you're not engaged in the school and, quite frankly, makes you look a little silly.  Prepare some decent questions about the school.  Mine are:

• What is your study abroad culture like?
• Did you attend [insert college/university here]?  If so, what did you like most/least about your experience?
• If not, from an administrative perspective, what do you like most/least?
• What was the most controversial issue on campus this year?
• If school is urban: What is your relationship to the city you are located in/near?

They show preparation and interest while being useful.  Personally, I like to know the answer to the first and last questions already so I can pay attention to how the interviewer answers the question.  For example: with regard to the urban question, I know I want a school where the campus life is focused on campus.  If the interviewer stresses the proximity of the city too much, it's a warning sign for me.  But I'm a little crazy, so there's that...

The Interview!  Reed College
Reed was my warm up interview.  The representative of the college: Crocket Marr (I got his name wrong on my last post).  I managed to avoid calling him by name for the entire interview, so I think that was a note of success.  All in all, it was kind of a weird interview.  Of the 45 minutes I got to spend with him, 20 were spent talking about neutral hydrogen transfer and radio astronomy (both very interesting topics but not particularly relevant to the focus of the interview), another 15 were spent reading his senior honors thesis on Plato and Egyptology, and 10 were spent talking about Reed College.  I know I did not come away from the experience any more informed, and I'm pretty sure he didn't either.  Note to self made: try not to mention anything too interesting that I've done until later in the interview.  I'll call it a mitigated disaster and move along.

The Other Interview!  Swarthmore College
This one went a lot better.  Of the hour, Ruby and I did not get heinously off topic.  This was a plus.  We had a lovely conversation about religion, astronomy, stage tech, grammar, historical context for literature, fencing, and sororities.  All in all, very useful.  Swarthmore stays very true to it's Quaker roots, which is one of the things I love about the campus.  I always leave wanting to create world peace.  30 minutes on the New Jersey Turnpike usually cures me of that desire, but it's the thought that counts.  In any event, Swarthmore is incredibly inclusive.  This manifests itself in a particularly interesting way in their attitude toward their club fencing team and toward sororities.  Swarthmore's Fencing team is ridiculously good.  But they're not varsity. They're a club team, and they plan on staying that way (as far as I can tell from the interview).  The team benefits from very serious fencers, but novices can pick up a blade for the first time and join the team if they are so inclined because it's a club team.  Becoming a proper varsity team would require a degree of choosiness with regard to skill level, and that's just not the Quaker way.  Similarly, in the 1930s, Swarthmore abolished it's one sorority because that particular organization had a policy against admitting Jewish students.  The administration realized that didn't jive with the college's values, and sororities haven't had a presence on campus since then.  However, they're revisiting the issue now because there's a certain degree of curiosity in the student body.  There are two fraternities on campus and about 6% of guys participate; and the girls realized that, if they were inclined to join a greek organization, they had no outlet.  Because of this discussion on campus, the administration has decided to allow one sorority on campus starting next spring.  Clearly, the interview was informative.  All of that was completely new information for me (check here for my previous impressions of Swarthmore).  So total success.

I have interviews with Washington and Lee and The University of Chicago scheduled for September, so look forward to those posts.  I'm leaving for various foreign countries tomorrow and I will be without internet; so look forward to a whole mess of blogging the day I get back.

Actual Final Visit

Remember how I said I had finished the college visit circuit? I lied.

Yesterday my dad and I drove into the City (which is to say New York City) for an info session and tour of Columbia University.  Now I know Columbia is a good school.  That's just a fact.  But it's also not for me which is kind of unfortunate since I know some really cool people who go to Columbia or who are starting there this year.  Que será, será I suppose.

I am relatively confident I have not met "the one" quite yet, which is to say that I have no idea if and where I might apply Early Decision.  Early Decision is kind of scary because it's legally binding.  My college counselor told me that, as the weeks progress here in September and the beginning of October, some schools are going to re-rank themselves as I figure out what I really want out of a school.  After my Columbia visit, I know there's one major thing that would make me simply say no to a school: academic rigidity.  I know that, at the very least, I want to study Religion and Astronomy.  I can't go to a school that's going to lock me out of certain classes.  The way Columbia's core curriculum works, Columbia prescribes about 6 classes that you will take at certain times.  I am not willing to sign up for that.  On a semester system in which an average student takes 4-6 classes, I am not willing to blindly give up one of my classes to the core.  Don't get me wrong, I like distribution requirements.  I also probably wouldn't function well at a school like Brown where there are no Distribution requirements whatsoever.  But I know I don't want to be told what classes to take when; that reminds me too much of my high school experience.
There is, however, one requirement at Columbia that I think is pretty cool: swimming.  Back in Alexander Hamilton's time (he's an alum of Kings College, which became Columbia), there was a minor concern floating around that the British might invade.  Completely unfounded, right?  Anyway, the college decided to add a swimming requirement to their core curriculum that would mimic the distance across the Hudson River to New Jersey.  If the British did in fact invade, Columbia students would have to be able to swim to safety.  More recently, the students of the Engineering college pointed out that they wouldn't have to swim because they would build a boat or a bridge or a catapult or something in real time so the engineering students don't actually have to pass the swimming requirement.  Personally, I think they should have to pass a time trial for catapult design to prove that they wouldn't need to swim, but that's neither here nor there.

Today I'm gearing up to take the next step in a college courtship: interviewing. I'll be heading into the City later on to meet with Crockett Marrow, the assistant dean of admissions at Reed College.  This is the one school I haven't actually visited in person, simply because of distance, so I have a lot of questions prepared for Crockett (I don't actually plan to call him by his first name; I just think it's hilarious that he's named Crockett).  We'll see how it goes...

Final First Visits

Today I ostensibly finished visiting the colleges and universities on my list that I'm seriously interested in.  The only two schools that remain are Reed (which I will very likely not be visiting because of the prohibitive distances between Harrison, New York and Portland, Oregon) and Columbia (which is literally 45 minutes away so I can really decide at the drop of a hat to go).

My dad and I started the day off at Skidmore in Saratoga Springs, NY.  It's waking up at 4:30 to drive upstate that reminds me that the state I live in is actually quite large.  Three hours on the dot later, I was in the middle of opening day at the Saratoga Race Track and about 15 minutes later I was at the admissions building.  Skidmore is an incredibly welcoming campus.  It says something about a school when someone tweets back at you to welcome you at 7:26 AM in the middle of summer.  Skidmore did that.  It was nice.  They also seem dedicated to bringing you resources at Skidmore.  Of course they participate in the Interlibrary Loan System (like every college), but they also make it doable to get a non-Skidmore study abroad program vetted and approved.  Our guide was working with the administration to get a U of Chicago program approved so that he could study history in Istanbul for the fall of his Junior year.  Generally speaking, they're a very encouraging and welcoming bunch.  Facilities seemed modern and clean (by contrast Colby's labs seemed a little dingy and Bowdoin reminded me of a horror movie insane asylum in its architecture) and rooms looked comfortable. Skidmore meets basically all of my criteria for a college/university.  Is it at the top of my list? Probably not.  I think I would be very happy at Skidmore, but it seems to lack some major resources.  For example: a Middle Eastern Studies professor.  Our guide said that the college was working on getting one since it's such a popular field of study, but it strikes me as odd that there wasn't already someone with that focus on the faculty.  It's little things like that.  But like I said, I think I would be very happy there.  It's very welcoming and encouraging and seems to have a good attitude toward it's students.

My dad and I also visited Williams.  These campuses could not have been more different.  We essentially made this trip out to Williams as a favor to my mother who has not been able to join us on any tours because she heard the campus was pretty.  Which it is... kind of; the Berkshires are beautiful, Williams not quite as much.  The campus gives off a cold, competitive vibe that could not have stood in starker contrast to Skidmore. Even with no people on campus in the summer, Skidmore was a more welcoming campus.  Williams still had a bunch of students, but it seemed somewhat hostile.  While I admit it might have had something to do with our catty, preppy guide, I basically stopped listening to her after 15 minutes and still felt ill at ease.  She actually described the typical Williams student as an aggressive, over-achiever.  I consider myself an achiever, but I would not consider myself an over-achiever.  I do not achieve for the sake of achieving.  I do what I do because I like it and because I am interested.  I'm not the kind of person to join 20 clubs to put them on my college app.  That's more or less how a typical Williams student was described by our tour guide.  I think that's a little unhealthy.  There's no denying the cachet of Williams.  It's a very good school.  But it's so combative.  Most of the school's I have liked have described themselves as collaboratively excellent.  Williams is cut throat.  You can feel it in the campus.

So that's it.  18 Campuses later, I get to start filling out the common app on August 1 when it opens for the 2012-2013 season.  Fun fun...

Waterville and Medford

In case you're wondering, my dad and I did actually make it from Colby to Tufts in time for tours at both. The answer to your next question is yes, we are completely insane.

Colby was nice.  I really can't say much more than that.  It seems like a perfectly pleasant place to go to school.  Class rooms look nice; buildings look older but not so old that they look like they're falling apart; and housing is apparently good.  Like Bates, Colby provides almost entirely Cross-Sectional housing with the exception being some senior-only apartments.  My concern is really only their obsession with environmental sustainability.  Those of you who read this blog will be familiar with my High School's commitment to empowering women (for those of you who don't, I refer you here, here, and here).  Similarly you will be familiar with the fact that I have gone to the same school since Kindergarten and have been told to be empowered every step of the way (see: 4th grade project on important american women before 1850.  Looking back on it, that project taught me a lot; specifically how to cobble together a research paper with zero resources available).  Colby kind of takes that attitude toward environmentalism.  Don't get me wrong, I like breathing clean air and not dying of heat exhaustion in February, but any topic that is treated the same way my High School treats empowering women will get under my skin.  That's really my only major concern.  Flipping through the course book, I was not disinterested in any of the courses and the people we saw there at 9:00 AM on a Friday during Summer Break seemed happy to be there (they were mostly there because they were tour guides or because they were doing research).  So as I said, Colby was nice.

We did have to leave the tour a little early to get to Tufts, but I really don't think I missed anything and I think it was totally worth it.  Tufts is located in Medford, MA a suburb of Boston and treats the City in exactly the way I like an urban/suburban school to treat a city: it's there if you want it, but there's always plenty to do on campus.  Tufts really was a great experience.  My tour guide happened to be a religion major and he spoke very highly of his experience in that department and of the advising process that brought him to his major.  He also spoke very highly of the performances that the school puts on throughout the year, but - when he found out that I was interested in theatrical design - introduced me to another guy in the tour guide group who works very closely with the theater.  Cole, the other guy, showed me pictures of past shows that he had worked on and ones that he hadn't, which was really nice for me to see.  As he said, if you can design lights for theater in the round, you can design lights anywhere.  Housing at Tufts is different from the ME schools I looked at in that it is only guaranteed for 2 years, but our tour guide said that getting off campus housing isn't too difficult and the university will help it's students out.  He also featured Tufts' theme housing on the tour, which wasn't really mentioned much on the ME tours; if you so desire, you can live in a Spanish Language house, a LGBT house, or a house with basically any other common interest.  Our tour guide had a friend who spent a semester in the Russian Language house to prepare for a trip abroad, which is pretty cool.  All in all, Tufts was really cool.  Everyone there seemed really happy and I could not foresee any problems for me with the school itself.

Boston is another matter.  My dad and I have both have a pretty good sense of direction, but Boston confounded both of us.  Never had I seen an intersection with two "One Way" signs facing each other but I was treated to that sight a number of times in Cambridge. Honestly, the place was designed by a drunken monkey.  Every suburb has it's own Harvard Street and none of them intersect.  Our plan was to drive by Harvard and MIT just to look at the buildings, and we managed to drive by Lesley, Harvard,  and Boston University.  MIT was hidden within the terrifying maze that is Boston urban planning.  My dad and I did get to take a picture in front of the sign that says Harvard Law School, which was awesome.  For those of you who don't know why this is funny, watch this.  Now.  Anyway, I cannot emphasize enough how stressful it is to drive in Boston.  If I end up going to school there, I know I won't have a car, but I feel like walking or biking would be stressful in that city.

So that's the trip.  I have three schools left on my list that I'm seriously interested in, so look forward to three more of these "first visit" posts, but I'm getting closer and closer to revisits, overnights, and class auditing at the schools I liked.  Look forward to that I guess.

Hey World, I'm in Maine. Thought You Should Know

The title pretty much says it all, save for the reason I'm in Maine.  I'm visiting more colleges.  Yay!

After driving up to ME from Harrison, NY (which is a bit of a drive), my dad and I hit Bates College for their 9:30 tour.  Bates doesn't do info sessions this time of year, which is just fine with me because at this point they're all starting to sound the same.  I liked Bates a lot.  It is warm (even thought I needed a real jacket in June) and friendly and welcoming and self-contained.  They really want you to be a part of their community.  They also offer really cool housing opportunities.  Almost all of it is cross sectional (Freshman through Seniors mixed together) and they offer the opportunity to live in proper houses with about 20-30 of your classmates; this gets a big thumbs up from me because it's nice to have friends of all ages.  They also have an unlimited dining plan and 64 different types of cereals of which they have 32 in rotation at any given time.  If you want to, you can eat all 64 different types of cereal in two weeks.  I also loved looking through their course catalogue.  One class in particular sticks out for me, but they all seemed really interesting.  The one in particular that I am just dying to take is one that combines Physics and Religious Studies to look at the origins of the universe.  Awesome or awesome?  I will end up double majoring because I'm interested in too many things and Bates really seems to encourage that.  The offer lots of interdisciplinary opportunities and they encourage you to combine in any three ways majors, minors, and what they call General Education Concentrations which is basically a minor lite.  These are all wonderful wonderful things that make me want to dance ridiculously with joy.  Also my tour guide - Jonathan, a theatre/rhetoric double major - hollered at me as I was walking back to my car "I really hope you come here".  And I do mean hollered; he basically yelled across a quad, which I think speaks to the inclusiveness of the campus.

On the flip side, about 25 minutes away in Brunswick, ME is Bowdoin college.  Some people talk about "the feeling" when they walk onto a campus of knowing they will go there.  I had that feeling in reverse at Bowdoin.  The people seem nice enough and it had actually warmed up by they time I got there but all in all the buildings gave me the feeling of being in a horror movie psych ward.  I had Zero interest in anything in the course catalogue - to be perfectly honest, everything in there read like a gender studies class and they only had one class on theatrical design which, in my book, is a bad sign - and the literature seemed cold and uninviting.  I'm sure it was just fine for Hawthorne, Chamberlain, and Longfellow but it is so not for me.  It gave me the feeling of wanting desperately to be a big university even though it wasn't.  I like my schools to be themselves and Bowdoin certainly was putting up a front.

So today was definitely a productive day.  Tomorrow I'll be visiting Colby and maybe, just maybe, making it down to Tufts in Massachusetts for a tour and info session.  That'll be a little tight and a little psychotic but why not try, right?

Yes and No

It's awesome when you can drive twenty minutes between schools and go from one extreme on the spectrum of interest to the other.  It really makes you value the schools you're interested in that much more.

Since my school called a "snow day" (we haven't had any all year so we had a day to burn), my dad and I hit the road to two of the schools I'm interested in that are within driving distance: Haverford and Swarthmore in Pennsylvania.  In my opinion, they are as different as night and day.

Haverford says no.  It is incredibly difficult to double major according to the students there.  It is very difficult to find a study abroad opportunity outside of those the college has vetted (the college itself does not sponsor any abroad programs).  The students begrudgingly chain themselves to the library desks come finals week with dreams of being in Philadelphia since there is apparently not enough to keep students on campus.  If the college does not have a resource you are looking for, they will ship you off to one of the Quaker Consortium schools (Bryn Mawr, Swarthmore, and UPenn in that order of likelihood).  There are all kinds of things wrong with that.  If I wanted to go to Bryn Mawr, I would apply to Bryn Mawr; but I don't, so I won't.  I will apply to a school for the resources they offer, not for the connections to other colleges with those resources.  They are academically stringent without the resources to support it.  On the plus side, the campus is beautiful.  It's a nationally recognized arboretum.

But if you want a nationally recognized arboretum coupled with a positive experience, I would suggest you drive 20 minutes to Swarthmore College where the people say yes.  Yes, double major!  Yes, find the opportunities that best suit you!  Yes, willingly study because when you're a freshman you can have the department heads as your seminar teachers!  Yes, party on campus at events like Screw Your Roommate (set them up on a themed blind date where they have to find their complementary other based on costumes) or Pterodactyl Hunt (this is a thing)!  If Swarthmore does not have the resources you're looking for, they will bring them to you.  Sure students go off campus, but it's to visit the art museums in Philly to compliment an interest in art history or to go to Chester and help a struggling community.  Visiting Swarthmore makes you want to change the world.  Also, they have twice as many species of trees as students.  At Swarthmore, they do more than pay lip service to their Quaker roots; they embrace their students and want to nurture their interests across seemingly disparate departments.  They believe in activism and consensus decisions and sharing.

So, long story short, I loved Swarthmore; it was totally worth the visit.  Haverford? Not so much.

Maroon and Nuclear Chain Reactions

The final school on the agenda for my college odyssey was the University of Chicago.  As the last school, it was either in the best slot or the worst depending on whether I was exhausted and it would need to make a great impression to overcome that or I was more likely to retain my impression of it because it was the last one I saw.  I’m still not sure which was the case, all I know is that, like W&L, I want to go to the University of Chicago.

This school does not need to tout its academic reputation.  It has produced more Nobel Laureates than any other school in the country.  The Manhattan Project happened under its football stadium (that’s not a joke, there’s a plaque commemorating the site of the first sustained nuclear chain reaction where the football field used to be).  In the words of the tour guide, the professors are “wicked smart”.  However, the school does have the unfortunate reputation of being the place where fun goes to die.  Our guide is acutely aware of that: it was his house that coined the phrase.  In an ironic twist proceeds from selling SWAG emblazoned with that slogan go toward fun trips into Chicago to see stuff like Second City or theater for his house.  And he is quick to assure us that the university is working to change that impression (of course so is all the admissions literature I get in the mail from them). Of the many student run organizations, University Theater is the most popular and with all the SRO opportunities there is always plenty to do on campus.  Hell, Greek Life is even on the rise.  The University of Chicago has by far the lowest percentage of students involved in Greek Life (10-15%) but that number is steadily increasing.  And they have athletics!  They’re Division III, but they do very well.  Their Women’s Basketball team went undefeated in their regular season and lost for the first time in the Sweet Sixteen of the Division Championships.  The school also has an impressive athletic history.  Their women’s basketball team was the first to fly to an away game.  The first Heisman trophy winner was a student at the University of Chicago.  Coach Amos Alonzo Stagg was their coach for forever.  They did do away with their football program in the ‘50s, but they brought it back and they’re doing fine.  And they just built a gorgeous athletic complex.  Not that I’m much of an athlete.  I’ll probably do club fencing if anything.  But it’s still nice to see a school spending money on improving its image. 

My one area of reservation is with regard to the percentage of classes taught by professors.  At most of the schools I’ve looked at, the percentage has been in the high 90s with some schools being at 100% simply by virtue of not having graduate students around to be TAs.  At the University of Chicago that percentage was in the 80s.  Now that’s not terrible, but it’s also not great.  On the plus side, the University of Chicago mostly doesn’t have TAs. They have ABDs.  An ABD is a graduate student who has completed “All But their Dissertation”, so they do know what they’re talking about.  It’s not like you’ll see a first or second year graduate student who is less informed about their topic.  But I still have my reservations.

All in all, I think the University of Chicago is a really good fit for me.  Also, I am a huge fan of the fact that I now own a t-shirt listing all of their Nobel Laureates on the back.  

On the Waterfront

Today marked my first day in Chicago, the beginning of the end of my college visit odyssey.  The penultimate school on my list, Northwestern, was today's goal and I'm not entirely sure what to say about it.

Purely objectively, it has pretty much everything I want from a school.  Good fencing, good religious studies, good physics, good theatrical design, an active social scene centered on campus.  It's maybe a little bigger than I would like (one of the guides told a story about a girl who helped him out in a computer programing class that he hasn't seen since), but not so big that it becomes depersonalized.  Hell, a very good friend of mine is going there; the kind of friend that you would trust to recommend stuff to you.  But I can tell you that it probably isn't for me.  I was not viscerally repulsed by it within 10 minutes the way I was with UVA, but I can tell it's not right.  But I could not possibly tell you why.  The campus has great traditions and history, but none of them did anything for me.  Logically speaking, I probably could be happy there; but I cannot imagine myself on this campus.

But setting aside my disappointment with/ambivalence toward Northwestern, I had a really cool day in Chicago. I've connected through O'Hare many times, but I've never properly seen the city before today.  My dad drove me around and pointed out important land marks that he remembers from when he lived here and we got to go to the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry (MSI).  Incidentally on the same day that the Mythbusters were there.  An exhibit about their science opened up today, and I got to see the ribbon cutting.  Admittedly I could only see the shower of sparks created by the event, not the source of those sparks, but it was still pretty cool to be 50 feet away from Adam and Jamie.  Mythbusters was a huge part of my childhood, and I'm still a fan.  I think the best part of that whole experience was the fact that it was completely unplanned.  I found out about the whole thing as my dad and I were parking via Twitter (I follow Adam: @donttrythis).  I love Twitter.  MSI also has a German U-Boat, which was super cool.  The special exhibits I sought out were one on the future of manned space travel and one on the inner workings of the Internet.  Networld was somewhat underwhelming, but the Space Exhibit was super cool.  I kind of love space, so it was really interesting to see models of real things juxtaposed with clips from sci-fi imaginings of space travel dating back to the nineteen oughts.  I also happened to wander into an exhibit on inventors where I saw a car with a drag of 2.11.  For perspective, a 10-speed bike has a drag of 3.something. To sum up: I love twitter, space, and inventing stuff.

That's it. Later today I'll be heading out for some real Chicago pizza and tomorrow I'll be seeing the University of Chicago.  Get pumped for continued blogging!

Why I Probably Should't Write a Post about UVA

This is the first campus that I have simply walked off of.  This school is not for me.

I could probably end the post there, but I feel I owe it to you, dear reader, to explain myself a little better.  Firstly, it's huge.  I've been looking at schools with between 2,000 and 11,000 students; UVA has 21,000 students on campus.  That's all in round numbers, but I think the difference is significant.  That kind of number severely impacts the campus ambiance.  Which is to say that UVA feels really impersonal.  Admittedly, I had just come from a tour of Duke with a very popular freshman and from W&L where the Speaking Tradition mandates that you say hi to everyone you see; but it is still ridiculous to me that one wouldn't say hi to people.  That's just who I am and I saw none of that at UVA.  The info session leader talked about an Honor Code at UVA similar to that of Davidson, Wake, and W&L, but I don't believe that it could possibly be implemented on a campus that size.  Why?  Because people suck, that's why.  Out of 21,000 people, there are bound to be a few bad eggs that have never been caught before.  They'll get in, and they'll ruin it for the rest of us.  The info session was also really uninformative.  I sat in for 35 minutes of a 45 minute info session, and I learned nothing useful about the college.

So, yeah. That's pretty much it.  I will not be applying to UVA.

@georgeandbob

That's the Washington and Lee (hereafter to be referred to as W&L) admission office's twitter account.  Follow it.  It's pretty hilarious.

Setting aside awesome tweeting, I want to go to W&L.  That is a statement I make with one distinct reservation, but I'll get to that in a second.  First off, the campus is steeped in history.  From the little things like the fact that George Washington's original donation of $20,000 in stock of the James River Company still pays for $1.87 of every student's tuition and the plaques around campus commemorating Traveler (Lee's horse) set up and maintained by the Virginia Daughters of the Confederacy to big things like the Speaking Tradition and the Honor Code, W&L maintains it's history in a really cool, modern way.  The academics are also top notch, but that almost goes without saying.  I got the opportunity to skim the classes offered in the Religion Department (a department I am particularly interested in) and I pretty much wanted to take all of them.  They also have a strong technical theater program.  My stage tech teacher is actually a W&L alumnus, and he's awesome at tech and as a person, which is what actually steered me toward the university in the first place.  W&L is a university, but their only graduate program is their law school which only has 400 people in it; so the focus really is on the undergrads.  Everyone I've heard from has spoken to the fact that the professors and the students are really close, which is really nice.  The professors are also pretty legit themselves.  I was skimming some of the literature I picked up on the Physics department (another one of my interests) and I learned that the author of my school's AP Physics C textbook is a professor there.  That's pretty damn cool.  I also really love the campus ambiance.  The Honor Code and the Speaking Tradition are huge parts of that.  The Honor Code has its roots in Lee's declaration that the only rule of the school was that the students should "conduct themselves like gentlemen".  Nowadays, that is interpreted to mean "I will not lie, cheat, or steal" or violate the trust of the campus in any way.  Conviction of an Honor Code violation is grounds for immediate expulsion.  Clearly this is taken very seriously.  But it's not like there are expulsions every year.  The student body takes the Code very seriously and really doesn't violate it.  Which, in the grand scheme of things, means that they are decent human beings, but that's no small feat in today's world.  There's also the Speaking Tradition, which also dates back to Lee's tenure as president of the university.  It boils down to the fact that you say hi to people you see.  No matter what. Again, this probably should be considered basic human decency, but it really is exceptional that the students do this.

I could go on and on about the things I love about the campus and all the little stories about the history of the university, but I want to address one glaring "question mark" area: Greek Life.  I am not what one would consider a stereotypical sister; some people call me a hipster, but I reject labels.  Participation in Greek Life at W&L hovers around 85%.  On a campus of approximately 2,000 people total.  It's kind of a big deal.  I am assured that you're not screwed out of the social scene if you are not involved and I am assured that the sororities and fraternities are not stuck up about who's who, but still.... 85%.  That's a lot.

All in all, I loved Washington and Lee.  It's the first school about which I have actively said "I want to go here".  I embrace the trident that is the university's symbol; it's just that there is one significant pointy bit.

Eruditio et Religio

Go Blue Devils!  Tuesday saw a visit to Duke University, a fine example of gothic architecture.  In fact a very familiar kind of gothic architecture.  James Buchanan Duke was told by the Princeton Administration that he could not simply buy their university, so he went and built his own in Durham, North Carolina.  That is not something you learn on the tour; that is something you learn from an alumnus.  An alumnus like my dad.  And he is proud of it.  Which is slightly adorable.

Anyway, I really liked Duke.  We started off with a very informative info session, which was followed by a very passionate walking tour. Our guide was a freshman, so he was maybe not the best informed; but boy could you tell he was excited to be at Duke.  Personally, I don’t feel like I missed out on much because my dad was liberal with his asides to me regarding his college experience. 

But I do have to get something out of the way before I extol the virtues of Duke’s academics and athletics. Well, two somethings.

1.  They have the original lemur from Zaboomafoo.  For those of you who also grew up watching that show, you understand why that’s awesome.
2.  THEY HAVE A HOLODECK.

With regard to the second point, it’s technically an immersive virtual environment not a holographic environment; but I don’t care. Duke has a holodeck.  That makes the trekkie in me very, very happy.

With regard to less nerd-tastic aspects of the campus, I’m going to throw down a statistic and be done with how excellent the academics are.  99% of applicants to law school from Duke get in.  There is no pre-law program. I know, you’re thinking to yourselves “What is this madness?!”  Duke is just that cool.  Athletically, just Google Coach K, I’ll wait.  Note, you probably don’t have to, because if you haven’t heard of Duke Basketball you’ve been living under a rock for the past 10+ years.   When my dad went to school here, Duke was the best school no one had ever heard of.  But he was class of ’76. Things have changed since then.  Now everyone knows Duke is awesome.  A few of my friends hadn’t heard of Wake and Davidson; they had all heard of Duke.

How Much Nowhere Would You Like?

Alenda Lux Ubi Orta Libertas or Pro Humanitate?  These are the questions I pose myself.


My spring break college odyssey began with a mad dash from the Charlotte Airport to Davidson College in Davidson, NC.  This is the first degree of isolation.  It's about 30 minutes from Charlotte, which is a major metropolis, to campus, but you wouldn't know it. Which is awesome.  I flat out love Davidson.  The tour began with a visit to the Belk Visual Arts Center that emphasized the fine arts requirement.  I am not a fine artist, so I won't stress it the same way they did, but Davidson seems to take art seriously.  Also, they have an original Rodin in the atrium.  Lucky for me, this art requirement can be satisfied in the performing arts (read: with stage tech), otherwise they'd have to prepare themselves for a concentration in stick figures.  With regard to the theater, it's gorgeous.  The college itself was founded as an all-male agrarian college, and - while it has evolved in nature - it has not much evolved in size.  Davidson is tiny.  But it seems to make up for it's physical size with history.  On the "Historic Quadrangle" are the Eumenean and Philanthropic Halls, home to the literary/debate societies at the college.  They stand about 50 feet apart and debates are conducted from their respective balconies.  Allegedly, Woodrow Wilson gave his first public address for the Eumenean Society in this format.  Did I mention President Wilson went here as an undergrad?  Because I think he's awesome.  He’s up there among my favorite presidents (don’t think I’m a dork for having favorite presidents).  Anyway the next stop on our tour was a quick walk through the sciences building.  There is a lab science requirement at Davidson, but the labs are capped at 32.  There are no TAs at Davison.  Every class is taught by a professor and, because they are pretty much all tiny, the students get to develop a really personal connection with their teachers.  If you really do want to get off campus to learn, Davidson has a very active study abroad program.  The programs that the college runs itself are somewhat limited, but it seems that if you really want to go somewhere, they will find you a program that runs through another university that will suit your needs.  Also awesome at Davidson is the laundry system.  In addition to a 24-hour student Laundromat that is free of charge and wifi connected (you can go online to see if machines are available and set things up such that you will receive a text message when your laundry is done), there is a Laundry service center that will wash, dry, press, and fold your laundry for you in a few days.  Which is awesome.  In terms of application, Davidson accepts all the usual stuff and asks that you fill out a “Why Davidson?” supplemental essay.  They also ask for a friend’s letter of recommendation, which is kind of interesting.  By friend they don’t mean teacher with whom you’ve bonded.  They mean actual friend who’s a peer.  As the saying goes: show me who you walk with and I’ll tell you who you are.  To sum up the experience of the “Davidson Family/Mafia”, our guide shared with us a seriously cool story about the last time Davidson made it to the NCAA Men’s Basketball Championships.  In 2008, the Wildcats made it to Detroit and a bunch of alumni agreed to pay for transportation, rooms, and tickets for any Davidson student that wanted to go.  They bet on about 100; they got pretty much the entire student body.  But they stuck to their word and paid for everyone to go.  Which is an amazing display of school spirit, both on the part of the students and on the part of the alumni.  That, in a nutshell, is why I loved Davidson.

After Davidson, my dad and I drove another hour or so to Winston-Salem, one of three municipalities in the US that is legally written with a hyphen.  Winston-Salem is home to Wake Forrest University, the second stop on my spring break visit schedule.  Unfortunately the student body was on spring break, so we got an extra-in-depth info session and a pamphlet that outlined a self guided walking tour.  Thanks to the info session leader, I honestly don’t feel like I missed out on anything.  He did a really good job of giving us the personal experience side of the walking tour that we would have missed out on otherwise.  I think some of his enthusiasm came from the fact that Wake served as his first, first-hand experience of the states (he lived his youth in the Democratic Republic of the Congo), but he was really excited about Wake.  Interestingly, Wake does not mandate that you send your standardized test scores.  If you feel that your test scores from one Saturday at 8 AM are representative of your academic abilities, then send them in.  Otherwise, they’re more interested in your career and grades in High School.  Wake is a University - as opposed to Davidson, which does not have a graduate program - but the classes are still kept small and are still taught by full professors.  TAs sometimes run review sessions for tests, but the professors keep office hours and keep themselves available.  And I can say from personal experience that they’re a nice bunch.  Just because the students were on break doesn’t mean the teachers were.  On our self-guided walking tour, my dad and I ran into the professor of technical theater in the Wake Forest “black box”.  This is the guy that runs the side of theater I’m interested in.  I was just poking my nose into their secondary theater space, I ran into him, and he took my dad and I on a tour of the main-stage space and the shop.  He was very excited to inform us that they’ll be getting some LED fixtures for the main-stage space and are looking to renovate the theater to make it bigger.  I also picked up a copy of the student run newspaper The Old Gold & Black and was quite impressed.  They had a feature on a speaker that recently came to campus to discuss religious freedom and tolerance.  I found this feature particularly interesting because of my particular interest in religious studies.  I think I ought to start picking up more of these student newspapers…

On a more cultural note, I have learned a few things about the south:

1. 1It is not abnormal to see churches along the highway as often as you would see a Starbucks in NYC.
2. Brown Sugar and Mayonnaise go on everything

Shout out to Simplyummy in Winston-Salem for a delicious grilled cheese sandwich.  I had no idea that Brown Sugar could taste so good on a grilled cheese sandwich…

By Providence, I Find Myself in Providence

Continuing my saga of college visits, this weekend I found myself on the campus of Brown University.  Beyond that, I find myself lacking for words.  The thing is, and it pains me to say this, I didn't really like it.  Some of that may have something to do with the fact that I had the weirdest campus tour ever (more on that later), but I generally didn't get good vibes from the campus.  And it feels awful to say that because I really wanted to like the campus.  Brown has a really good Religious Studies program, and that is something that I am definitely interested in studying (my plan is a double major in RS and IR, and then go into international law if that makes any sense) so I was really hoping to like it. In any event, the campus itself was a little odd.  The students seemed all too focused; people didn't say "Hi!" to each other the way I've seen on other campuses.  It really gave the campus a cold, forbidding feel.  The architecture itself was odd too.  Most campus have one or two requisite modern monstrosities, but, generally speaking, they have a kind of look to which even new buildings conform in the general sense.  This is not so at Brown.  I wish I had pictures because all this would make so much more sense with them, but Brown's campus does not have a contiguous look and it lends a disconcerting sense of being lost to waking through the campus.  It's hard to tell where the campus begins and ends because it looks like a random collection of buildings.  I suppose it fits in with Providence the city, but it doesn't feel unified.

The campus tour matched this disconcerting sense of being lost too.  Our tour guide almost didn't seem to go to Brown.  Most tour guides will intersperse the fact based portion of their tour with personal anecdotes to make the tour seem interesting and to lend a sense of what it's actually like to attend their university.  Our guide did none of that.  Sure he threw in some interesting stories about the history of Brown, but I didn't here him tell one story about his personal experience attending his university.  He seemed apathetic and like he too was visiting the campus.  Additionally, he managed to go through the entire tour without mentioning athletics or student social life more than to acknowledge their mere existence.  Now I am by no means an athlete (in spring and fall I dance and in winter I am the captain of the Brunswick Girls Fencing team of which I am the only member), but I still like hearing about the existence of that kind of stuff.  I'm not going to join a team, but I plan on attending games to support my school.  And of course, there must have been other people on that tour who would be interested in playing sports.  Likewise, based on that tour, I have no idea what the social life of the average student is like.  I'm not talking about parties (although that would be good to know about), just basic social interactions.  I know I need a college where there is an active social scene on campus, i.e. the student body doesn't disperse into the city to entertain itself, otherwise I won't make friends.  And I'd like to make friends.  All of this is really tied into the fact that I don't think our tour guide used a single "I statement" in the entire tour, but I think the thing about the athletics and the social scene is especially weird.

All in all, I can't recommend Brown for myself.  Even setting aside the weird tour, it was objectively a little strange and just not for me.  But I have heard wonderful things about Brown from other people, so you really should go check it out for yourself.