Girlie AGDee's College Search Thread

[KSig RC]

Also, if she's dead-set on an "urban" campus life (like, she actually wants to experience city life in that city), Northwestern and UChicago are notoriously NOT that, at least not in the way you might expect. Northwestern is very suburban and well over an hour away from Chicago proper via public transportation - it's very self-contained, although the campus is neat (almost to the point of "cute" honestly). U of Chicago has a long and storied reputation as a "marriage factory," with an insular campus lifestyle based around itself/students rather than going out into the city.

Obviously, undergrad is what you make it, but from friends who have attended both, that's sort of the vibe.

Similarly, Emerson is probably the least 'urban' of the Boston schools. It's a fine school, but it's very much the stereotype of "Liberal Arts" school. Again, considered to be insular* to an extent - it's a smaller campus, although it isn't far at all from Boston landmarks etc. BU, Suffolk, and even MIT/Harvard/BC (even in the suburbs) have a much more "Boston" feel. Maybe even Tufts. That doesn't mean Emerson is a bad choice - she just needs to know it's very much a small LA school, even in Boston.

With that said, if she wants an urban, liberal-arts atmosphere, she should seriously consider the Boston and Philadelphia schools - there are some fine ones that can offer her what she wants, while still having options if those wants change later.

*By way of example ... we mixed with an Emerson sorority, and they were astonished at essentially every portion of our mixer, from having a sound system to having officers with 'jobs' to perform/set times to perform them to everything being paid for. The campuses are a 20 minute walk apart, but that walk was across the Collegiate Sea, apparently. It was a fun mixer though.