College Stuff! (Not for Earthling, Thank God)

[thefourthvine]

The redoubtable Cousin Z, my oldest nephew, is -- oh god oh god -- going to college next fall. He applied to many schools and got into most of them, and now, through assiduous research, careful internal debate, and, very likely, a color-coded spreadsheet with many tabs, he's narrowed down his options to Reed and Whitman. And now he's trying to make that final choice.

Z had very good experiences visiting both schools, including talking with a Whitman admissions officer who described the school in Harry Potter house terms. He also went to an accepted-students reception for Reed where he went to hide in the kitchen because people, and then so many other guests (and also the host) had the same idea that it ended up being a reception-within-the-reception for people who hate receptions, all of them hiding in the kitchen and talking about how much they wished they weren't there.

Z is a very introverted person who is interested in applied math (his intended major), Doctor Who, social justice, Harry Potter, politics, Game of Thrones, and economics. His hobbies are reading fic, playing and writing music for his cello, and spending many hours at Starbucks with his study groups. (Also making color-coded spreadsheets.) He likes both Reed and Whitman because they're smaller schools where he felt comfortable on the campus, in large part because the students seemed like geeky introverts and giant weirdos, so pretty much his people.

It seems like either school could be a happy place for him. But this is Z, so he is in hardcore information-gathering mode. He could use more data. (Z could always use more data.) He needs to know the differences between the two! Find a way to make a choice! My question for you is: do you know anything about Reed or Whitman? Do you have any experiences to relate or any data Z can gather? It would help.

Thank you!

Comments

a note by a friend

[brainwane]

A friend of mine who attended Whitman for their bachelor's says:

Reed and Whitman were also my two final choices. Similar to your cousin, I
had the impression I would have been just fine at either school, or at the
other liberal arts colleges I looked at -- they are pretty similar overall,
or this wouldn't be a hard choice. (The flip-side way to view this is that
there are no *wrong* choices.)

The deciding factors for me in choosing Whitman were:
(1) Reed offers (at least at that time) no merit-based aid, whereas Whitman
offered me a good merit aid package.
(2) Reed students seemed to be under a lot more stress, to deleterious
effect on their academic performance and personal lives. The school is
known for being rigorous, but this seemed to express itself
in eye-wideningly high rates of drug use and of students needing more than
four years to graduate due to taking a semester or more of leave to address
mental health and/or substance abuse issues. Maybe that has changed in the
17 (!) years since I was making this choice, but I don't know. But it was a
significant deterrent to me.
(3) I just liked my campus visit to Whitman more. The admissions officer
took the time to meet with me personally. I liked the classes I sat in on.
I liked the students who hosted me in their dorm overnight. I liked the
vibe of the place.

Your cousin also experienced something else about Reed, with the
hide-in-the-kitchen thing: it doesn't exactly discourage the introversion
and general weirdness of the type of kid that ends up there. The Reed grads
I have met later in life are still weird, in a harmless "wear a lot of tie
dye and Vibrams" way. Whitman made me a lot more normal after being an
introverted goth high schooler who wrote ample bad poetry in notebooks. I
started having colors other than black in my wardrobe again due to all the
free T-shirts. I view this "normalization" as a positive development rather
than something to sneer at.

And it's simply *pleasant* at Whitman, though that isn't to say Reed is
not. As said, I just liked it when I visited. Whitman is a friendly,
sporty, outdoorsy place. It rarely rains. A lot of Whitties marry other
Whitties. A surprising number of people participate in Greek life
(IIRC Reed has no fraternities or sororities). I didn't join a sorority or
turn into an extrovert, exactly, but I was happy and I was still free to be
weird via Ren Faire and Medieval Society. (Reed's "Renn Fayre" features
naked lube wrestling. Whitman's does not.)

The location may matter more to your cousin than it did to me. Walla Walla
is small and far-flung from a real city, while Portland is a real city, but
not too big, and very cool. Whitman is its own bubble of campus activities
and plays and films and frisbee golf. There isn't a lot on offer in town
compared to Portland. If your cousin wants a city, Reed is the rare liberal
arts college that's actually in one. That said, WW isn't a total podunk
town: I haven't been back to WW since 2007, but the wine boom there means
it apparently has much better restaurants and so forth than it used to
during my time there.

I hope this is helpful. I would be happy to chat with your cousin directly
if he'd like, but when I was comparing the two colleges, he was
busy teething and learning how to walk, and I haven't lived even in
Portland since he was about to start third grade, so I may not be the best
source of up-to-date information.

Good luck to him! As said, it may be that with the decision this close,
there is no "bad" choice.

I can put you in touch with my friend if you'd like to follow up!

Re: a note by a friend

[jelazakazone]

I never went to either, but this summary gives an excellent point of what I know of both schools. I think there might be a higher than avg transfer rate too, from Reed. I think if you can handle the environment, it's great, but it really and truly is not for everyone. I'm all about gentler/kinder these days. We don't need to push ourselves to our absolute limit. If it were me, I'd steer my kid to Whitman.

I have heard of both, btw, having gone to Pomona College (disclaimer, I graduated almost 25 yrs ago).