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

[sanguinity]

I went to Reed twenty-five years ago and majored in math; I know a few people who graduated in the last ten. I still live in the campus neighborhood.

Back when, Reed's math program was theoretical only; there wasn't much of anything available in terms of applied math. That was a problem when I graduated, and discovered that baccalaureate-only math jobs are for applied math, and I had none. I've since had a good chunk of applied math coursework at the masters level. Turns out, that theoretical foundation I had is utterly bizarre for an undergrad math degree; no non-Reed professor I met ever really had a solid grasp on what I could and couldn't do off the cuff. (Could: prove anything, understand the theoretical underpinnings of anything, think rigorously, correctly extend a bit of mathematics to a new application, even if the extension wasn't straightforward. Couldn't: solve a calculus problem in my head without looking up in a book the calculus-equivalent of my multiplication tables. Most of my grad-level applied math teachers thought I was brilliant, but I got caught out on a few midterms with not having at my fingertips some calculus fact that "every" math major has memorized.) My understanding is that the math program has gotten a little more traditional on the calculus front, at least, but I'm not familiar with the current program. My guess it's still more like what I did than isn't.

Concerning drugs: I never did drugs while I was there, and never felt the least pressure to do them. From anyone. Ever. In fact, it seemed to be a code of honor among the people who did use drugs to not be peer-pressure assholes about it. (Which isn't to say that they were never assholes. People who aren't sober have a way of not thinking carefully about whether they're being jerks.) It was very easy to have a social life and social circle that never had drugs in it, but it would also have been easy to do drugs, should I have wanted to. I will second the comment above about the drug education on campus was pretty usefully informative. However, I also know that at least some things have changed: back in my day, campus security considered a student's drug use no concern of theirs; nowadays, I hear they do consider it their concern, and there are infractions and disciplinary actions? (I am very much not equipped to speak about whatever that currently is; I was stunned to discover that there apparently are rules on campus now? In my day there were literally two: no guns on campus, and no walking on the roofs.)

Portland versus a college town: You know, when I was there, most people didn't leave campus very often? And I hear it's much the same now. But it's true, there are cool things to do and places to go when you want to leave campus. And it's not that urban of a city; if you want to get into the countryside, it's not that hard.

Burnout: I think the attrition rate in my freshman dorm was 50%? Partly because of money, but a lot of it was people crashing and burning academically, typically because they couldn't handle the workload. After I graduated, I read nothing but YA for a year -- I could not stomach voluntarily reading anything written at a higher grade-level than that -- and it was a year or two before I could even think about grad school.

Socially: Reed was the first time in my life that I felt at home. I went from being a freaky weirdo in my high school, to being one of the squarest, boringly mundane people on campus. Reed was where I grew into myself, and better, became happy to be myself. It was lovely. It's also where I met my wife. (In fact, I think most of the people from my freshman dorm who didn't drop out ended up marrying each other later. Seriously, there's like four married couples from a dorm of thirty people, only half of whom came back for their sophomore year.) However, I have friends who feel exactly the opposite way about Reed: it never felt like home, it was a never-ending set of social battles for them. I do know of a couple people who left Reed because the social environment didn't work for them.

...and I'm happy to answer questions, such as I can, if you or Z have them.