(no subject)

[rivka]

U.S. News & World Report just published a profile of the college I attended. The article sounds very much like the Reed I knew, so despite the "whoa, look at these weirdos" tone, I guess they pretty much got it right.

Just saying.

Comments

[kcobweb.livejournal.com]

Hee. While my sister was at Oberlin, Newsweek ran a cover story about how it was the gayest of all gay schools (or something to that effect). One of Mom's neighbors just couldn't get over the fact that sweet lil' A___ was going somewhere like that, and managed to work in a reference to that Newsweek story in every conversation she had with A____ for YEARS.

I see Williams is #1 again this year. Just saying. :)

[rivka.livejournal.com]

I see Williams is #1 again this year. Just saying. :)

Ah, but in the Princeton Review survey of 110,000 students, Reed was #1 in "overall academic experience for undergraduates," (http://www.princetonreview.com/college/research/rankings/rankingDetails.asp?CategoryID=1&TopicID=9) and Williams was only #5. Reed was also #1 on students ignore God on a regular basis (http://www.princetonreview.com/college/research/rankings/rankingDetails.asp?CategoryID=2&TopicID=23), and... whoa, things must have changed since I went there! They've dropped to #6 on the "Birkenstock-wearing, tree-hugging, clove-smoking vegetarians" (http://www.princetonreview.com/college/research/rankings/rankingDetails.asp?CategoryID=4&TopicID=35) list. How the mighty have fallen, or at least, how the mighty have washed off some of that goddamned patchouli.

A___ will be relieved to learn, I am sure, that Oberlin was only rated 20th-best for gay acceptance (http://www.princetonreview.com/college/research/rankings/rankingDetails.asp?CategoryID=2&TopicID=24). Or at least your mom's neighbor will.

[kcobweb.livejournal.com]

I <3 that they *have* a list for Birkenstock-wearing, tree-hugging etc. That just rocks. And Oberlin beat Reed by 1 on that scale.

Only #5! Ack - how the mighty have fallen! I'm going to call the college NOW as a crusty old alum and demand that they *do* something.

The USN&WR college rankings are a bit of a joke at Williams (or used to be - I assume they still are), since we trade that #1 spot every 3 years with Amherst and Swarthmore. When the rankings came out, people would say "oh, whose turn is it this year? Amherst? (nodding) Sure."

[micheinnz.livejournal.com]

Sounds _wonderful_.

[ckd]

I'd forgotten that you went to Reed. Even given the bizarre ability of my social connections to cross-connect, I don't suppose you knew a David Reeck, did you?

[rivka.livejournal.com]

The name's not familiar. I graduated in '94 - do you know about him?

[ckd]

I'd guess 91-92; somewhere around there, anyway. Not a big deal in any case; if you had, it'd just be more of my "why does everyone I know have some connection to someone else I know from a completely different context?" conundrum.

[dafna]

Huh, I didn't know you went to Reed. Reed has always struck me as a very litmus test kind of place -- like, you can sort of tell where someone's from by what they know about it and/or think about it. When I was in h.s. in Seattle, we thought of Reed as being very snootily liberal, but that Hampshire, which is basically Reed East as far as I know, was way cool. I then met people from the East Coast who thought Hampshire was snootily liberal but that Reed must be way cool.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Do I strike you as snootily liberal? ;-)

[kcobweb.livejournal.com]

But you're from the East Coast, so you get to be way cool. :)

[dafna]

No, but I'm not in high school anymore, either, so it's sort of a moot point. But if I recall correctly (and somewhere, therealjae is snorting at that likelihood), the prejudice wasn't against Reed students so much as it was against the institution. It was very much, "that school thinks they're so hot getting all those East Coast kids to come there." In a similar way, there was a lot of anti-Stanford bias but we thought Penn was cool. And again, that was flipped for the people I later got to know who'd grown up on the East Coast.

[beaq.livejournal.com]

Yes? I like you that way. :-p

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

I'm not at all surprised to find you are a Reed graduate; so many of the most interesting people are. If not there, Oberlin. (No, I didn't attend either.)

[supergee.livejournal.com]

Reed and Oberlin are two of the few schools we Swarthmore grads don't look down on.

[firecat]

"whoa, look at these weirdos"

Like Steve Jobs?

[alecaustin.livejournal.com]

The impression I got of Reed over the three years I lived in Portland after graduating in '01 was that the current administration is trying to push up the graduation rate by admitting a more preppy student body, but that might just be a combination of Reed's higher media profile and my friends being bitter about their experiences as alumni. The administration has also done good by one of my friends who'll be filming O-week for a documentary, so I probably shouldn't rag on them too much.

I will point out that part of the reason why Reedies of my acquaintance end up migrating to academia in droves is because Reed's academic reputation is stellar, while its career services department is about as useful as a pet rock.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Well hey there, Reedie!

I'm not going to say you're wrong about the shift, because I've had no comtact with Reed in the past few years. But I will say that the belief that Reed has recently become more mainstream/lost its distinctive spirit is... pretty traditional. (Does everyone still know when the Last Year Of Old Reed was? I'd be happy to explain why it was 1990-91.) I once spoke with an alumna who'd been at Reed in the 1960s, and she told me about the overwhelming perception in that era that Reed had become a lot more mainstream since the Beat days off the 60s.

[alecaustin.livejournal.com]

Heh. No, I absolutely agree with your point about "Old Reed" stories being traditional. The seniors were telling them when I was a freshman, comparing our shiny new student center to the dingy old one I'd seen as a prospie, and I'm sure the tradition continues to this day.

If nothing else, the continued program of renovation and new construction that the trustees have been pursuing certainly makes Reed's campus *look* more mainstream with each passing year.

[hobbitbabe.livejournal.com]

That sounds really neat. Was it?

I was also really shocked by the tuition fee. Is that typical for a private institution? Do most people get some kind of assistance with that fee?

[rivka.livejournal.com]

It was. Also very very hard, but it was a great place to get an education and to figure out who I was.

Some of the things I only appreciate in retrospect. When I was a student there was a huge uproar when the Dean of Students was quoted as saying "there are no adults on campus after five o'clock." The strong sentiment among the student body was that we all were adults, capable of handling out own affairs without having any representatives of the administration acting in loco parentis. I didn't really learn to appreciate that attitude until I got to the University of Iowa, where the student body mostly saw college as an extension of adolescence. That quote would've passed completely unnoticed at Iowa.

Yeah, the tuition is shocking. It's nearly doubled since I went there in 1990-94. The majority of students then got financial aid, and I'd assume that's still true.

A statistical quirk?

[(Anonymous)]

As an Obie (AB '62) I find it amazing that I was somehow drawn to a Reed grad's site with posters from Reed, Swarthmore, and Oberlin. My mother was Oberlin class of 1936 and I went there because she had loved it so much. My niece graduated from Reed in 1995. I adored Oberlin when I was there but have mixed feelings now. First, being at a school where almost everyone was my peer or truly gifted (or was lucky enough to have gone to a top high school), I began to think of myself as below average and didn't get my Ph.D. until 15 years after my AB. (This was, of course, typical for the times for women.) Second, as a scientist, I later met many students from other (cheaper) schools who'd had a much better undergrad education in math and science than I did.

But I still feel very privileged to have had the real liberal arts undergrad experience: small college in a small town, dormitory living, four years of isolation from many real-world concerns.

Grandma S.

[patgreene.livejournal.com]

You have to question some of US News & World Reports methods, though: they have Julliard listed as being "least selective."

[orangemike.livejournal.com]

Sounds like the kinda place I should have attended, instead of Chicago. But I doubt they did much outreach to the hicks in the sticks. Hell, in my hometown you were considered an ambitious scholar if you took the ACT, far less the SAT.

What, me bitter?

[rivka.livejournal.com]

I doubt they did much outreach to the hicks in the sticks.

I'm not sure where you think I'm from. I grew up in a small rust belt backwater of a city, and of the kids who went to college, most of them went to state universities. I was one of only a handful who went to private or out-of-state colleges. Reed sent a flyer in response to my PSAT scores, like about a hundred other colleges did, and then I looked them up in the Princeton Review guide and decided to apply.

And they did, actually, strive for geographic and economic diversity. There were lots of students with big trust funds, sure, but there were also lots of students from working class homes who were the first in their families to go to college. I had a friend who was so poor that her full-ride scholarship not only paid for tuition, room, and board, but also textbooks and travel expenses so that she could go home for Christmas and in the summer.

[orangemike.livejournal.com]

I grew up in a small rust belt backwater of a city

I graduated from the only high school in a very rural county (senior class of 112). I didn't even know there was such a thing as the PSAT until I heard about it in my freshman year of college (I think you would have had to drive the 100 miles or so to Memphis to take it), so me and my kind were de-selected right there by the sent a flyer in response to my PSAT scores part; and I never heard of the Princeton Review guide until this thread started.

That's nothing against you or your classmates, Rivka; just the ol' shoulda-coulda-wouldas hitting this old redneck.

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

Mike, that particular difference may reflect time, more than class or location. If I recall correctly, you were in high school 15-20 years before Rivka. The PSAT became much more prevalent in the late 1970s. I don't know if it was universal by the mid-80s, but it was close. _The Detroit News_ had feature articles on it a few times a year, mentioning its importance for financial aid applications, interviewing nervous kids and parents and busy university officials.

[lizardling.livejournal.com]

Hee! I never knew you went to Reed -- that was one of the places that I briefly flirted with when I was in the undergrad application process. Sometimes I still wonder what might have been... ah well, c'est la vie.

Tres amusing article, too. ;D

[rivka.livejournal.com]

In my experience, Reed was painfully behind the times in the way they dealt with the needs of disabled students, so you might've chosen wisely. I can't even count the number of times I had to explain to some functionary in a college office that, no, it wasn't my or my friends' job to meet my accessibility needs - it was theirs.