Travel With Teens and Tweens

Hobart and William Smith Colleges rolled out the welcome mat during our early November visit.  Lake Seneca sparkled in the background during the admissions information session, the 195-acre campus sported green grass and lovely foliage, and our student tour guides went out of their way to answer our myriad of questions.  It was one of the most energetic and useful tours we have taken. After visiting  a dozen colleges that each promise to deliver a life changing educational experience it is easy to get a little jaded.  Hobart’s student tour guides quickly overcame our doubts by exhibiting genuine enthusiasm for their studies, professors and the college community.  Where some tour guides seem to walk through the script, our two guides were clearly engaged. The coordinate colleges share the theme of Community, [...]

Wheaton College in Norton, MA is a four-year liberal arts college serving 1600 students on a 400 acre campus in the suburbs of Boston, MA and Providence, RI.   Once an all girls school,  Wheaton went co-ed in 1988.  The school offers small classes and 150 dedicated faculty members who go out of their way to get to know the students.   On campus housing is available for all 4 years.  Many students study abroad at some point in their Wheaton career. In recent years, Wheaton has made it a priority to encourage students to compete  for prestigious academic awards like the Rhodes, Fulbright and Truman scholarships.  The effort is paying off with over 130 awards in the last 10 years.  We were very impressed with the energy and resources devoted towards helping students prepare to compete for these prizes. We [...]

With early action deadlines closing in we recently fit in a quick trip to Washington, DC to check out two terrific, but very different, universities.  DC is naturally high on #1 Son’s list due to his interests in politics and economics so it made sense to visit both American University and George Washington University.  For two schools located just a couple of Metro stops from one another they are as different as night and day. American University is housed on 84 sculpted acres designed by Frederick Law Olmstead.  Approximately 6,000 undergrads and 3,000 graduate students call American home while hundreds of others visit for a Semester in Washington but are housed on a satellite campus a few blocks from the main campus location on Embassy Row in the Northwest corner of the [...]