College Visits

I could never have forgotten the beauty of the University of Richmond, a bucolic campus I first visited ten years ago. Emphasizing a foundation in the liberal arts, its new president, Ronald Crutcher, says that UR is a […]

*The last time I visited the University of San Diego, I toured a beautiful mission-style campus overlooking Mission Bay, and that has not changed. The emphasis is on the three Cs: collaboration, creativity and critical thinking in its […]

Ah, Cambridge. It’s the quintessential charming English town, with rambling streets filled with quaint stores, restaurants, tea shops, taverns, even a canal, with most colleges clustered in and around central Cambridge. And of course, tourists. Like Oxford, Cambridge […]

My first view of the City of Oxford, after leaving the high speed train from London, was of the place where I would be staying during my visit, a former prison located in a medieval castle that had […]

One of my most interesting academic classes occurred on the subject of writing at the University of Chicago on a visit in early March. It was a sample of the education at a college where students unabashedly proclaim […]

The student/faculty ratio is 16 to one; there are no teaching assistants; and the largest class is probably no more than 120 students (Introduction to Biology and Introduction to Psychology, for example). With only 1500 graduate students, the […]

The address is Portland, Oregon, but the Lewis & Clark campus is a beautiful, rural enclave only 6 miles from downtown. Students do use the city (there is a school shuttle). The site of a former estate, the […]

Reed is a distinctive place where the intellectual life thrives in a suburban Portland campus just 15 minutes from downtown. The campus school with a canyon in its midsection is intense academically but not competitive. Classes are capped […]

A return visit to WPI found a campus and students just as impressive as in the past with women now constituting almost a third of the population and 13% of students hailing from outside the United States. Sixty […]

Applications are increasing at Clark University, whose admission rate has gone from 77% not too long ago to 52% overall last year. Popular majors on campus include psychology (Freud lectured on campus and his statue figures prominently near […]