Hello! Prospie here! Why did you choose Smith over other schools? What are some things you like/dislike about the school and the school community? Favorite events that you've gone to? Academic difficulty? Anything you would change?
HELLO!! welcome to the party
this got really long so i put it under a readmore
1. i chose smith for a bunch of reasons! i outline them in this post but a lot of it boils down to: i wanted a small, liberal arts college in a smallish town in the northeast, ideally a women’s college. smith is all of those things! but then, mount holyoke and bryn mawr are also all of those things. towards the end my college list looked like: 1. smith, 2. moho, 3. bryn mawr? 4. idk bard maybe? and honestly, i could go to moho and be perfectly happy. it mostly came down to smith vs moho, and i liked smith’s housing system a lot better, and also smith doesn’t have any core requirements. so unless i major in something like sociology, i may not ever have to take another math class B^)
also you don’t have to submit SAT/ACT scores at all if you don’t want to, and since i hate the whole. standardized testing industry. with a burning passion, that Pleased me
generally the best way to pick a college, i’m sure you’ve been advised, is to figure out what qualities you want your college to have, and then find out what colleges fulfill those qualities, and then narrow those down to a more manageable list. according to my dad, the most important thing to think about when choosing a college for most people is NOT necessarily programs, specific professors, etc– it’s whether you want to live in a city or in the country, and whether you want a little college or a big university. it’s literally that. bc like, if you’re like the VAST MAJORITY of incoming first years, you know more or less what interests you, but you don’t necessarily have a LASER FOCUS on anything. pretty much anywhere you go, you will have a good and worthwhile education in things that interest you! but you can have good resources and still be fuck miserable if you go to, like, u mass, and then it turns out you want overall smaller, more intimate classes. or, vice versa, if you go to smith, and then it turns out you want to take super specific classes, like “polymer engineering: viscoelasticity” (that’s a real class at umass this semester, I CHECKED). OR, you can even have all the right classes, but it turns out you actually really hate hot weather and you regret deciding to live in nevada for four years. IT GOES ON. so: figure out what kind of environment you operate best in. is it similar to the one you live in now? maybe! not necessarily! but you should find out.
2. some things i like about the school community: I LOVE THE HOUSING SYSTEM… idk if you’re 100% aware, but basically at the beginning of yr first year you get “sorted” into a house, and then unless something comes up w you, you stay there all four years. like, you don’t HAVE to stay there, and it’s not uncommon for people to switch houses, but most people stay in their house. im pretty dang sure i’ll be staying in capen, bc i love capen w all my heart <3
also, ok, so like… for basically all of my high school career, i got used to being like… way more socially conscious than everyone else. just Knowing More than most of my classmates. like, i had a super progressive school, but the student body is overwhelmingly cishet and white and upperclass, so like… not a lot of incentive for people to go out of their box ?? so like i was one of like maybe 10 people in my grade who were like… at all Up To Speed with social shit in america. which was simultaneously a point of pride for me, and really frustrating? like yes! ask me about queer issues! i love to talk about that shit! i know all about it! but also like, it always kind of baffles me that people just… dont know… about things. like i was at Gender 500 and most people were barely at Gender 101. which isnt fair i guess?? but like. yeah. ANYWAY THIS IS ALL TO SAY: smith is FULL OF PEOPLE LIKE ME. it’s like a third of the student body is at Gender 500 and the other two thirds are in actual, literal swag classes so they can catch up. and the race dynamics at smith are a lot better than they were at my high school, i think– like, there’s both proportionally more ppl of color at smith, and also the student body is like 300 times larger so there’s JUST MORE PEOPLE OF COLOR. like still not as many as there should be but !! it’s better !! and it means that events like the sit-in can happen, and just. more people are Aware of issues of race and how they intersect w gender and class and aaa
also i just love all my friends and there’s a ton of queer people here and it’s SO NICE to not be surrounded by cis dudes all the fuckin time?????? like the only guys i interact w on a regular basis are professors and a couple trans dudes. im so on board with that.
also also, this is super duper trivial and goofy but our yikyak is super positive and good compared to like everyone else’s yikyaks. like there’s someone who posts pictures of flowers from the greenhouse every day, and someone who posts the weather forecast for the day?? how good and pure is that. i live near duke university normally and their yikyak is an awful trainwreck. i luv smith
2.5: things i don’t like about smith– i think people do get caught up in Bad Discourse– ie, “all lives matter”; the bipartisan coalition inviting liz cheney, Noted Homophobe, to campus; various bullshit things about the difference between “my right to free speech is being legally violated” vs “the people hosting this private event don’t want you shit talking it”, etc– altho that’s 1000% not at all an issue that’s unique to smith??? like honestly the Bad Discourse at other colleges is probably a million times worse
the student body’s relationship w president kathleen mccartney (kathy) is. Contentious. to say the least, and while i do think she honestly tries her best, it’s just that she can be really clueless??? ESPECIALLY abt issues of race and racism it’s uhhhhhhhhhh rough for her
3. favorite events ive gone to: well the sit-in was really really good– it was Definitely a space for students of color to be prioritized and i think that’s really important. the organizers made sure to have different events so that it was an act of solidarity to be there, but also actively productive? so there were spaces for people to speak, and caucuses where black students and other students of color decided on demands for the student body and the faculty, and white students decided on demands made of themselves (ie, “i will call out my white friends on microaggressions, so that students of color don’t have to deal with that”). it was a really good and important space made and it kind of ?? kept people accountable
also like, halloween isn’t really an event i realize, but there was a caramel apple making thing and that was fun
ALSO OMG ANDREA GIBSON CAME TO SMITH AND THAT WAS AMAZING, THEY WERE AMAZING, IT WAS GAY, I CRIED
5. academic difficulty: this one is kind of hard for me to estimate actually– first of all i’m not in Any actual math or science courses, so like, there’s that, but also i went to essentially prep school for high school?? so im not really coming into college w the perspective that most people have. BUT i know that smith is Academically Rigorous WITHOUT having a culture of grade-grubbiness or comparison?? like people don’t fall all over themselves to find out how other people did on assignments. everyone wants to do well, but it’s mostly like, “i want to do better than i could two years ago,” and not “i want to do better than other people,” u know?
the class that ive heard the most groaning about is organic chemistry which i think is probably pretty usual for organic chemistry regardless of what school you’re at lmao
in terms of the classes i’ve taken: none of them has been EASY easy, but i haven’t been swallowed by a black hole of doom and anxiety yet, so ! that’s a good sign ! i’ve mostly been in reading- and writing-heavy classes, for what it’s worth. i had 1 final exam last semester, but four final papers at 5, 4, 10, and 6 pages
6. anything you would change: hmmmm… i mean, improvements can always be made in terms of making sure everything is The Least Racist/Ableist/Transphobic/Etc Possible (hence things like the sit-in). but honestly even for all the places we fall short, smith is still a million miles ahead of A LOT of other colleges in like… Practically Every Way lmao
also i wish the dining halls would branch out a little BUT YOU KNOW… again, smith dining is a million times better than a lot of places’ dining
ANYWAY I HOPE THIS HELPED
lemme know if you get in!!! we’d obviously be thrilled to have u here B)
PS just for the sake of full disclosure: i mention race dynamics a lot in this answer but just to clarify: i’m white and so while i do my best to Not Fuck Up i’m still not at all an injured party when shitty stuff goes down?? so i try to support students of color but like– things like the sit-in are all pioneered by and for students of color and i am just here 2 support them
