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Bxian
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| Joined: | Sun Mar 5th, 2006 |
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Posted: Mon May 22nd, 2006 03:24 pm |
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Full disclosure-S will be a freshman there in the fall. It was the first school we visited in the fall of junior year. After each subsequent visit to other schools (15 in all, with some schools visited twice),I would ask S what has current favorite was. The answer was always Dickinson. W know of several students there, all of whom love the school.
Dickinson is located in the small city of Carlisle, PA. which is not large but has sort of a quaint old-fashioned feel to its downtown, which students can walk to. The campus is beautiful, with many old limestone buildings and a well-regarded and comfortable library. There are large red Adirondack chairs scattered around campus, and we saw students chatting and making good use of them. One negative that I have seen others mention is the fact that the campus is bisected by a somewhat busy road. This did not bother S, but might be a negative to others. It did not appear to disrupt the feel of campus life at all-but students need to be mindful when crossing.
Dickinson places a strong emphasis on study abroad and integrating an international focus into the curriculum. which was one of the things that interested S a great deal. I think that the overwhelming majority of students study in at least one country. International Business majors are encouraged to study abroad for a full year. One unusual thing we saw was that 2 years of physical education classes are required-but you can fulfill the requirement with such diverse options as rock climbing, ballroom dance or first aid.
The student body seemed to be a mix of preppy and quirky. S was delighted to see several students engrossed in a Monty Python movie as we toured a dorm. Our tour guide was from Chicago and was extremely enthusiastic about her experiences at Dickinson.
S was initially interested in East Asian Studies, which he may now want to combine with International Business. We e-mailed the chair of EAS after our initial visit. he sent a long e-mail back immediately. A couple of months later, we got another e-mail from him which provided a link to pictures of a recent Chinese New year celebration on campus. We were impressed by the fact that the professor saved our e-mail address and followed up with an item of potential interest several months after we initially contacted him.
S did a summer leadership program at Dickinson the summer after his junior year and had a great experience. He also was very excited after our first visit because he called in to answer a movie trivia question on a local radio station and won some CD's. Overall, all these quirky things have added up to "good Karma" for S at Dickinson. May the good karma continue as he embarks on life as a Dickinsonian!
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CalifCarolyn
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| Joined: | Tue Apr 4th, 2006 |
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Posted: Wed May 24th, 2006 09:33 pm |
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Thank-you. this is on our list for 'drive-by' visits in June. We will be in DC late June and will explore the general area we know that the campus will be empty but a general impression of the community can at least be obtained. My d is looking at Government, International Studies, Political Science.
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kdmom
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| Joined: | Sun Jun 4th, 2006 |
| Location: | Washington USA |
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Posted: Sat Jun 17th, 2006 12:32 am |
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We visited Dickinson on our April college tour because my son was interested in their International Business program. However, he turned out to be most impressed by the gym! In fact, during our entire nine-college tour, the only photo he took was of the Dickinson athletic center  It has a huge gym with multiple basketball courts, a viewing balcony, and a swim and dive pool, all of which impressed S2 enough to get out the camera.
I'd heard the school was mostly for fraternity-oriented "prepsters" (as my son calls them), but that didn't seem to hold up. I was pleasantly surprised to see a diverse-looking student body, and thought the overall atmosphere was pretty studious. We saw several international students (African and Asian) putting up posters for their various organizations, and the library was full of all kinds of students studying hard.
The science facilities looked good, especially the astronomy tower and physics labs. The dorm room we saw was modern and very spacious-feeling due to its high ceiling. Much of campus is made of gray brick buildings that have been around for ages. The surrounding area seems largely residential and kind of dull, but the students appear to keep busy on campus.
Our tour guide was very pleasant. He said that he'd applied to Bucknell, Schreyer Honors at Penn State, and Gettysburg, and had been accepted by all of them. He chose Dickinson for its science program. I asked him how many hours of studying he puts in outside of class, and he said about 10-12 (chemistry major). He also spends a lot of extracurricular time with martial arts and two on-campus jobs.
All in all, it looks like a friendly place -- we were impressed, and S2 will definitely apply.
(Edited because S2 pointed out that I'd misremembered the number of study hours our tour guide puts in per week.)
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CalifCarolyn
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Posted: Sat Jun 17th, 2006 01:21 am |
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we will be there next Thursday -it sounds like my D will want to tour the schol. We are also looking at Gettysburg and Goucher.
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Bxian
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Posted: Sat Jun 17th, 2006 02:42 pm |
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| kdmom-Actually, Dickinson will be breaking ground for a brand new science building (or may have already). It's funny-while my S (Dickinson 2010) fits the "prepster" stereotype, he has a diverse group of friends in HS. When we toured, he thought there was a diverse enough crowd to keep life interesting. We also both noticed lots of meeting/activity notices posted around campus. S likes cities, so I thought that he would not like Carlisle. However, he discovered while doing a Dickinson summer program last year that there is a Subway sandwich shop (one of his essential food groups ), a theatre with live performances (such as one by Gallagher, the man who smashes watermelons on tv) and a shopping complex with a Walmart and Panera all within a 5 minute walk of campus.
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CarolynLawrence
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| Joined: | Sun Mar 5th, 2006 |
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Posted: Sat Jun 17th, 2006 06:44 pm |
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Bxian wrote: S likes cities, so I thought that he would not like Carlisle. However, he discovered while doing a Dickinson summer program last year that there is a Subway sandwich shop (one of his essential food groups ), a theatre with live performances (such as one by Gallagher, the man who smashes watermelons on tv) and a shopping complex with a Walmart and Panera all within a 5 minute walk of campus.
Bxian,
I think this is a really important statement you've made - not just about Dickinson but about how many kids think the only way to have access to restaurants/entertainment/shopping is to attend a school in a large urban area. It's important for kids to understand, I think, that sometimes a smaller college-centered town or city can meet their needs quite well. In fact, there are some negatives associated with the smorgasbord that might be available in a larger urban environment: distractions from studies, higher costs, even difficulty with getting to all of the activities offered. I'm not saying that there is anything wrong with preferring an urban environment, but perhaps the real question needs to be how many diversions do you really need to be happy and entertained?
Very interesting point. Thanks for inadvertently bringing this up.
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lingsquared
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| Joined: | Sat Jun 24th, 2006 |
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Posted: Wed Jun 28th, 2006 09:31 pm |
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I've done CTY at Dickinson and just thought I'd add a couple of insights--
One year, my TA was actually a Dickinson undergrad. He'd been accepted to Yale and UVA and other "better" schools, but Dickinson had thrown a lot of $$ his way. He mentioned that the school was rapidly improving, and that the entering classes were getting stronger and stronger academically. I also have a friend who was accepted with a big scholarship and some kind of an international research grant, I think, but she eventually chose to go elsewhere. I know you can't really make broad conclusions from a couple of isolated anecdotes, but it seems like Dickinson will really roll out the red carpet for strong students, particularly those with international experience (my friend had spent a summer in Costa Rica).
Also, for future visitors to Dickinson, there is a "must visit" home made ice cream/frozen custard store by the name of Masseys. If you go to Kline, the gymnasium, and face the street, walk left for less than 5 minutes, and you will find it. Excellllllent ice cream and other frozen goodness. Mmmmm
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jocelynDAD
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Posted: Mon Jul 17th, 2006 06:43 am |
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D3 and I visited Dickinson on Wednesday July 12th. It was an Open House from 0830 to 1230. Had a short welcoming and then a Tour. It was hot and humid, but D3 was interested in spite of the weather.
I had introduced my nephew to Dickinson and he graduated in 1988, so I had a positive past impression.
The campus is lovely and I know the academics are excellent, that said the Open House was poor.
After the Tour, we were split up into regional groups so that we could meet the Admissions Counselor for our state. The 'briefing' was rather feeble with no handouts or other materials available in the briefing room. It was basically 'ask any questions you want' type of briefing. Most questions were about factual items found on the web site. No sense of the nuances or special features of the college.
They gave lunch tickets to D3, but family members had to pay $5 for lunch. It was billed as lunch with the Admissions Counselors. However, it was sit wherever and during the meal, some persons were roaming around. There was a large group of young ballet students (summer camp) in the Dining Hall. The food was terrible.
If this is a sample of the food served - well it would be a long 4 years. The Dining Hall was the primary Dining Hall of the College.
They had a 30 minute financial aid seminar, that we passed up as we were heading to Susquehanna.
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CalifMom
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| Joined: | Sat Aug 26th, 2006 |
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Posted: Sat Aug 26th, 2006 04:39 am |
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What was your impression of the safety of Carlisle and surrounding area? My daughter's impression on her visit was that the town looked run-down immediately surrounding the campus area.
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jocelynDAD
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Posted: Sat Aug 26th, 2006 05:21 am |
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It is a safe small town with older housing around the college because the houses have been there near the college for a long time. Population is stable, Location is as a far suburb of the state capitol Harrisburg, so lots of state employees and similar types locate in Carlisle.
Carlisle is near the intersection of the Pennsylvania Turnpike , and Route 83 from South and Route 78 from East so many warehouses are in the greater Harrisburg/Carlisle that gives employment as well.
My nephew graduated in '88 and town has not changed much since.
So be ease on the safety issue, Dickinson and Carlisle are stable and secure as any similar college/town. (no place is perfect, but this location is as good).
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outwest
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| Joined: | Sun Mar 4th, 2007 |
| Location: | CA |
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Posted: Mon Sep 17th, 2007 03:37 pm |
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Has anyone been to Dickinson? It is on my daughters list, but it looks like it is going to be one that we aren't able to visit until later. It would be great to hear what people think who have seen it. She is enamored with the fact that it has a farm and environmental studies and fantastic study abroad and languages.
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Descartes
Super Moderator
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Posted: Mon Sep 17th, 2007 03:46 pm |
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Have you seen this thread?
http://admissionsadvice.mywowbb.com/forum7/441.html
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outwest
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Posted: Mon Sep 17th, 2007 05:39 pm |
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No! It didn't come up when I did a search! I waas surprised because I seemed to remember seeing one somewhere a while back. This must have been it. Thanks, Descartes!
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Canadian
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Posted: Wed Nov 14th, 2007 04:20 am |
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Dickinson College was founded by two signers of the Declaration of Independence, John Dickinson and Benjamin Rush. Dickinson gave more money. Rush stipulated in his will that nothing be named after him, and that if anything was, the students had a moral responsibility to deface it. There is a statue of him that is regularly decorated.
A Dickinson claim to fame: James Buchanan, Dickinson College Class of 1809, was sworn in as President by Supreme Court Chief Justice Taney, also a Dickinson graduate. Apparently this is the only time that a President has been sworn in by a Chief Justice who graduated from the same school.
It's an easy 2 hour drive to Dickinson from DC though farmland and low rolling hills (and 1 hour from the Harrisburg airport) We missed most of the fall colour...........probably gorgeous in late October. Carlisle is disappointingly flat, seeing as the Appalachian Trail runs through somewhere near here. The town is about 20,000 and charming; the main business area is in historic buildings. Small shops, restaurants and movie theatre are all in walking distance of the school, in fact, contiguous to the campus.
I stayed at the Carlisle Comfort Suites, walking distance from campus, older but nice for $90/night Dickinson rate, $79/night AAA rate.
Dickinson is a haven for students majoring in languages and international studies (and the school pushes this strongly). Proficiency is required up to the intermediate level, generally 3-4 semesters. Many languages are taught. There is satellite reception from TV stations from14 countries. A prof might assign a class to watch the news in another language and write a summary. Also, it is possible to study abroad every year, and there are ample study abroad experiences even for those in the sciences that allow them to stay on track.
The vaunted Dickinson “workshop” approach to science mostly applies to physics, which is structured on this approach. Students are divided into small groups starting in freshman classes and have to devise their own experiments to prove things they are being taught. They consequently test very high in conceptual understanding.
The other sciences are more traditional, with moderate size lectures (organic chem. being the largest at 50-60) and smaller labs taught by professors and assisted by TAs who are upperclassmen. Some higher classes use the workshop approach.
There is a new, interdisciplinary science complex which includes psychology. The first phase is finished and includes a plasma lab, planetarium, and observatory. The final phase is scheduled for completion in ’09.
Environmental science requires field work. One option is a semester taken travelling from Ohio to New Orleans and back doing research. That program just lost funding but the school thinks it will probably get another grant.
A fabulous course is the Sociology and Geology of Disasters. A group goes to Montserrat, a West Indies island that has had recent volcanic activity, and studies the geology and also does field research interviewing residents. Upon return they write up their research using books about natural disasters.
They have some good opportunities for the pre-med kids with local doctors and at a hospital.
Every major requires an internship, thesis, or research paper. The research paper is less writing than the thesis but requires original research.
The freshman dorms that we saw had an interesting layout, which the students call an S shape, basically two connected but slightly offset rectangles. Some students put their beds in one part and their desks in the other. Rommies with different cleanliness standards create private space for themselves by putting a curtain between the two sections.
The students looked middle-of-the-road, perhaps a bit more conservative, a bit more well-groomed, than the western schools we visited. No lumberjack grunge look like popular at L & C. I didn’t see any obvious tattoos or wild piercings, but mostly kids were in winter gear. Lots of Northface. I saw pictures of the women’s track teams, and they mostly had the same red tattoo on their upper thighs. 84% of the kids are involved in athletics, and overall they had a very healthy, fit, look.
Dickinson prides itself on being a “liberal” campus, meaning many views are tolerated. The students are apparently about equally split Democrat and Republican.
Our guide talked about heavy drinking on campus, but S had an overnight with 4 boys who were all total abstainers and felt that there was no social problem for them.
Our guide said that he is a very happy B student who drinks a lot and never works on Fridays and Saturdays. Because of his published senior research paper, he is confident he will get into grad school. He said that the kids who want to make all A’s study 4-5 hours a day.
The campus, with it’s formal and often old, lovely limestone buildings amid the square grid of town streets has a cohesive and also rather structured feel to it, though softened by expansive lawns and many large and beautiful trees. The main street bisecting the campus is moderately busy, with stop lights and pedestrian lights on every corner. Also, mid-block, there are pedestrian walkways which the drivers appeared to observe scrupulously. This creates a strangely urban feel, despite the fact that the college is larger than the town.
Dickinson likes to do their interviews in groups of students which they call forums, and which they say show what classes are like. The forums are evaluative. The students are asked to pick a topic to discuss, and then they discuss it with little help from the staff. At the end, the kids could ask questions about the school. The staff sent S a very nice note about his participation the next day.
The visit that was scheduled for S was one of the most well-organized he has had, with a class that demonstrated what he wanted to see ( first year workshop physics) and overnight and lunch hosts who had his interests. At the last minute there was a hosting problem, and the person in charge even gave us her cell phone over the weekend to stay in contact till it all got sorted out.
I had the feeling that there are tremendous opportunities at Dickinson and that it is a wonderful place for the right person.
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Consolation
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Posted: Wed Nov 14th, 2007 12:26 pm |
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Thanks for the excellent and eye-opening (for me, anyway) review: it sounds like a very interesting school.
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Descartes
Super Moderator
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Posted: Wed Apr 16th, 2008 02:58 pm |
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{From peabodie's post in 2008 ACCEPTANCES!}
I think D is going to be happy at Dickinson. Outwest, we stayed at the Comfort Suites, so if you stayed there, maybe we did see each other.
We went to Connecticut College's open house on Monday and then on the drive home talked over impressions of both schools. Conn's was a nice program--lots of seminar choices, tours, etc., and a schedule for sitting in on classes. But the classes and seminars didn't line up right for scheduling. If you went to a class, you missed two seminars, unless you were rude and left before the class had ended. This is twice we had gone to open houses there, and they did this both times. I ended up going to seminars and she went to a class. Then they scheduled a big lunch, not in the dining hall, where faculty members were supposed to sit at each assigned table (grouped by major, if you had shown interest in a particular one). But no one from the Spanish department ever showed up at lunch, so that made her wonder a little about the department.
At Dickinson, they scheduled a time for representatives from all the academic departments and campus organizations to be in one room and then you could talk to anyone you wanted about your interests. She was able to talk to several Spanish teachers, as well as someone from the music department about the possibility of playing in the orchestra. They even gave her the audition schedule and had a list of FAQs that answered all her questions about storing her violin, paying for lessons, etc.
And the lunch at Dickinson was definitely good. We ended up sitting at a table with current students, and they certainly seemed happy to be there.
We didn't go on the tour of residence halls at Dickinson because we needed to make the long drive home in time for D2 to get to a party. But both Ds seemed really sad to leave the campus. D2 hung out at the Quarry, the campus coffee house, while D1 and I toured the campus, and she said she felt very happy there. So maybe Dickinson will end up on her list as well.
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outwest
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Posted: Wed Apr 16th, 2008 09:44 pm |
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I was going to write a full review of Dickinson, but then I read Canadians and it is accurate as far as I am concerned. I will just post a few other observations.
The students are physically fit. The college was named the fittest student body by Mens Fitness a few years ago. My D attended a couple classes and said they were good and the students cared. We saw two different classes meeting outside on neat low red wooden chairs.The campus is heavy on stone like so many PA campuses and there is a lot of history there having to do with Washington, etc. The streets running through it didn't seem to be a problem.
They have the most extensive study abroad program of any college we looked at with more then 75% of students participating. They run a number of the programs themselves. A global view is how I would describe Dickinson.
The other aspect of the academics we noticed is that it is a very hands on college with lots of field trips, etc. In one class my D sat in on, instead of giving them the formula and explaining it, the professor gave the result and had them figure the formula out by actual experimentation.
They have an observatory on campus. The campus is about 6 miles from the Appalachian trail and there is a PE class that hikes every week. There is a PE requirement and a language requirement as well as distribution requirements.
The student body seemed to be mostly from Conn, NY, PA and NJ. Because of the regional nature of the college, my D didn't feel she quite fit in, although we did meet several students from other states, the West and even internationally, it still felt a little too regional for her. They did give her a lot of money, so for merit aid I would say they are tops. The students all seemed extremely happy and I think this is a wonderful, coming up school.
Last edited on Thu Apr 17th, 2008 12:06 am by outwest
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