Colleges

Wells College: On the shores of NY state's Cayuga Lake, this school has cross enrollment with Cornell University and Ithaca College. Wells makes an integrated effort to connect new students with all aspects of college and community life. There are many interesting and creative social events that deepen community and balance the academics with fun- among them an eighties dance, a semi-formal, and the Erotic Ball, a themed, yearly dance that seeks to celebrate being comfortable in one's body and with safe sex.

Washington Monthly ranked Wells 30th among all liberal arts schools; Princeton Review put it at 12th for encouraging discussion. The campus is regarded as one of the most beautiful- it sits within a historic district, and is also considered to be haunted. A new major, Book Arts, the history and art of making books, is considered better than any in the country.

Classes are small and seminar style. Students are encourage to work collaboratively with professors and the many internship opportunities are wide ranging.

St. Michael's College: Way up in Vermont is a little treasure of a school just outside of Burlington. The school claims to be the "happiest college in the world", and it does seem to be a thoughtfully conceived experience. Hands-on learning in any of the 29 majors is the major emphasis, and the context is one of the outdoors. All students get unlimited ski passes to nearby Smuggler's Notch for $30 and the school has a wilderness program. There is also a student staffed EMT program, a $30 pass to all events at Burlington's Flynn Cultural Center, a vibrant music scene in town, and 5 other nearby colleges to mix it up with. Washington Monthly, Forbes, and U.S. News all rank it highly for quality of life. The theater program is competitive to get into, and puts students to work next to professionals; the school also sponsors a Mozart Festival.

But this is stratospheric on the Nerdy/Cultural/Literary scale: Harold Bloom, the arch-defender of modernism and almost certainly the most influential American literary critic of the last 50 years, plans to donate his personal library to St. Micheals. A donor has ponied up the cash to build a library annex to hold it all.