Miami University in Ohio?

[Kassia]

Does anyone have any experience with this school?  From what I'm seeing, it's very preppy and a party school, which wouldn't be a good fit for my dd at all but it looks good academically and financially.  I'm wondering if students who don't party and aren't preppy at all can fit in.  

 

 

[Hoggirl]

I know a preppy, NON-partier who had a great experience there. His freshman roommate was a partier and didn’t last the first week!  He wound up having that double room all to himself the entire year.  

[livetoread]

I know a couple of people who have attended. They don’t party and have found their group. Having said that, the school earns its reputation for being an upper middle class haven. They are working hard on increasing diversity, but it does seem to draw white, privileged kids. They are probably more concentrated in some areas, like the excellent business school, than others. It’s a beautiful campus, and I’ve been on campus several times. Given the reputation, I was expecting to see beautiful people decked out (like when I visited University of Virginia years ago, lol), but was impressed with the number of sweatshirts, pajama pants, and ponytails I actually saw. Looked like any other student body to me.

That said, my son is working for an exotic car company this summer, and he’s been over there detailing 100k+ student cars, so, yeah!

My rising Senior daughter is considering it, and I have mixed feelings. She was accepted to their Summer Scholar program, and will go to study genetic engineering for two weeks in July, so we’ll see how that pans out. They do have an excellent reputation in the sciences and send a high percentage to med school. My daughter is leaning science, but doesn’t want anything medically related.

Their biggest competition for science students is OSU, which now slightly edges them out in Freshman profile scores. It’s a different feel though. Miami feels more like a private school campus to me, and they emphasize their high ranking in undergraduate teaching. OSU feels like the huge research school that it is.

The fact that Miami is about 40% Greek and kind of far from anything (though the college town is cute) means it’s going to be a party school. I have reservations about that and about the entitled students, but like I said, we’ll see how this summer goes.

[Kassia]

6 minutes ago, livetoread said:

 

My rising Senior daughter is considering it, and I have mixed feelings. She was accepted to their Summer Scholar program, and will go to study genetic engineering for two weeks in July, so we’ll see how that pans out. They do have an excellent reputation in the sciences and send a high percentage to med school. My daughter is leaning science, but doesn’t want anything medically related.

Their biggest competition for science students is OSU, which now slightly edges them out in Freshman profile scores. It’s a different feel though. Miami feels more like a private school campus to me, and they emphasize their high ranking in undergraduate teaching. OSU feels like the huge research school that it is.

The fact that Miami is about 40% Greek and kind of far from anything (though the college town is cute) means it’s going to be a party school. I have reservations about that and about the entitled students, but like I said, we’ll see how this summer goes.

 

Please keep me updated on your daughter's thoughts!  My dd is a rising junior so she still has some time.  She is thinking about majoring in computer science and/or math.  I just can't imagine her in a preppy entitled environment.  She's an introverted minimalist and very conservative.  

My three sons graduated from OSU (engineering) and we were not impressed with most of the undergraduate teaching there.  

[livetoread]

Will do. Miami was ranked #1 in undergrad teaching by someone at some point, and though I take stuff like that with a grain of salt, it does at least tell me that’s their emphasis. 

[flyingaway]

My girl refuses to consider it now after her friend had such a horrible time finding her people there that she became very depressed and had to leave the school. She’s such a friendly young woman, too. We didn’t really understand it.  

[Kassia]

31 minutes ago, flyingaway said:

My girl refuses to consider it now after her friend had such a horrible time finding her people there that she became very depressed and had to leave the school. She’s such a friendly young woman, too. We didn’t really understand it.  

 

Oh, that's awful an what I'm afraid of for my own dd!  

[alewife]

On 6/13/2018 at 9:06 AM, Kassia said:

Does anyone have any experience with this school?  From what I'm seeing, it's very preppy and a party school, which wouldn't be a good fit for my dd at all but it looks good academically and financially.  I'm wondering if students who don't party and aren't preppy at all can fit in.  

 

 

I only know a handful of kids who are there now or recently graduated.  All are pot smoking preppy kids who were given fancy cars for their 16th birthdays.  Actually, one was given a second brand new expensive car after totaling his first car  trying to see how high he could get the speedometer to go while driving through our residential neighborhood.

Having said that, I would bet that there are some kids there who don't party and are not preppy, but I would definitely visit and try to do an overnight.

[livetoread]

I realized that I forgot to address the conservative part you mentioned. If you mean conservative politically, I know Miami has the reputation for having a higher concentration of conservatives amongst both students and faculty than any other public school in OH. Opinions I’ve read suggest the campus is pretty evenly split between liberals and conservatives, with the majority of kids not being very politically engaged either way. Pretty representative of OH, actually! I think a politically conservative kid would have more like-minded classmates there than other public universities around. They spawned Paul Ryan, after all!

[Kassia]

1 hour ago, livetoread said:

I realized that I forgot to address the conservative part you mentioned. If you mean conservative politically, I know Miami has the reputation for having a higher concentration of conservatives amongst both students and faculty than any other public school in OH. Opinions I’ve read suggest the campus is pretty evenly split between liberals and conservatives, with the majority of kids not being very politically engaged either way. Pretty representative of OH, actually! I think a politically conservative kid would have more like-minded classmates there than other public universities around. They spawned Paul Ryan, after all!

 

I was thinking more of socially conservative.  I would say she's more moderate politically - maybe leaning conservative.  

[mschickie]

My niece went there.  It was an excellent school and has a top notch mock trial program (she was very into mock trial).  My niece was in the upper middle class but I would not call her preppy.  She did have a car in high school but it was an old beater and she had to contribute for it (and then drive her sister around as part of the deal).  She did do the whole greek thing.  I think the school is like any other large university, you just need to search to find your tribe.

[Sebastian (a lady)]

Several members of our family (in my generation) attended.  They all had very good academic experiences.  One did a dual major and later earned a master's.  The other two went from Miami into PhD programs.  

 

I don't think well of most fraternities. I did encourage my kids to apply to Miami because of academics, Navy ROTC,  and automatic test score based scholarships.  They both were accepted but attended other schools based on academic that more closely matched their goals.

[livetoread]

Okay so daughter is back from twelve days of Summer Scholar camp at Miami, and I have the report. She really enjoyed her module (Genetic Engineering) and liked her professor a lot. Just as an interesting aside, there were ten students that chose that module and all were young women. Her professor was a woman too. 

Daughter liked most of the other participants she met, though she said for many of the ones she talked to, Miami wasn’t their first choice. The staff was quite diverse, and the program had a diversity presentation and talk that dd said was really well done and interesting. Full disclosure, dd is pretty liberal in her views, though conservative in her behavior. She thought there were more politically conservative kids than liberal, but that might be because she is used to being around other liberals and not conservatives so they stood out. She did end up friends with one of each, lol. She thought by and large the other participants were often well off, but weren’t obnoxious about it. She has some social anxiety, but didn’t find it any harder to make friends with the crowd there than other camps she’s been to.

The school seemed to be trying hard to shed its white, preppy, upper middle class image. I am well aware of its reputation, but every time I’ve visited, I’ve seen what at least looks like a wide variety of students. My daughter is not used to being the popular one anyway, and if she could find a few other science nerds to hang out with, I think she’d be fine if she went there. So far she hasn’t said either way though, and she has awhile to think about it. 

[Kassia]

39 minutes ago, livetoread said:

Okay so daughter is back from twelve days of Summer Scholar camp at Miami, and I have the report.

 

Thank you so much for taking the time to post an update!  I'm glad your dd had a good experience.