Here's a second to Bowdoin. My brother went there and as well as to medical school at Dartmouth. Darmouth is pretty but I liked Bowdoin better.. Another pretty campus is the US Coast Guard Academy on the banks of the Thames River in New London CT. Another brother went there. No place prettier, especially when the US Eagle is docked there. Then again Boston College is beautiful too. Two brothers, my sister and my sister-in-law went there. I met my husband there too so naturally I'm biased. I went to Providence College and while I would recommend it highly for its academics and its student life, its campus is nice but not beautiful.

Another vote for Vanderbilt! Top academics, beautiful campus,and Nashville!

Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA.

Actually, U VA in Charlotesville is a really beautiful. A majority of the buildings, if I'm not mistaken were designed by Thomas Jefferson.

You're right Cassidy. That's why I mentioned it-and outstanding academics. Katie Couric is an alum.

William and Mary

Glad to see there was at least one vote for Swarthmore -- which is designated as a National Arboretum and has one of the best gardener-to-student ratios in the country! When the cherries and magnolias come out, it's breathtaking! Graduations and plays take place in the lovely, leafy outdoor amphitheater.

Don't miss Wellesley -- a graceful, traditional, picturesque place where it is easy to imagine the women all dressed in white with flower garlands for Tree Day.

Duke ain't bad, having had the advantage of a main campus (west) that could be planned pretty much at the same time, and the Duke Gardens are a lovely accent to the neo-Gothic style.

University of Oklahoma. Beautiful campus and great town (Norman).

One of the ugliest has to be Salisbury State University on Maryland's eastern shore. Absolutely flat. Half-hearted attempt to beautify with trees, flowers and other landscaping. All the modern buildings are soulless blocks. On the weekend, the dorms smelled of beer and vomit. The town of Salisbury is dull and most famous for being headquarters of Perdue Chicken. Decent restaurants can be had in Ocean City (half-hour away) and Talbot County (one hour northwest). Nearly as ugly is the University of Maryland in College Park in high crime Prince George's County. The campus is rather bland and the town is in decay.

.....The one that is paid for after my childrens commencment.

Wow, what an amazing number of great replies! A number of the schools listed are in the South. Do you think a New York girl would be in for culture shock or is that stuff all exaggerated? (She is attracted to warm weather.)

Well Ducks, I am from Jersey, and spent 3 years of undergrad at SMU in Dallas. Talk about culture shock!!! I had no idea that the frat system was basically in charge of the whole school - I arrived with a full scholarship & came to LEARN - a virtue that is still highly regarded on the East Coast. I left after 3 years, finished up at Rutgers, then did my Masters at Northwestern. Aesthetics do play an important part in feeling comfortable at school. I would also have your daughter be honest about the overall vibes of a place. If she feels like she will fit in at a certain school, but it is not YOUR version of Eden, let her attend anyway. Rutgers is not on anyone's list of top 10 beauties, but I still have an affinity for it, after all these years (13!! :) ) Good luck with your choice, and remember - she can always transfer out!!

Message to Ducks:
I'm the poster who recommended Bowdoin College in Maine and Emory University in Atlanta. We live in Mass. My youngest daughter transferred after a year from Skidmore to Emory. She loves Emory! And has not suffered from "culture shock". Probably because Emory is located in Atlanta. So she's not in the back woods anywhere. She has made many friends from the south as well as from the north. I think it's a great experience living in a different part of the country for awhile, which is what she wanted. Good luck with your search! It can be stressful but fun and enjoyable as well.

Hello, Just wanted to add that my daughter prefers the warmer weather as well, which is one of the reasons why she transferred from Skidmore to Emory.

Have watched the replies with interest over
the past few days and finally decided to
jump into the fray. After nearly two years of
intensive research on college choices and personal tours (our daughter is now a sophmore at a well regarded small New England college), I have the following comments: If New England is a top option, then I agree with the posts on Dartmouth, Williams and would add the extraordinary beauty of Middlebury. We visited Bowdoin and felt it did not compare to the aforementioned three schools (either academically or location-wise). Also visited
Colby and Bates in Maine, which seemed the "poor cousins" of the NESAC. Several of
my daughter's classmates went to Yale
and Harvard, which, while they have excellent reputations, are in big city settings
(although the value of those degrees is something to be considered, ditto: Princeton). My husband was pushing for
Washington and Lee, which is truly bucolic,
but very small and definitely has a southern
feeling. If my daughter had not gone to an
all-girls' high school, I would have rooted for
one of the seven sisters, especially Mount
Holyoke or Wellesley, which takes women's
education so seriously, especially in the math and science fields. No one has mentioned Stanford, which has a beautiful
colonial California setting and ambience.
There are so many others, e.g. Cornell,
Northwestern and others mentioned. While
physical beauty is of course a consideration,
if a parent is going to pay private school tuition, then academic rating, class size,
crime rate, quality of life (dorms, food, etc.)
all need to factor in, as well as reputation
in particular fields , such as pre-med, environmental studies, etc. At the end of the
day, your own child's strenghs and priorities
are important.

UC Santa Cruz...it's set in an enormous section of forest...you can ramble through the woods to class and even spot a bright yellow banana slug (the mascot). Everything smells woodsy and clean. My housing was set in a woodsy area where several deer hung out a lot. Do deer hang out?

love
roxy

Another vote for Vanderbilt. You don't feel like you are downtown in a city, but you have all those benefits. Great in the fall!

ducks53, there are a few schools in the South that have a heavy contingent of northern students so the culture shock may be less. Over half of Tulane's student body hails from NY, NJ, CT, PA, etc. and nearly half is Jewish. The students are drawn to New Orleans (a city both good and bad for a parent's nerves, I'd guess), the warm weather, the campus itself and good academic programs. The university website states that 91% who start actually finish at TU.

Another vote for Vanderbilt (from another Vandy grad). A beautiful campus, great academics (including grad schools), decent athletics (at least basketball) and a nice city with population of 1 mill+.

Here's one that hasn't been mentioned yet: Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee. An absolutely beautiful campus -- all collegiate Gothic. Smack in the middle of Memphis. Always makes US News & World Report's Top 10 small liberal arts colleges. This year named to the list's "up and coming." Check it out.

Ducks I am from upstate NY (actually central) and I wanted the big city feel and location without all the cement! Hofstra was the best for me the campus is beautiful and the security is great and the unispan across hempstead turnpike is actually a great trademark of the school that the students love! at one point the school talked about taking it down and it was met with so many protests that they left it alone!

If I lived near NYC and wanted another feel I would try Ithaca college or Cornell (if the grades were good). Otherwise I would leave NY and try NC Chapel Hill is beautiful as is Duke (again if the grades are there) or Washington University in St. Louis or Bowdoin in Maine.

Hope that helps. If you can describe a bit more of what your daughter is looking for we might be able to help more ie near a city, major,Jewish vs not etc.

I was accepted to Vanderbilt and visited - it was nice, but certainly not beautiful - sorry.

My pick is by far Miami University (Ohio). No buildings taller than 4 floors, mature trees everywhere, the quaintest little college town around. Not the place for someone who wants an urban school, but if you are looking for the quintesential college experience with top notch academics as well, Miami is the place.

Just read the comments about Emory - my brother went there. It's a good school but the campus is certainly nothing special. I wouldn't send either of my kids there. I liked my brother more pre-Emory - he was more laid back.

I have heard many criticisms of Vanderbilt over the years but have never, ever heard anyone say their campus is not beautiful.

I didn't say it's not nice, I just didn't think it was "beautiful." I have been there and liked it (enough to apply and seriously consider going there), it just didn't strike me as beautiful. I visited several schools and while both Wake Forest and Vanderbilt were attractive, Miami Ohio was by far the most beautiful.

Middlebury, URichmond.
Across the pond, Cambridge University is fantastic.

Williams College, hands down. Especially if she plays sports - the athletic fields are set against wide mountain backdrops - breakthtaking!

Ohio University in Athens, Ohio. Beautiful rolling hills of SE Ohio, lots of trees. Just beautiful.

In the South, Rhodes College in Memphis; Duke University in Durham, NC; and University of the South (bka Sewanee) in Sewanee, TN have to be the most beautiful. Duke is consistently rated in the top 25 colleges and universities nation wide. Sewanee and Rhodes both have excellent academic reputations. Rhodes has one of the highest acceptance rates of students who apply to graduate or professional school. It also has benefit of Memphis right there. Sewanee is completely secluded on a mountaintop but is breathtakingly beautiful.

In the north, Williams College and Mount Holyoke win hands down. I live in Northampton, MA, home of Smith College, and while it is excellent academically, I don't think it would win any awards for beauty.

William & Mary or Mary Washington.

Ducks53,
My suggestion is that you look at schools in North Carolina. The seasons change, but it's not as cold as it gets in NJ. There are a few that I can recommend. 1) Elon University. Without a doubt, the best campus in NC. There are many students from the northest (mostly NJ and NY), so your daughter will experience the "Southern Life", but can do it with fellow Yankees. Academics and student teacher ratio are great. www.elon.edu 2) Wake Forest. Academically, a great school with a pretty campus. Right in Winston Salem near everything. www.wakeforest.edu
If you decide to visit NC, I promise you will not be disappointed with either.

Oh yeah...Duke University too. I think the others did a good job explaining. I find the campus similar to Princeton. www.duke.edu

Vassar is a Seven Sisters school but it is coed. You had said your daughter went to an all girls high school so you wanted a coed school. It has been coed since the 70s.

Hi,
Another vote for U.N.C. Chapel HIll, it is the "southern part of heaven"! However, since my child and money goes to Clemson, I have have to say that is a nice campus to.

I vote for Indiana University in Bloomington , Indiana.
its very wooded and has creeks running thru campus.
nothing like the flat, corn fields that many people think of in Indiana.

Hi Ducks,
I hope you will have the opportunity to visit the schools your daughter is interested in and see them for yourself. Obviously, people have differing opinions which is why the campus tours are so important. For instance, I disagree with the poster who ranks Middlebury over Bowdoin. We also put in several years of college research and visited tons of schools. Personally, I feel that Bowdoin is equal to or better than Middlebury academically. We visited Middlebury and my daughter chose not to apply there because of the location. It is pretty but in the middle of nowhere. The town of Middlebury is very small, also. She preferred Bowdoin's location because Brunswick is larger than Middlbury, close to Freeport and Portland, located on the coast but 1 1/2 hours from ski resorts. You really have the best of both worlds (with the exception of being close to a major city). Just my opinion. If she is still interested in a warm weather location, I still recommend looking at Emory. With its white marble buildings and red tile roofs, it has a Mediterranean feel to it. Landscaping is beautiful, especially in the spring with tons of daffodils and tulips. My daughter finds it easy to get to the different Atlanta neighborhoods, with public transportation and friends who have cars. Good luck and let us know where you decide to visit. Is she a junior?

Here's another vote for Elon University (http://www.elon.edu) in North Carolina. Beautiful campus and an academic program that's definitely on the upswing. Always ranks as one of the "best buys" in the US News and World Report college issue. Large percentage of the student population is from the NE. Besides I've been helping pay for all those pretty buildings and landscaping for the last four years!

University of Colorado-hands down. See Kristy's review, she is 100% correct. Great looking campus in a wonderful college town

Indiana University in Bloomington. For every acre of ground designated for a campus building (which are all gorgeous Indiana limestone) an acre of ground was set aside for landscaping. You'll see gazebos, sculptures, etc while walking through a beautiful campus.

Going to school in the south isn't like going to another planet.

We got smarts and learnin' real good down here. Ya know?

I love the campus of Wattsamatta University. Lots of moose and squirrel.