My brother-in-law teaches at Duke, so maybe I am biased, but the Duke campus is gorgeous.
i’m attending [deleted on request]…it’s so beautiful that I can’t help but choose a window seat in all my classes and just sort of gaze endlessly… 
Yikes, are you serious? Every single building is a glass/aluminum rectangle! The base itself is gorgeous, as is pretty much every open area in that area. But the cadet area? Ugh. I think they were going for ‘slick and modern’, and ended up with a bleak early-60’s disaster (IMO, YMMV, etc).
Isn’t that one of the problems with going to school in such a nice place? You just want to sit and look…(I personally use it for inspiration - whenever I ask why, exactly, I’m racking up such intense debt for a heaping plateful of stress, communal bathrooms, and cafeteria food, I look up at the mountains, or the sunset, or the night sky…
Which one’s that?
You just want to sit and look...
Hardly a problem…
I can tell you a college that’s never going to be anywhere near this list. Mine.
I’m pretty sure this is the prettiest spot on the entire campus. Woo, a little patch of grass.
That’s the University of Nevada, Las Vegas by the way.
I’m a little prejudiced, but I love the look of Florida Southern College in Lakeland. Most of it was designed but Frank Lloyd Wright. My favorite building is Danforth Chapel.
Our rival, University of Tampa, is beautiful as well.
A while back, someone started a whole thread just to say how ugly he felt the Texas Tech campus was. I’m sure it’s not the best, but I think it’s kinda nice. It’s just spread out, is all.
It does have the chapel. I was referring to the natural setting for the most part. My Alma Mater, who I also nominated, Wisconsin, has several examples of 1960’s “big dump o’ concrete” architecture on several significant campus buildings. H.C. White Library
The University of Texas at El Paso has gorgeous architecture. Every building on campus is designed with the motifs of Bhutanese monastaries. So I think UTEP would definitely be a candidate for the title if it weren’t for its immediate proximity to a copper smelting plant and the worst slums of Juarez, Mexico.
Then there is the
Oops. Hit the wrong button. What I meant to say was…
Then there is the University of Washington that has a wierd situation. When the university first started it was in the heart of what is now downtown Seattle. The university moved to a new campus north of the city in the 1890’s. At the time they couldn’t find anyone that would buy the original land at the appraised value, so they decided to just lease the land. The caveat was that all the money from leasing the land had to go to building improvements on the new university campus. And that hasn’t changed. So, here we are 100 years later and the UW still owns about 6 city blocks worth of prime land in downtown Seattle that they collect rent on. This land includes a Four Seasons Hotel and several skyscrapers. Because of it they have alot of gorgeous buildings and facilities.
Look at these pictures of Bard College
The Bard campus and views of the Hudson River and the Catskills are jaw-dropping, eye-popping gorgeous.
UC Riverside is kinda pretty. Well, the plants and trees are. Really; people have their weddings there. And it can be foggy and remind people of Scotland. Maybe the buildings are okay depending upon your aesthetics.
Ummm, go Highlanders!
Some have already mentioned Princeton.
It is my wife’s favorite town – if we were rich, we would live there (and I would have a shorter commute), but we aren’t and it is impossibly expensive to buy a house in Princeton these days.
A few years ago I took my wife along on a week-long business trip to Cambridge, UK. While I was working, she was shopping and walking about the various colleges. It was quite obvious to us that Princeton is just a pale imitation of the spendor of Cambridge or Oxford.
Nevertheless, we still want to live there.
Funny that Princeton should be mentioned because The Princeton Review has what they call the Best 357 College Rankings. One category they use is “Beautiful Campus”. Here is what they say:
[Quote]
[ul][li]1 Wagner College [/li] [li]2 St. Mary’s College of Maryland [/li] [li]3 Williams College [/li] [li]4 The University of the South [/li] [li]5 Sweet Briar College[/ul][/li][/Quote]
I went to The University of the South. Here are all of the categories they in which they rated in the top 20.
[Quote]
[ul][li]#7 Professors Bring Material to Life (Academics)[/li] [li]#17 Professors Make Themselves Accessible ( Academics)[/li] [li]#13 Lots Of Hard Liquor (Parties)[/li] [li]#16 Major Frat And Sorority Scene (Parties)[/li] [li]#4 Beautiful Campus (Quality of Life)[/li] [li]#17 Happy Students (Quality of Life)[/ul][/li][/Quote]
I can’t go without mentioning my alma mater, the University of California, Santa Cruz. (I looked up the virtual tour, and boy, does it suck. Who cares about pictures of professors with students?) The buildings aren’t particularly interesting but the setting is stunning. The school is built in a redwood forest on a hill overlooking the Monterey Bay. The campus is gigantic and huge amounts of it are totally undeveloped. You can go off hiking in the forest and never leave school. A walk to class is almost always a hike through the forest and the bay or ocean are visible from most clearings or high places. It’s not pretty in the old “manicured campus and fancy buildings” way, though, and maneuvering the hilly terrain would be difficult in heels, so it’s not for everyone, I suppose. That Princeton Review list thingie has it as the #10 most beautiful campus.
And man, we only made #16 on the list of Birkenstock-Wearing, Tree-Hugging, Clove-Smoking Vegetarians? What is the world coming to?
Wow Wow Wow, I vote Bard #1.