My wife’s niece hopes to be selected to do an exchange programme next year (12 months hence). Her top two choices are warm (warmish in the case of Nashville, I suspect) places in the States:
Mills College, Nashville (I think I have that right - going from memory), and
University of West Florida, Pensacola
She’d like to know a little more about them for her proposal. Any nuggets of information re history, (in)famous alumni, best-known courses of study etc? She is a Translation Major (Eng-Chinese), but intends to study somehting along the lines of media, film, literature in her three months abroad.
I, on the other hand, like Oakland a whole lot. It’s had a renaissance in the last few years and has a vibrant arts district, and it’s 10 minutes away from Berkeley. Nothing cultural to do as compared to Pensacola? That’s an odd comparison. Mills has a good reputation. And I have a feeling the east bay will be a lot more pleasant for a Chinese student than Pensacola-- she’ll fit in much better. Oakland has a much worse reputation than it deserves-- a few bad neighborhoods but otherwise very pleasant.
I know nothing about UWF (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_West_Florida) but I’ve been to Pensacola (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pensacola%2C_Florida) once. It’s just a quiet Southern small city, close to Mobile, Alabama, and the feel is much the same. If she wants any kind of metropolitan stimulation, the closest bets would be New Orleans and . . . well, on the Florida side, nothing’s really metropolitan until you get down to the Tampa/Orlando corridor.
I don’t know anything about the Florida school, but Mills has an excellent reputation as a women’s college in California; it’s one of the top ones, I would say, in the country. That said, it’s a women’s college. No men (except in the grad school). Your wife’s niece ought to be aware of that going in, in case it matters to her.
Now, here’s where I paint with a pretty broad brush. As I recall, it also has a reputation for being a bit of a crunchy granola type place – lots of environmental causes are championed, the women wear Birkenstocks, and it’s generally a pretty liberal environment. EJsGirl, I don’t think it’s in Oakland proper; it has its own campus, so I’m not as concerned about safety with Mills. Transportation is an issue, though, as it isn’t in SF/Berkeley proper.
Thanks, people. The list of exchange colleges for US is not that long (maybe 15), and we ruled out half because they are in places like Minnesota and Wisconsin and will be too cold. Others charge for dorms; both of these two don’t. I thought Oakland, being 5 miles from Berkeley, would be fun for the “scene”. What are Birkenstocks by the way? Doc Martens? Army boot things some women like wearing in England when going through their radical phase. Women’s college only might weigh against it for her, I’ll have to check.
There were also a couple of colleges in San Antonio, and one in Nashville, among the warmer (than Minnesota) climes. Will try to track down the names. Nashville has music, S.A. is near the Mexican border, isn’t it?
Hmm… Does she like NASCAR, football, and movies? Cause that’s Pensacola culture. Highly disrecommend staying there, unless she’s not a city girl at all.
What is the issue with cold? Does she have actual experience with it and did not like it (or was harmed by it)? Or is someone making a decision for her that may be based on unsupported assumptions?
Minnesota, for example, has 2 1/2 weeks of summer every year (sometimes 3 weeks) and never more than 22 weeks of winter. And it is much prettier than either foggy, smoggy California or flat, sweltering Florida. (YMMV, obviously.)
I suspect that both of the schools you have mentioned are fine places that people could enjoy, but it would be intersting to see what places have been ruled off the list.
San Antonio is “near” the Mexican border in the sense that LA is “near” the Mexican border; drive a couple hours, and you’re there. San Antonio would be great; it’s a very interesting city, and only an hour from Austin. Nashville’s also a great city, but it gets quite cold (to me) in the winter.
I can chime in a bit here. Mills, as I recall, is a women’s college with a decent reputation. I think the pros and cons of Oakland/Bay Area have been discussed. I used to live in Fort Walton Beach in the 80s and there was nothing going on there. I imagine that’s changed somewhat. Nature-wise it is beautiful and has amazing beaches from P’cola to Panama City. There’s a lot of Navy stuff there too.
I visited Nashville once. Pretty neat place. Vanderbilt, a prestigious private university, is located there, plus you have a lot of cultural things going on (it’s the country music capital of the US). It is Southern, as is Pensacola - nothing pejorative about that, but you should know.
San Antonio isn’t really near the Mexican border (politically), but it is well immersed in Tex-Mex culture. It’s the tenth largest city in the US, and has great tourist attractions (Alamo, Fiesta Texas theme park, Sea World). There’s professional basketball there and a large military presence - lots of GIs and families. There is a large Latino population in San Antonio as well, and many small colleges - Trinity, Our Lady of the Lake (I think that’s right) - and one larger one, the University of Texas at San Antonio. Austin, the state capital and a pretty damn cool city - it’s my hometown - is 70 miles to the north. Houston is a few hours away to the east and Dallas is a few hours away to the north. I think you can get to Brownsville in a few hours heading south and the Mexican border.
Having visited HK, climate-wise I think San Antonio and Nashville are closest. It’s humid as hell year round in both places. Well, so is P’cola. If it means anything my best friend, who lives in HK, visited me in Austin several times and loved it. San Antonio is bigger than Austin and more tourist-y (IMO), but you get the Texan charm and the cultural stew of South/Central Texas (Mexican, American, German, Czech). There are some wonderful smaller towns north of San Antonio like Fredericksburg, New Braunfels, and San Marcos that have festivals and show the diversity of the state.
Obviously, I’m a little biased, but I would suggest that your niece look into the Texas school!
That would also be true of Oakland and Pensacola with strong Naval/Marine presence. (Oakland would be a bit more diffuse since the metropolitan area can absorb more of the housing and families.)
What 3 months is she going? If she goes for a summer term that opens up the northern schools. And Minnesota is gorgeous in the summer. Outside of Minneapolis/St. Paul Minnesota is quite rural, though, but the cultural scene in the Twin Cities is excellent. And the people are famously nice.
Pensacola yes, it exists because of the Naval Air Station there. The beaches are nice when the hurricanes aren’t blowing, but otherwise it’s quiet and relatively remote.
There are no more military bases in the SF Bay area, though, IIRC. SF and all of its unique attractions are close enough to Oakland.
You will hear a lot of bad stuff about Oakland. Ten years ago, those things might have been true.
Like any city, it has it’s bad neighborhoods and has city-like crime levels. If she is living off campus she’ll want to talk to the housing agency about what neighborhoods are good to live in. But it is also a beautiful, lively, amazingly diverse, and perfectly situated city. Oakland has more working artists per capita than anyplace west of Manhattan and the arts scene is thriving ever since all the artists from SF/Berkeley moved here for the cheaper rents. It has 8,335 restaurants within ten miles of it (my personal goal since moving here is to eat at a restaurant from every country.) It has dozens of different neighborhoods that each have their own flavor. It’s ten minutes away from San Francisco and Berkeley and public transportation (while slow) will get you anywhere. The weather is great (although I’d hesitate to call it warm)…about 60-70 Fahrenheit year round and the most sunshine in the Bay Area- no smog or fog to be seen. This week has been the first gray skies I’ve seen since I moved here in June. I personally live in a neighborhood centered around a beautiful old theater, full of wonderful walking-streets with restaurants and interesting shops, a lively farmer’s market every Saturday and a couple blocks away from the 3.5 mile-in-circumference Lake Merritt and the wonderful parkway (full of joggers and families day and night) that surrounds it.
I moved here from a place that could rightly be called paradise (Santa Cruz, CA) and live with a guy from Hawaii. When we moved here we heard nothing but horror stories about how bad it was. As it turns out, we’ve never been happier with a place than we are in Oakland. It’s not for everybody (FWIW, I’ve never seen any military presence here…Alameda county is one of the most liberal counties in CA), and it is a real life working fairly industrial city and feels that way, but please don’t let people whose knowledge of Oakland boils down to “it has a lot of Black people” and “I heard some stuff about it on the news in the 90’s” scare you.
As for your daughter, I think the most important thing to know about Oakland is that it is very diverse. It’s about 30% Asian and there is a large Chinatown full of Asian shops, restaurants, etc. It even has a library with all books in Asian languages. It’s also around 30% Black, 20% Latino (mostly Mexican) and around 20% white. Oakland is also about 25% immigrants. If she is uncomfortable about leaving home, she will probably like having access to familiar things (there are places in the US where real Chinese food is completely inaccessable). But it could also be pretty easy to spend all your time in the Asian community and miss out on the full “American experience.” There isn’t a lot of baseball and apple pies here. It’s not “typical” America. But it is a place that could happen only in America.
It should be noted that Pensacola is not what a lot of people think of when they think “Florida”. It is definately not Miami or Tampa, which are big, multicultural, touristy cities. Pensacola is in the panhandle of Florida, and is part of the “deep south”. Not that that is good or bad, but it is way different culturally, even for Americans.
For someone coming from overseas, it would be a shock, culturally. I’d recommend Oakland.
