I can do it. I will do it NINE times!

I'm glad you had a good experience there. In general, Calvin is much more conservative than any east-coast school. It's those mid-western values. Their choirs are pretty good too.

At any school you go to, it will be difficult at times to do choir AND xc/track. Not to say it's impossible, but it's inevitable there will be conflicting events from time to time, and you will have to pick one or the other. My geology program was always upset that I missed "mandatory" field trips for track meets, and when I went on the field trips and missed a meet then I felt like I was missing out on the team.

But at least in DIII no one FORCES you to do anything, so you do have the ability to make your own choices. We had a guy qualify for track nationals in the 5K AND 10K, and he elected to skip nationals to be a councilor at a Christian youth camp. Al and Diemer were obviously disappointed to lose a potential point-scorer, but supported his decision.

I think you made a fairly accurate assessments of all three colleges. I can certainly confirm your impression about MIT - my cousin is a professor there (physics) and knowing him, it is an incredibly hard and nerdy school academically. He is a genius, and always has been, since middle school! I doubt a normal person can have a balanced life there, social life, sports, etc. I don't know how these runners, swimmers, etc. cope. I wouldn't want my daughter to kill herself for 4 years studying non-stop. I'm thinking, get a good education from small college and enjoy it, then go to a big "name" school to get masters, like you said.

It doesn't surprise me that Haverford students are snooty and rude, in elite college on the East Coast it is not uncommon, unfortunately. Have you looked into a couple of Claremont colleges in CA - Pomona and Claremont McKenna? Both seem very good academically, but I'm not sure about running teams. I found a cool site where students post about their colleges uncensored - www.studentsreview.com - helpful for getting at least initial impression on schools, beyond US News rankings.

For what it's worth, even before I had my own business, I never mentioned my schooling in job interviews, and I got jobs just fine. In fact, I got a programming job compensated by industry standards before I formally graduated from BYU. My clients occasionally ask me to evaluate prospective software engineers. I could care less about their schooling - if they demonstrate a decent understanding of computer science, decent problem solving skills, and some creativity in my tests and in their proven experience, I give them thumbs up.

I believe there is way too much hype about going to a big name school. You should earn your position with real work, not with how much debt you accumulated obtaining a semblance of education.

Ruth--

I must make a last plug for MIT, though your assessments sound fairly accurate. My father went there, as did several friends, and they loved it. Granted, al of them nerds, but on the other hand, all very involved in extracurrivular activities (possibly equivalent time-wise to track, e.g. dance). It's not like a liberal arts school, which purposely tries to give you the opportunity to try different things, but if you have a pretty good idea of what you're interested in there are few better, richer environments. I went to school up the road and found the Cambridge area really stmulating. Can't imagine their track team is much good, but the facilities are probablu expensive and nicely designed!

In the end, it all depends what you're looking for. Sounds like you got a pretty fair sample of the three schools and can make an informed decision.