I have an interesting history with Reed. I initially applied to Reed as an undergraduate in 1992,…read moreand got waitlisted for admission. It was in my top ten college choices because it "fit the bill" of schools I applied to. I went with Hampshire College instead, mainly because I wanted to stay close to home on the east coast and go to college in New England. Reed was a more selective school like Amherst or Oberlin was to get into, but had a campus culture that was more like Bard, Sarah Lawrence or Hampshire's granted it just happened to be on the West Coast.
In 1994, after my first year at Hampshire, I took a road trip west with some Hampshire friends to spend time in Portland for the Summer. I TOTALLY fell in love with Portland, and Oregon, and found it a relaxing and cultured place to base myself (I'm from NYC), and Portland had a pretty interesting theater & film scene, so I wanted to come back and explore it more and decided I'd take my academic leave after my second year at Hampshire and base myself in Portland for at least a year.
In the Summer of 1995, after I'd finished up my second year at Hampshire, I moved out to Portland from the east coast after filing to go on academic leave for the 1995/1996 academic year from Hampshire. It was a good change of pace for me, because I'd gotten a little overworked and burnt out during my second year at Hampshire.
I did a lot of work in the theater community in Portland, and did sone film projects and took classes at the Northwest Film Center in downtown Portland as well. I enjoyed living in Portland so much, I had a lot of mixed feelings about even returning back East, so I decided to re-apply to Reed as a transfer student and finish up my Bachelor's out west instead.
Although I was finally accepted to Reed as a transfer student, it came with a couple of steep caveats: I'd have to have taken my second year all over again to fulfill certain Reed distribution requirements because they felt my first two years from Hampshire didn't transfer well (this is when I started to get annoyed) although I had classes with A's and B's from Amherst, SmIth & UMass/Amherst. Not to mention two years worth of glowing exceptional evaluations from my Hampshire coursework, as well as strong recommendations from Hampshire faculty. This is when I started to realize that Reed is a bit pretentious and full of itself as an academic institution, BUT, I wanted to continue to live and work in Portland, and loved my apartment in SE Portland (within commuting distance of Reed's campus; so I could've lived off-campus) and didn't want to give that up; since I'd felt my biggest complaint about Hampshire was the insularity of being forced to live on-campus for all four years (this is in fact, STILL a Hampshire requirement, exceptions are ONLY granted on a case-by-case basis if you meet certain conditions).
Then, in the Winter of 1996, the financial aid award letters arrived from both Reed & Hampshire: Reed gave me the BARE minimum (worse than my financial aid package at Hampshire had been my first two years) and ALSO requiring I maintain at least one year of on-campus residency (thus losing my apartment) AND of course, take an extra year longer to get my degree. Hampshire, in contrast, upped my financial aid to nearly full tuition for my final two years, offered to help pay for a semester abroad for Field Study (I'd also just applied to a Theater Program in London for the Fall 1996 semester) & gave me a scholarship to help me pay for books and any associated expenses. Um, what would you all have done?
Bye, Reed & Portland. Oh well. The saddest thing for me was that I had to give up my really cute Portland apartment. However, I was on Field Study in London (practically paying nothing to attend the British American Drama Academy) in the Fall of 1996 coming back from Oregon, and then back in Massachusetts at Hampshire by January of 1997 (and practically paying nothing to finish attending Hampshire). So, in the end, it was the right decIsion for me to make, AND I got my BA in time in four years time from Hampshire instead. Sometimes though I do engage in a bit of: "What If I'd gone to Reed.....?"