keep_em_honest

June 11th, 2013 at 10:40 AM ^

Investopedia is like BleacherReport for finance.  Anyone can post.  I agree with the list, but it's not something that carries any merit.

Space Coyote

June 11th, 2013 at 11:07 AM ^

Penn State has a beautiful campus. MSU north of the river is very nice (south of the river sucks though). Purdue, for being in the middle of God-knows-where, actually has done a nice job of sticking with a single look throughout most of their buildings and not doing flashy modern buildings that look old in a decade. Wisconsin is very nice as well. Indiana is great because it's like 100% limestone, very consistent and very gorgeous.

Haven't been to the rest as of yet, but everything I've heard gives the B1G a pretty good name when it comes to campus beauty.

saveferris

June 11th, 2013 at 11:22 AM ^

The only thing about it is that once you get outside the city limits, its farm land. Flat and uninspiring.

You've just described a large portion of the Big 10. Iowa, Michigan State, and Purdue could all say the same thing.

Bay_Area_Blue

June 11th, 2013 at 11:45 AM ^

Wait. The B-52s are considered "famous musicians?" I guess never underestimate the power and allure of "Love Shack." I spent a summer at Loyola Marymount's campus and really enjoyed the views. It felt more like a resort than a college campus. Jesuits don't play. 

Ben from SF

June 11th, 2013 at 5:23 PM ^

Stanford's campus does resemble a retirement resort, even with the attached golf course and shopping mall.  However, that golf course is a heck of a golf course.

Northwestern has a nice "lakefront" campus as well.

M-Dog

June 11th, 2013 at 1:59 PM ^

Some interesting campuses (not necessarily the best, but interesting):

Columbia:  They managed to put an actual college campus (albeit a very small one) right in the middle of New York City.  It's the anti-NYU in that sense, which has no campus at all.

Cornell:  Surrounded by hill and gorges, it's beautiful in the fall.

Duke:  The whole main campus looks like the Michigan Law Quad.

Lehigh:  The campus is carved out of the side of a small mountain on a swithcback road.  Every section of the road overlooks the section below it.

Virginia:  You are back in time to Colonial Jeffersonian America.

 

The Wolf

June 11th, 2013 at 11:02 PM ^

I have always found Duke's campus to be absolutely gorgeous; the architecture, the design, and the grounds. I understand that Durham isn't exactly paradise as it surrounds it, but Chapel Hill is quite nice and right next door. Makes me wonder why Duke isn't included on these lists more often. Am I crazy?

MichiganExile

June 11th, 2013 at 5:53 PM ^

The area surrounding UCSD is fantastic. The campus itself kind of sucks. It is rather dreary despite being one of the best locations for a college in North America, the architecture of the buildings leaves a lot to be desired. The school's most prominent feature is the Geisel library and even that is mostly due to its design and not necessarily because it is pretty. 

I worked there during a summer program as an undergrad and, with the exception of Scripps, every cool place we went to was off-campus. 

Libertine

June 11th, 2013 at 11:23 PM ^

U of M (obviously), Boulder, Berkeley, Palo Alto, Madison, U of Chicago (just don't go over the Midway or on the other side of Washington Park), Williams, Princeton, Oberlin, UVA, Duke, LSU, Indiana, and UCLA. But my absolute favorite is the University of Washington.

Smash Lampjaw

June 12th, 2013 at 9:02 AM ^

Kenyon, Princeton, UCLA, Suwanee, Claremont. Not so much about big-time sports, obviously. Maybe Haverford is in there somewhere. I give an edge to places that managed to avoid building anything in the nasty 60's and 70's.

French West Indian

June 12th, 2013 at 10:07 AM ^

...on Michigan's campus.  Central Campus is still nice but they've had a bad habit of jamming more buildings in it over the past 20 years.  And it's also been creeping into the city too which, I feel, threatens what had been a very nice town/gown balance.  If they're not careful, I could easily imagine returning in 20 years and being unpleasantly shocked by what it has become.

North Campus looks lovely but the problem is that almost nobody wants to actually be there for any lenghty amount of time.

And the Medical Campus is, frankly, an outright abomination, like a giant tumour growing on the city.