A day of unalloyed joy.

I wrote about the due diligence visit my son and I paid to Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, NY some six years ago. Whereas most of the light manufacturing north eastern towns have been destroyed by the export of labor to the east, Saratoga Springs has been spared and remains a premier tourist destination. The small town is gorgeous and, unlike many we encountered in our many college trips, Saratoga Springs is very student friendly. After all, why turn down some 2,600 affluent consumers?

A key reason the town remains attractive and prosperous is the adjacent Saratoga Race Course thoroughbred racetrack where hopped up horses run fast. It’s the longest continually operating track in the United States. The Mob played a part in its creation finding that the town was a reasonable commute from either Boston or New York City for a spot of weekend revelry, and what is partying if you cannot gamble on the ponies? Thank you, Sicilian descendants.

Winston decided that Skidmore College would be the right choice for a top notch liberal arts education – imagine a world made up solely of narrowly focused STEM grads – and was all set to start in the fall of 2020 when Covid struck. We decided that a gap year would mitigate health risks so he eventually joined the college as a freshman in the fall of 2021. With a likely life expectancy of 100 years we reckoned he could afford to graduate a year later.

September 5, 2021 – Winston starts at Skidmore.

And that graduation was this past Saturday and the great smile on my face has yet to fade. This was a culmination of a 23 year project.

Winnie and dad, May 17, 2025.

Collecting his diploma.

628 graduates were awarded their degrees that day and it’s impossible to convey the joy of the occasion, with so many beautiful, young people at the start of the rest of their lives.

The hat toss.

After the ceremony at the Performing Arts Center we visited the school one last time – a sad place without all those smiling faces – and found Winston’s engraved brick:

On the brick pathway.

Winston Hofler, BA. My son.

Perhaps the best line from the fine Commencement speakers was from President Marc Conner, who had joined Skidmore just as the maelstrom that was Covid broke out in 2020:

“Ever since the Renaissance every generation has considered its problems to be insurmountable yet somehow we have muddled through”

Here’s to Skidmore College and muddling through.

iPhone snaps.

The best of the best.

For an alphabetical index of the New England College series of pieces, click here. OK, OK, so Caltech is not actually in New England ….

You would expect armies of white coated nerds running around on the way to clean rooms with multiple levels of security and AK armaments, wielded by 007 style villans, in what is arguably the greatest school of pure science and engineering on the planet. Far from it.

What you get is predominantly 1930s architecture housing some of the finest brains in the universe, all discreetly hidden away in largely unexceptional buildings. If Hollywood, just down the road, boasts of its accomplishments with glitz and bright lights, The California Institute of Technology keeps a very low profile by comparison.

Admission? Well, it’s largely fughedaboutit. You need a 4.0 GPA and 1600 on your SAT (well, used to, until SATs were suspended) just for your paperwork to make it through the door. And with Caltech closing in on 50 Nobel prizes in Chemistry and Physics (and one for the comically named ‘Peace’ prize) you can imagine this sort of brain power has been around quite a while, the first being awarded to Robert Millikan in 1923 for work on the photoelectric effect. Or something. (Millikan turned out to be a nut for eugenics, so is now persona non grata at the school. Not all Nobel prizes are created equal).

1930s architecture.

A lovely late summer day found my son Winston and I luxuriating in the dulcet tones of our guide, a long time friend who just happens to be a tenured professor at the school. I understood precisely 9.72% of what he said with my son maxing at some 31.45%. So follow up reading is strongly indicated and I now almost know what a polymerase chain reaction is. Or something.

Most science buildings at the great American schools flirt with ugly and if there’s the occasional outlier at Caltech it can be forgiven by the generally cohesive appearance of the campus. In this image my son, contemplating the complexities of gravitational waves, is following our tour guide. Those east coast losers at MIT actually also had something to do with these:

The occasional outlier.

And everywhere our splendid guide took us saw magic going on. In one area there were screens documenting in real time tremors across the earth, the area of focus switchable at will. A glance at the adjacent map of seismically active areas confirmed that Caltech is actually doomed and that my Scottsdale, Arizona home will soon be beach property. Have a big quake anywhere and the film crews line up with their broadcast vans, plugging in to the provided receptacles to advise Hung So Low that, yes, his former shack in Beijing is now so much rubble. Ah, science.

Even geniuses with no social skills need solitude for relaxation and the beautiful grounds of the campus provide plenty of opportunities for that increasingly rare experience.

Solitude.

Reading rooms are, as you might expect, everywhere, and if the British walnut and oak model is any guide, Caltech has adopted its forbears’ tastes with aplomb.

One of many reading rooms.

And everything is an experiment. This innocuous lily pond is actually used to demonstrate how methane is created by these plants with annual late night illustrations of the combustible power of the gas when ignited. As our guide told us, “Caltech students love to burn up things”. The campus provides for 900 undergraduate and 1400 doctoral students, and their aggregate IQ exceeds that of all but a small handful of nations. And there are so many faculty members that you cannot go a block without encountering a dozen. Add in a generous ‘prank’ budget and you have a combustible mix. Or something.

Explosive lily pond.

With an endowment of $4.6 billion for just 2300 students money is no object here and driving around it seems that the school owns most of the buildings in Pasadena. Come here as a visiting prof and you get splendid housing, perfect weather and the thrilling prospect of the Big One which will wipe everything out. Just avoid the freeways if you hate parking lots.

A beautiful place for your child genius.

Everything is an experiment.

Images snapped using an iPhone 12 Pro Max, much of whose tech content probably originated here.

Even better second time around.

We previously toured Union College in May, 2017 and loved its compact and high quality feel. Since then my son Winston has interviewed with the school and decided to visit it for a second tour, which we took yesterday. This time we were guided by a sophomore student.

Union College clearly reinvests its ample cash flow in facilities and there’s not a tired building to be found. The new Science Center, a $100 million capital investment, opened in late 2018 and will be completed come the fall of 2020. It is magnificent, as you should expect for that sort of money.

The Grant Admissions Center – lovely inside and out.

Our tour, conducted by the enthusiastic Sophia Anderson, commences.

Fall colors frame a unified architectural style.

Inide the Philip R. Beuth ’54 atrium which bridges common areas and the library.

These students are studying the Microscopic Characteristics of Catalytic Aerogels.
That’s fire retardants in English.

The new Science Center cost $100 million and is almost finished. A wonder to behold.

Bad leg spotted in one of the many student common areas.

The F. W. Olin Center, funded by the arms manufacturer’s foundation.
Two symmetrical wings flank a central circular rotunda, which rises through
the three above-grade floors of the building. Science is studied here.

“Formulating strong theses”. One of the mandatory classes – the other is on
how to conduct professional research – at Union College. English as she is wrote.

The Henle Dance Pavilion, one of two Theater facilities.
Part of the 8 acres of formal garden is visible.

The color of the architecture is conformed throughout the many campus buildings.

The Minerva concept sees freshmen grouped into dorms with
discretionary funding to do their own thing.

This was a great experience complemented by an excellent tour guide.

We dined at Johnny’s Italian Restaurant in nearby Schenectady, a short walk away, expecting the Sopranos to enter at any moment.

Lunch at Johnny’s.

iPhone 11 Pro snaps.

A bucolic setting.

For an alphabetical index of the New England College series of pieces, click here.

Home to some 2,600 students on 850 acres, and a ten minute walk from the lovely town of Saratoga Springs a few miles north of Albany, NY, Skidmore College started life as an all girls’ school. The school went co-ed in the 1970s and we were lucky to visit it on a crisp New York autumn day. The lovely campus, replete with trees and perfect buildings, is one we have long wanted to visit for its mix of setting and academic quality.

Everything here is in perfect condition, the dorms are spacious and modern, the food center is beyond compare and the academics are first class. The nearby town of Saratoga Springs, famous as the oldest site for professional horse racing in the US, is within walking distance, and while home to only 25,000 residents is sophisticated, beautiful and safe. Dining (and coffee!) choices are abundant.

Alumni include director Jason Reitman and Grace Mirabella of Vogue.

Update May 17, 2025:

My son graduated from Skidmore College.

Snapped on the iPhone 11 Pro.

Interview day.

For an alphabetical index of the New England College series of pieces, click here.

We made our way due north from Philadelphia to Middletown Connecticut for Winston’s final interview at Wesleyan University today, this being our second visit. The weather continued perfect though the traffic was awful, seemingly the whole world having decided to leave work early for Monday’s Labor Day, as we made our way through the horrors of Manhattan’s west side en route to our destination.

The open and welcoming design of the campus fronts for a high quality college with traditional values – work ethic, fairness, and decency. Wesleyan alumni succeed in all walks of life. Winston’s concerned visage notwithstanding, his interview went well.