One of the Big Three.

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

Along with Princeton and Harvard, there is not a lot that can be said about Yale which has not already been committed to paper. Founded in 1701 there are 5,500 undergraduates and 6,900 postgraduates here and the university can lay claim to being the alma mater of many US presidents, including a recent one who is now likely happy to be rated the second worst, courtesy of the current incumbent.

Part of the city of New Haven in Connecticut, the campus spans an expansive 260 acres and while there is not that sense of perfect integration of the parts into a whole so evident at, say, Wesleyan or Tufts, the scale is necessarily larger here, given the five times greater number of students. In addition to the usual gamut of academic buildings, the campus includes the Peabody Museum of Natural History and the Yale Art Center, both major museums in their own right.

While we originally contemplated a weekday visit to enjoy a guided tour, the weather forecast is so bad (how does anyone survive the simply awful weather in New England?) that we toured unassisted on a Saturday and, in the event, had a wonderful time.

The Yale Art Museum:

The Museum has a superb collection, not least when it comes to Edward Hopper, five of whose best works were on display at the time of our visit.

In addition to five US Presidents both good and awful (mostly awful), Yale alumni include Meryl Streep, the great public servant John Kerry, Anderson Cooper, Cole Porter, Jodie Foster, Janet Yellen, Edward J. Norton, Sigourney Weaver, that great debunker of morons Paul Krugman, Paul A. Giamatti, Paul Newman, Sinclair Lewis, Thornton Wilder, Elia Kazan, George Roy Hill, Oliver Stone, Brian Dennehy, Sam Waterston, Sam Wagstaff, Charles Ives, Richard Serra, William Boeing, Indra Nooyi, Murray Gell-Mann, Benoit Mandelbrot, Frank Shorter, Sargent Shriver, Eero Saarinen, Benjamin Spock, Maya Lin and Eli Whitney. Stated differently, find a bunch of successful people in any discipline and a disproportionate number will be Yale grads.

Stunning.

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

Founded in 1764, Brown is one of but nine schools dating from before the American Revolution. A healthy endowment sees to it that the 6,300 undergraduates and 2,200 post graduates are ensconced in pristine surroundings on the gorgeous 143 acre campus in beautiful Providence, Rhode Island. Size appears to be inversely proportional to quality for this, the smallest of the US states by area, is also home to its finest arts school, the neighboring Rhode Island School of Design. Indeed a shared double degree with RISD is to be had for five year students.

Brown was the first Ivy League school to offer engineering studies and also has the distinction of permitting students to design their own courses. Nothing is mandatory here. So well known is this concept that it is now known as the ‘Brown Curriculum’.

Prize winners galore grace the alumni and faculty counts here, from Nobels and National Medal of Sciences winners to Rhodes Scholars and MacArthur Genius fellows. This is as good as it gets in American academia.

The campus is a thing of beauty and my son and I enjoyed a splendid – and rarely dry – day in wandering around. We were made to feel very much at home by staff and students in this beautiful setting, a testament to the civilizing power of the liberal psyche, one much under attack today by the forces of darkness seeking to usurp the American Republic. Brown fills you with the knowledge that this evil is but a temporary setback to progress from the Age of Enlightenment on. This is not a flame that can possibly be extinguished and if we came away encouraged by this realization then that is how it should be after a visit to one of the world’s greatest schools.

Little narrative is needed for what follows. Just gaze on the sublime beauty, the many quiet places, the expanses of lawns and air which make this a hallowed academic setting.

Brown’s mascot is the bear.

The cupola in octagonal Robinson Hall, once a library, now the Department of Economics.

The reading room in the Hay Gallery, recently restored – right down to modern furniture – with a grant form India’s Mittal family. Mittals graduated here in ’12 and ’15. And we seek to deny their compatriots American citizenship?

‘Idee de Pietra’ by Giuseppe Penone. High whimsy.

Hammock studies.

Untitled (Lamp/Bear) by Urs Fischer. Public art is everywhere on the campus grounds.

Even Brown cannot escape the obligatory ugly. This high rise gaol masquerades as the List Art building.

The Wriston Quad, named after a former President of the University.

An appropriately named crossroad on which to conclude our tour.

There are so many prominent alumni of Brown that it’s hard to know where to start. They include the great philanthropist John D. Rockefeller, Jr., donor of a magnificent library on the campus, Janet Yellen, the most powerful person in the world, Ted Turner, Oren B. Cheney, the founder of Bates College, George Kidd Teal, inventor of the first silicon transistor, Emma Watson, Walter/Wendy Carlos of synthesizer fame, and if that’s not enough the list of distinguished faculty members is every bit as long.

A jewel in Lewiston, Maine.

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

While the old mill town of Lewiston appears to be successfully gentrifying, its ‘dark, satanic mills’ being converted to businesses, restaurants and quality housing, no such excuse need be made for Bates College, a true jewel. The campus is gorgeous, and Lewiston happens to be one of the safest cities in the United States.

On the small side as US campuses go with but 1,800 undergraduates, and dating from 1855, Bates spans 133 acres on the Lewiston campus, and manages to be much of a muchness. Everything is where you want it and it is the second school we have visited where not a single building is out of place, regardless of age. Indeed, one of the most recent, Pettengill Hall, is one of the best, with a magnificent sweep of bay windows and the high Perry Atrium inside making for a special place to meet, to learn and to think.

A dear friend who graduated here – and also met his future spouse on campus – writes:

Without naming names, I can guiltlessly disclose this long held secret!

Bates is accused of being the costliest private school but the distinction is meaningless. These New England private colleges do not compete on price, having no need to do so in an environment of massively excess demand. So the Bates ‘premium’ is but pennies on a comparative basis. If Bates has a challenge it is to increase its endowment where, on a dollars per student basis, it’s at the low end of the range. Let’s hope its modest premium allows this to be done.

Bates alumni include Bryant Gumbel, Robert F. Kennedy, the architects Buckminster Fuller and Minoru Yamasaki, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Dean Kamen the great engineer and inventor, George Mitchell, Jan Masaryk, Edmund Muskie and Olympia Snowe.

Verdant yet flawed.

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

Founded in 1813, Colby College is home to 1,800 undergraduates and encompasses 714 acres in central Maine, some 50 miles north of Lewiston-Auburn. The school has a strong liberal arts tradition and is in excellent repair throughout.

Our visit here was a mixed bag for while the college has a vibrantly verdant setting there is no sense of a cohesive whole that is to be found in other schools. Frankly, much of this impression is based on the architecture, frequently shockingly bad and the use of the main building as a library is a very poorly done conversion. Most books were shipped offsite and the awful low ceilings quite destroy the interior in contrast to the superb exterior.

So the question for aspiring entrants is not so much the academic standards, which are fine, but whether they can live with so much mediocre architecture, and having to do so for four years could constitute cruel and unusual punishment.

Alumni of Colby College include a bunch of politicos, including economist Eric Rosengren of the Fed, Billy Bush of pu**y grabbing fame and the fine historian Doris Kearns Goodwin.

In Brunswick, Maine.

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

Some of the best American schools are to be found in remote Maine, and Bowdoin (pronounced ‘Boh-din’) is very much a study in excellence. There are 1,800 undergraduates here in a school dating from 1839. A healthy endowment helps see to it that the school is maintained in pristine condition.

If distinction it be, then Bowdoin is distinguished as being the first college we have visited without a disfiguringly ugly modern building. Even the later additions here are beautifully integrated and the school’s building committee is to be congratulated. Bowdoin is one of the highest ranked liberal arts colleges in the nation despite its relatively modest size.

Distinguished alumni, in addition to those named above, include Reed Hastings (Netflix), Ken Chenault (AmEx), President Franklin Pierce, hedgie Stanley Druckenmiller, Alfred Kinsey and Joan Benoit (Olympic gold in the marathon).