Devyn
It is okay, nothing crazy here. Small school, decent teachers, the social scene is barely existent.
Angela
What's the best thing about this school? Easily the landscape: surrounded by the Newport mansions. But I think the school unfairly exploits this quality, because the time of year when Newport is "nice" (beach weather, tourists, scenic gardens) only overlaps with the school year for maybe 3 out of the 9 months you're there. The rest of the time it's basically what you'd expect from a New England seaside resort town in winter: windy, slushy, and mostly deserted. A lot of the nightlife and shopping closes for the season, leaving little to do. As a result, half the students leave for the weekends, which creates kind of a vicious cycle because then the school then sees no demand to organize more on-campus weekend activities, which in turn means more students leave, etc. I know it is not the school's responsibility to keep students entertained at all times. I personally founded and participated in several clubs, but found their quantity and quality totally inferior to extracurriculars offered at other schools.
Newport is actually a diverse city, but most students don't know that because campus is situated in the wealthiest area. The upper-class neighbors are irritated by the student presence, which puts a lot of restraint on our ability to be students because noise, street art, etc are "out of keeping" with the landscaped mansion theme and the image Newport wants to present to tourists. By mid freshman year, most students develop Salve-itis, which is almost indistinguishable from mono: you eat and sleep a lot, become apathetic, neglect your social life, and don't get out much. School pride is almost nonexistent and most people transfer. On another college review site, only 42{4a082faed443b016e84c6ea63012b481c58f64867aa2dc62fff66e22ad7dff6c} of almost 100 students interviewed said they would go to Salve if they could do it all over again.
In all, Salve is a small school that doesn't offer many of the touted small-school benefits. Newport job and internship resources are scarce, the administration is not particularly caring. and extracurriculars are weak at best. For students who want to learn, state schools have about the same quality of education. For students who want to party (or who just want to experience the life of a student), there is even less going on.