<p>@cckerry: No, don’t do that! At Oberlin you’ll be a URM and a shoe-in! (Just kidding! I joke, I joke!)</p>
<p>I don’t think there’s a place on the application where you would have to disclose your political leanings.</p>
<p>Even if you worked that into an essay or an extracurricular activity, I strongly doubt your chances of admission would be impacted by what you believe; though it could be impacted by what you did.</p>
<p>For example, I suspect that the admissions committee would consider what these people DID, not what they BELIEVE, in terms of which items are impressive: </p>
<ul>
<li><p>President of Young Republican Club since 4th grade, growing the membership from 12 to 380</p></li>
<li><p>organized 120 volunteers from your high school in support of a Free Gold candidate for dog catcher</p></li>
<li><p>second vice-chair of the decorations committee for my school’s first annual “Hip-Hop Dance to Stop Climate Change” that raised $62.39 and a pair of lightly-used Birkenstocks.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>I think it’s easy to pick out what activities are impressive here while being truly blind to the applicant’s political ideology.</p>
<p>In terms of how political compatibility impacts students after matriculation, I see many discussions on CC that dwell on difference in political ideology as an area of concern in terms of “fit” and I think those conversations are almost as inane as “chances” threads.</p>
<p>You will be in a community of thousands of students, meaning that you will have to be at an extreme end of a political spectrum in order to feel politically isolated, even where the prevailing winds blow hard left or right or moderate. Your immediate community of friends will be self-selected and much smaller and, if political ideology is truly important, you can find yourself surrounded by like-minded thinkers without much effort.</p>
<p>And it’s this fact – that your college experience is shaped by a far smaller orbit than one that sweeps across the full expanse of the student body and faculty – that brings me to the principal reason that I think these discussions are inane: college students generally don’t select their friends based on political ideology.</p>
<p>How many high school seniors are themselves looking at that as a litmus test for who they hang with? I suspect most of these concerns about political compatibility are driven by parents and other stuffed shirts over the age of 30 (meaning they cannot be trusted…except when they’re saying that they can’t be trusted). I can see how parents would be afraid that Sammy or Sally might go off and befriend students who vote differently. I don’t think Sammy or Sally give a single thought to that when asking around the dorm who wants to go to the 'Sco.</p>
<p>What you DO want to consider (if you can trust me for a moment) is whether students are open-minded or close-minded – about anything and everything, looking well beyond politics. This goes to musical tastes and, for a prospective athlete like the OP, whether they are embraced as members of the academic community or whether they’re outcasts or even placed on a pedestal (but kept separate). At Oberlin, you might want to know if someone who likes disco and techno will be shunned by con students. Even if you don’t like disco and techno yourself, that might be relevant because if students are throwing up barriers like that at any college, it’s likely that they’re not doing it in one narrow arena. Maybe you’re into Star Wars or on-line gaming. Will you be ostracized for that…or will people still walk to the far end of the hall to knock on your door to see if you’re up for grabbing a second dinner even though they’re clueless about those things? Yes, politics might be included in this…but it would be one of many considerations under the broader inquiry of open-mindedness and close-mindedness.</p>
<p>I don’t go to Oberlin and I won’t offer an answer to that question. I’m just suggesting that, when you’re trying to glean where you’ll “fit” as a student, the “political compatibility” test is one to avoid and the “open-mindedness” test is one to explore.</p>