<p>Gellino quote: As a point of reference, I knew someone who had been accepted RD into Colby who only got into Colgate as a Feb-frosh (meaning he couldn't start until 2nd semester Freshman year) and still chose to go to Colgate over Colby. While I think Colgate is better, I don't know if the spread is so great to forgoe the first semester of college.</p>
<p>Gellino, your comment is so anecdotal and hardly proves your broader point.<br>
Our daughter was accepted at Colgate and Colby, both RD fall acceptance, and decided to go to Colby. The latter was a better fit. </p>
<p>I applaud the fact that she made her decision on the basis of many factors that had nothing to do with "prestige". </p>
<p>All the top LACs are wonderful schools, so is it so important to keep reassuring yourself that Colgate is really more like Princeton and Dartmouth than its close peers?</p>
<p>momofdd: I'm sure it would help OP and others reading the thread if you enumerated the factors that made Colby a better fit. As I said, my wonderful cousin loved it.</p>
<p>Colgate and Colby are both great schools. While I am, of course, biased, I would argue that Colgate is a better choice.</p>
<p>Colgate's slightly larger size is advantageous in keeping the school feeling fresh and always making it easy to meet new people. I saw that someone suggested that Colgate '11 was 26% New Yorkers and while this might be true, the overall geographic diversity at Colgate far exceeds that of Colby. My class has over 70 students from California alone.</p>
<p>Colgate's science programs are top notch and are enhanced by the opportunity for undergraduate research; biology is general in the top 3 or 4 majors at Colgate and the other sciences have consistent enrollments as well. The facilities of the Ho Science Center are unmathced in our peer schools as is the newly renovated Library.</p>
<p>At the end of the day you should follow your gut and pick the school that feels the best. Maybe that means visiting again, or maybe you'll just figure it out one day [which, trust me, can happen at anytime]. Either way, Colgate is a great school but you couldn't go wrong at either.</p>
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At the end of the day you should follow your gut and pick the school that feels the best.
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<p>Exactly GateNY09.</p>
<p>For my S, summer visits to Colby and Colgate resulted in Colby being removed from his list & Colgate staying on...but just barely. These decisions had little to do with facilities or reputations or SAT scores, but much more to do with gut feelings having been exposed, albeit briefly without many students around, to the campus and themes the tour guides and students spoke of. In Colby's case, he wasn't too enamored with the monostylous look/feel of Colby with its relatively new, but well maintained, campus (he equated the impression to Wake Forest, a school he didn't particularly like being "too" manicured), and disjointed connection with town (both physically and relationship)...these qualities, which may be non-consequential to others, were enough for him to give Colby the hook early in the process. Colgate made his first cut, but not by much....more eclectic campus feel and decent village helped. It was only after returning to campus after RD acceptances that he really fell in love with the place....this was mostly a result of student and fellow acceptee interactions (compared to other places he was accepted.) A factor that helped steer him to Colgate over others where he was accepted (that were more urban & metropolitan) was the notion he hadn't truly considered until that point on the benefits of attending a rural bubble school, e.g., perhaps one chance in life to spend a considerable amount of time in a bucolic setting, enhanced school spirit due to isolation.</p>
<p>While objective things like the wonderful, new Ho Center and endowment statistics are great for us geezers (speaking for myself) to pontificate on, there is much more subjectivity at the individual preference level….and rightly so….for the applying students that must be thought through, and sometimes that takes soak time.</p>
<p>Hence, getting back to the OP, rewrets, I agree with others on this thread….the benefits of an ED strategy should not drive your decision….your choice should feel right, and if you need more time, take it, you won’t regret respecting your gut.</p>
<p>Mythmom, there were many small and larger factors that affected our daughter's choice.<br>
A larger issue was Colby's stronger focus on International Studies, borne out from a larger international enrollment (10% versus Colgates 6%) and early participation in taking United World Scholars (along with Princeton, Wellesley, Middlebury and a couple of other schools).<br>
The campus culture was very important to her, she saw the lack of Greeks as a plus. Colby also has many more dorms that are "chem-free", that option seemed very limited at Colgate, at least when she applied.
She perceived that people were a bit more laid-back and that the vibe was friendlier at Colby, more casual in their dress, fewer girls with "straightened hair". The latter may fall in the silly category, of course, but all in all it made the choice pretty straightforward.</p>
<p>"All the top LACs are wonderful schools, so is it so important to keep reassuring yourself that Colgate is really more like Princeton and Dartmouth than its close peers?"</p>
<p>I'm just trying to present the difference in feel and ultimate destination of people from the two schools, a large factor of which is that Colgate is 50% larger than Colby.</p>
<p>From knowing many Colgate and Colby grads and knowing where else they applied and seeing this confirmed by the PR list of overlap schools is where I get the info from. It certainly stands to reason that someone at a 730 person/class school would be more interested in a 1,000-1,100 person a class school than someone at a 480 person a class school; not to mention that the former plays at the same level of sports as well. It's not a matter of prestige as I would say that Dartmouth and Amherst are regarded as relatively comparable schools.</p>
<p>Besides that, I was merely pointing that despite both schools having ~ 6% of students go on to get a PhD that Bloomberg reports a disproportionate share of Colgate grads in the business and legal world than Colby grads.</p>