@homerdog is it equally intellectual or are the stats skewed by the D1 sports?
@NEPatsGirl No idea. I assume USNWR would rely more on academics. Not sure why sports culture would figure into their rankings.
The academics at Colgate are top notch and the kids are every bit as smart as the kids at those other schools. Imo, the difference is the social scene, but even then, for lots of kids, many of these schools are interchangeable. @homerdog , you should probably check it out yourself if you are going to look at Hamilton, for example. You can tour both in one day.
To the extent that the academic preparation of incoming students can be measured by standardized test scores, Colgate (50th in the fairly recent analysis below) compares well to highly-ranked NESCACs such as Middlebury (46th): http://www.businessinsider.com/the-50-smartest-colleges-in-america-2016-10. In the prior year, the order was reversed (Colgate 44th, Middlebury 51st) http://www.businessinsider.com/the-610-smartest-colleges-in-america-2015-9.
Usually you get people here posting about how we shouldn’t care about the USNWR rankings so it’s interesting to see someone openly saying its the reason their family is considering a school.
In any event, that wouldn’t really be a reason to differentiate these two schools. Hamilton ranked 1 place below Colgate this year (there was a 6-way tie for 12th), which is statistically insignificant. They are in the same ranking tier.
@citivas Well, rankings aren’t that important and, after months of making a list, this was the first I looked at them. I just thought we had considered most of the top 50 LACs at one point or another and Colgate just never came up. We are in the Midwest and not many kids from our school go the LAC route so I didn’t have a lot of experience with the small colleges. I made this thread to get a feel for the vibe at Colby and to see if it made sense to do more research on the school. I agree that exact rankings don’t tell the whole story. We are shooting for best fit.
Take Bowdoin and Colgate - as opposite as they could be within the same category. Bowdoin is known for having outdoorsy students who are consistently ranked at #1 happiest, while I have personally been told by 3 all three friends of mine who go to Colgate that the student life is terrible. While the admin is trying to eliminate the old frat/jock vibe, it is ever present. One friend went there over unc; says it’s the biggest mistake he ever made.
Well, Colgate receives a “student life” grade of A in the survey site Niche, as well as an overall grade of A+.
@homerdog, your approach makes perfect sense to me. I think the rankings are mostly useless, but I did consult them periodically. If a school we were considering was a serious outlier, that made me dig a little deeper. If we hadn’t considered a school that showed up in range of some schools we were considering, I took a look to make sure I wasn’t missing anything. Rankings were also super handy with a certain family member who didn’t get the current landscape … it gave credibility to a few schools they’d never heard of. 
Other than that, eh, not so much with rankings.
You’ve got some good answers here about Colgate, and I can’t help because we didn’t visit … on paper it just seemed like not a great fit for my kid.
USNWR doesn’t have a metric that measures the level of intellectual (vs. pre-professional) vibe at a school. Colgate is awesome – it’s just different in its sports scene, and Greek life, frommost noetheastern LACs. Different doesn’t mean worse – I wasn’t making a value judgment, or at least did not intend to.
Heck, UW-Madison is one of the biggest rah-rah sports schools in the country, with perhaps the biggest party rep in the country, and I chose it. 
I’m relieved when kids and parents ask a question about schools that are fairly different in multiple areas, because it makes it easier for us to proclaim those differences and implore them to choose based on fit. It’s harder to give advice when the choice is, say, Oberlin vs. Grinnell or Midd vs. Williams.
I know this is old, but I gotta chime in -
Hamilton alum here, and Hamilton always felt way more cozy and walkable than Colgate to me. As others have stated, the campus may be larger, but it’s probably more condensed. Now, I attended before the frats lost their housing, and the Rogers Estate was renovated just before I graduated, so I never had to walk to class from those buildings. But I still maintain that Hamilton is very walkable. In 4 years, I don’t think I ever walked to or from Clinton. I either rode the Jitney or drove (either myself or with boyfriend/friends - 4wheel drive is recommended)
Also, someone mentioned that the frats and sororities are required to invite the entire campus to their parties. I don’t know if this is a real policy or not. It has always been this way at Hamilton. Yes, there were private parties - usually semi-formals by invitation only - but there was never a shortage of open parties to attend. It’s just part of the culture. Before the drinking policy changed, there were keg parties in the dorms open to whoever walked by. It’s a very social campus.
Also, the whole “light-side/dark-side” thing is so over-exaggerated. It’s just a fun way of referring to the different sides of campus. First years might be assigned to either the light side or dark side based on perceived fit, but after that, the “divisions” kind of melt away. As a student, you will have classes on both sides of campus, you will eat on both sides of campus, you will party on both sides of campus, and it will all feel like home.