Just a note of clarification. Syracuse airport is a hub airport for Delta, United, American and JetBlue with flights tom
major international gateway airports such as Newark, Chicago, JFK, Atlanta, Toronto, Washington, Detroit, Boston, Minneapolis, and, yes, Philadelphia. Very convenient then.
Go 'gate!
Oh, and Colgate does not have a business and/or finance major. So not sure where that came from…
Colgate is a proper, focused liberal arts college with a storied core curriculum and incredible alumni network. Just look at its graduate outcomes on colgate.edu including those finance firm placements on Wall Street leading to careers in London, Hong Kong and elsewhere. Of course, many are/were economics or mathematics-economics majors. But more generally, and with finance careers aside, Colgate does very well with the STEM, social sciences and humanities disciplines. It’s Colgate students’ enthusiasm and performance in academics, participation in study groups with internships and on-campus activities that make Colgate students interesting to employers and professional schools post graduation.
Go 'gate!
@LucieTheLakie We also had a very negative experience with a Lafayette admissions officer and ill informed tour guide. Yet, there were still things to like about the school including a beautiful and nicely laid out campus, strong engineering, fun sports rivalry and a wow athletics center. Also met a charming science professor along the way.
@happy1 while I’m sure the alumni network is good at Lafayette, my point was not made to disparage the school, but simply to point out that the alumni network at Colgate is exceptionally strong, measured by job and internship networking and placement, and alum giving and involvement etc. When you visit and do your research on Colgate, that really stands out much more than at many other LACs
@wisteria100 I didn’t disagree with you about Colgate since I have no knowledge one way or another. I only wanted to state that I believe from my D’s experience there that Lafayette is outstanding in its own right in terms of an alumni network, job placement (Gateway program) etc.
Colgate is a great school; I just couldn’t get my kid to consider it, due to the location. Oberlin is a great school too, but he nixed it due to its location and opted to apply to Macalester instead. (A GREAT school for internationals.)
Given that the OP is international, I’d just have a hard time recommending Colgate sight unseen.
Lafayette just seems like a “happy medium” and the safest bet if he can’t visit any of the campuses before he commits.
I am going to add my two cents as a Lafayette alum (who is a little pissed at her alma mater as they just waitlisted my son) so I actually feel I am a little less biased toward Lafayette than I usually am. Colgate is definitely tougher to get in to; and while Colgate has a bit stronger of a reputation in general, Lafayette is very strong in the sciences and especially engineering. I honestly do not know enough about the CS program to give a valuable opinion, but Lafayette’s career and graduate school placement is incredible. I don’t recall the source, but one of the rankings has Lafayette’s career placement program as second in the nation, and not just among liberal arts schools. And though it seems that @ClarinetDad16 may be a Lehigh grad (?) I will forgive him for that.
Oberlin ranks way up there in the schools that send students on to PhD’s in STEM. The other two do not. It is close to Cleveland, so it is not completely isolated. I don’t know that the weather would be any better at Colgate!
Just want to add that we visited Lafayette last Saturday and thought the campus was wonderful. Absolutely beautiful and it had such a nice feeling to it. I’ve heard that Colgate is beautiful too, but we haven’t visited yet.
While I know that Oberlin has a well-deserved reputation as a very liberal and artsy place, I don’t think people are giving it nearly enough credit for being strong in the areas of interest to the OP. Oberlin actually has one of the better CS departments of any LAC. They have 7 faculty, and had 28 majors last year, appreciably more than either of the other schools under consideration (Lafayette, for instance, only had 7). It also had the most math majors and was tied with Colgate for the most physics majors. And, as @csdad2 pointed out, it produces substantially more students that go on to get Ph.D.s in math and science. Check out the lists in this thread, for instance: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/1737399-which-top-liberal-arts-college-has-the-strongest-science-programs-p1.html Notably, Oberlin ranks 5th on the list of schools that produce the most Ph.D.s in math and computer science.
And I agree with @csdad2 that people are steering the OP towards schools THEY would be comfortable with rather than what the OP may be comfortable with. There’s plenty of kids out there (mine included) that would probably feel a good deal more comfortable on the Oberlin campus than at either Colgate or Lafayette. Totally depends on the kid. But to dismiss it out of hand based on campus culture when it’s arguably the strongest academically in the OP’s areas of interest does them a disservice.
Also, while it’s quite possible that there’s plenty of marijuana use at Oberlin (I really don’t know), I’ll point out that Colgate is on both princeton review’s Lots of Beer and Lots of Hard Liquor top 20 lists. Pick your poison, I guess.