Current Student's Thoughts (honest description, clarifying a big misconception)

Colleges and Universities A-Z Davidson College
1

If you’re reading this post you are likely a high school junior or senior doing a bit of research on potential options for your educational future. Not too long ago, I was in a similar position. It’s a complicated decision, and if you’re an analytical person like I am you are probably trying to absorb all the information you can regarding your college options. Both while applying to Davidson and in the summer leading up to my freshman year, I would constantly read all that I could find online about the school (this included stumbling upon the old Davidson Show videos on youtube, worth a watch IMO). This perpetual and admittedly obsessive search for information about the school led me to discover websites like this one where different people would opine about Davidson’s academics, social life, and everything in between. It dawned on me the other day that I should write something that could possibly help other students make decisions and learn more about the place I’ve come to love and call home. When you only visit a school once or twice you obviously don’t know everything about it. But you really want to! I was once there too. Hopefully I can give some decent advice to the high school senior trying to learn all he or she can about Davidson. (I’ve never posted to a site like this, not really my vibe, but I believe what I have to say is important and useful so here it goes)

  1. Rumors of Grade Deflation/Unreasonable Difficulty
    I feel like I should address this first, as it is something that bothers me greatly. A common theme in these online reviews of Davidson is this notion that there is grade deflation here. You’ll read things like “You do A-level work only to earn B’s” or “You’ll have to work more for a B than students at comparable schools do for an A”. Do not believe this for a second. I think it is unfair and irresponsible to make such hasty generalizations and tell incoming students what their academic life will be like before they get a chance to figure it out for themselves. There is a small and vocal cohort of students that perpetuates this doomsday attitude (“all we do is work!”, “You’ll never have free time!”, “My life is so hard!”) surrounding our school’s academics. Those types of people are more likely to voice their opinion in an online forum, creating a misleading picture of our academic life. Take a look at the Class of 2017 graduating class profile (https://www.davidson.edu/offices/institutional-research/graduating-class-profiles). The average GPA is a 3.40. A 3.8 is the 90th percentile and a 3.7 is the 80th percentile. For a quick comparison, the average GPA at Williams is similar - 3.45 (http://williamsrecord.com/2016/10/26/average-grade-rises-0-12-points-in-16-years/). You have to work to earn your grades, but don’t let anyone try to tell you certain marks are unattainable. That’s just patently untrue. If you have good time management skills and are smart with the non-major/minor classes you take (i.e. don’t take a brutal lab science class if you’re not a science person and just need the requirement) then you’ll easily be able to have a lot of fun and get involved while keeping up a 3.7+ GPA. Personally, I’ve found that academic life at Davidson is nowhere near as difficult as it was in high school. In high school I woke up at 6 AM, got home at 6 PM, and did homework until midnight. That’s not Davidson. Manage your time well, seek help when needed, and you’ll be more than fine. A small number people at Davidson are just a bit self-righteous at times and love to talk about how much work they do; it’s the one complaint I have about my school. The silent majority of Davidson students (as I’ve alluded to, not really the type of person that would post on an online forum like this) works hard and achieves great results. There will be select weeks during the semester when you have to grind pretty hard, but if you’re in the library every night until midnight the whole semester that’s more of a reflection of your own time management skills than it is an indicator of the overall school culture.

  2. Professors
    With grade deflation rumors and skewed misconceptions of the academic culture, I advised you to be skeptical and not buy everything you read. When it comes to what you hear about professors here, buy the hype. Buy it all. I think we were ranked third in best undergraduate teaching (not a fan of rankings, but its still a good indicator). The professors here are so genuine, outgoing, and caring. With no grad students, you are their only focus. Many schools employ faculty that care much more about their own research than their students. Not at Davidson. The consistent willingness of our professors to connect and engage with us in the classroom and outside of it never ceases to amaze me. They’re such impressive academics too. The areas of research they operate in are often extremely unique and focused on producing meaningful change in society. That’s something I value a lot. The vast majority of my profs have also just been cool people. I’ve had a good amount of young, funny, chill, and intelligent teachers that truly care about us students. Buy the hype.

  3. Athletics
    Take a look at all the other schools on any list of top liberal arts colleges. What does Davidson have that none of those schools do? Elite, nationally relevant D1 athletics. Basketball is competitive in the A10 every year and our baseball team just beat #2 nationally ranked UNC twice at home to make the super regionals in the NCAA tourney. We also have one of the top football programs in the nation! (sarcasm, football is awful). I’m a big sports fan and the fact that we do have relevant athletics is a big plus for me. Basketball season is a lot of fun and I personally think having that aspect to the school holds a lot of value. We’re always lurking to pull of an upset against a powerhouse, and A10 competition is really solid basketball. Oh yeah, and Steph Curry.

  4. The ‘Hidden Gem’ Effect
    Where I’m from, nobody has heard of Davidson. If they have it’s either because of basketball or, in a small number of cases, they actually know it for its academic reputation. You’ve heard or likely will hear many students say that they love the people at Davidson. It’s this sort of indescribable feeling that 2,000 students somehow make a place so special just by being who they are. It’s why you fall in love with Davidson and don’t want to leave come May. I think this is directly correlated to Davidson being a hidden gem of a school. I think it takes a special type of person to find Davidson. Kids who attend Davidson aren’t the high schoolers who made their college lists based on the US News and World Report. We didn’t decide to come here for the name recognition or to impress people at grad parties during the summer after high school graduation. Davidson students are incredibly bright, and they find this place because its special, not because of a ranking or a name brand. This little school in suburban North Carolina has an amazing ability to bring extraordinary people together and create a one-of-a-kind community.

Those are four areas that I thought would be beneficial to expound upon in an online forum like this. These sites are a nice tool, but they can lead to misinformation and troubling misconceptions. I really just wanted to talk about the grade deflation/impossible academics thing. Felt like it was important for there to be an honest take on website like this, because I fear the views of very few could misinform someone’s decision. The other stuff I wrote was just kinda what popped into my head as I was going along. Hope it helps. Peace out and best of luck with the college process. Roll 'Cats.

2

Thanks for writing this. My D and I just attended a presentation with five schools, including Davidson. She thought it was the best presentation of the five. A few questions: is it a moderate student body? leans liberal or conservative? Greek life dominant? We’re from the West Coast, so how diverse is the student body and culturally is it very southern? Thanks.

3

It’s an elite liberal arts college, so naturally it leans liberal. With any election year, and this especially divisive year in particular, highly liberal voices are amplified. Therefore, this past year may have made the campus seem overwhelmingly liberal, when it is in fact rather moderate. Definitely a lot of conservatives, but they’re just quieter about it. I have found that almost everyone is levelheaded and willing to be rational and engage in dialogues with all sides, which is really what matter rather than ideological spectrum. There’s a difference between being on a liberal campus where liberal student activists take over and cause uproar in the school because they think the sushi is culturally appropriative and a liberal campus where the slight liberal majority is logical and levelheaded. Greek life is highly prevalent, but not dominant. The school says 45% of males are in fraternities, but if you were take a percentage out of the number of students that consistently party and consume alcohol, it’s probably more like 70% (that’s subjective, keep in mind). Nearly all women join eating houses and some join our two sororities (historically African American organizations). I like our greek life because it’s non-residential and doesn’t take over students’ lives. All court parties hosted at houses on Patterson Court are open to all student regardless of affiliation. Having witnessed greek life at other schools, ours is comparatively much more inclusive and respectable, though I don’t want to imply that many issues don’t exist in greek life. School is definitely not culturally southern. There aren’t too many kids from the deep south. A lot of NC and SC kids. Ton of DMV. Lot of Northeast and atlantic coast. Lot of NY. Surprisingly a decent midwest draw. West Coast probably the smallest region represented, but a good amount from Cali and WA. The school is culturally the same as any of the new England or PA liberal arts schools, but with far better weather and a more active greek life.

4

I went to Davidson and I don’t buy paragraph 4 in the first post. EVERY school can claim that it’s a “hidden gem” and has amazing people and is special.

As one of my friends who went to Duke says, “why in the world would you go to Davidson and work so hard and have a degree from a place that nobody’s heard of if you could go to Duke and work the same and have a well-known diploma?” The comment is offensive, and people today tell me that Davidson is a “hot” school, so I’d say that the comment is also somewhat wrong.

I would go to Davidson if:

  1. I were looking for a LAC (in which case name recognition wouldn't matter anyway because few if any LACs are well-known, so you might as well go to one that's a good fit), or
  2. Davidson were the best school I got into.

I wouldn’t go there, though, with the attitude of, “this place is so special and I’m intentionally picking a place that nobody has heard of, simply because it’s super-special”; that’s silly.

People at Davidson seemed to like it, and I never heard complaints; my experience there was about 25 years ago, so it’s not really relevant, though.

5

There is something to be said for the type of student who doesn’t chase the popular name brand. A large group of such students creates a pretty unique and cool environment. That was pretty much my point in the fourth paragraph and has been true based on my personal experience. Our experiences, being 25 years apart, are obviously pretty different. I’ve seen firsthand that the Davidson student is more often that not an exceptionally bright young person who is truly invested in their passions and simultaneously very genuine and humble. That type of person is hard to come by in an age where top high school students applying to elite schools are all too often egotistical and spend four years with “college coaches” and SAT prep classes all geared towards perfecting an application that doesn’t really reflect their true profile as a person or a student.

Your condescending synthesis of what I wrote (“this place is so special and I’m intentionally picking a place that nobody has heard of, simply because it’s super-special”) is clearly misguided. I never tried to claim that Davidson is the only school that can embody what I referred to as the “Hidden Gem Effect”. Certainly schools like Colby or WashU or Bates could say the same thing. Nor did I write anything to the effect of “I’m intentionally picking a place that nobody has heard of.” I think the vast majority of Davidson students are picking a school they truly feel attracted to, and usually name recognition has little to do with that. I’m not sure how you’re takeaway from that could be the line of thinking “I’m going out of my way to choose a lesser known school.” Davidson students choose to attend the school because of the school itself and the community within it, not its reputation in the outside world. That’s all I meant to convey. Sorry if I didn’t manage to do that to the effect I had hoped.

Comments like your own are why, as I mentioned in my original post, I think online review sites like this can be problematic for potential applicants. You make unsubstantiated blanket statements, misinterpret and over-simplify what was written, and end it by saying your experience at the school isn’t relevant. I don’t understand how that is constructive or beneficial to anyone.

This will be the last comment I write on this site. I just wanted to share my experience and hope that it can help some people somewhere down the line.

6

@wildcat30, you posted your honest description and you got honest responses. Not sure what you expected.

7

Thanks, Maine Longhorn. I agree.