Happy to help, as my current Denison student was choosing between Kalamazoo and Denison as well as some other schools.
What we loved about Kalamazoo was the tight community and cozy campus tucked among several streets near “downtown” Kalamazoo. It is a few blocks from a major public university campus, Western Michigan University. My son also liked the flexible curriculum, with only foreign language and senior writing project required, as well as the trimester format. Kzoo draws primarily Michigan residents though students do come from California and plenty of other states. We all liked that the Kzoo students reflected a range of types, there was no dominant “type” of student – we saw blue hair, piercings, preppie, etc.
What he preferred about Denison was the larger student community as well as the national reach of the campus community. Only about 20% of the students come from Ohio, with both east coast and west coast well represented, plus a heavy percentage of international students. Both fine arts and performing arts are superb, and with Columbus about 20-30 minutes away, there is a lot of opportunity to engage with business, arts and political opportunities in the city. The town of Granville is a charming village at the foot of the “Hill,” with a CVS pharmacy, grocery store, restaurants, banks, small shops etc. Newark/Heath are about 10 minutes away for “major” shopping like Target, Chipotle etc. There is a high end mall, Easton, about 20 min away when you want to splurge.
In terms of party culture, there is greek life (fraternities and sororities) at Denison but it is non-residential, meaning that the students don’t live in the greek life houses, the houses are just for meetings and “chilling” and cannot be used for parties. There are big parties, formerly in the “Sunnies” – the senior apartments – and now in the “Moonies” – newly built social spaces. 1st year students may overindulge in that but at least my kid and his friends, pretty much lost interest after a while. There is a campus wide “gala” every fall, plus “D Day” – a day of music performances capped off with a headlining music act in late fall. There are movies on campus most weekends, plus endless music, singing and theater performances on campus. The Vail Series is a music series which brings internationally known performers as well as under-the-radar performers to campus – my kid saw Wynton Marsalis as well as lots of young, rising performers. A long way of saying – there are “traditional” loud, crazy parties if you want them, but also lots of other things if you don’t.
Finally, in terms of academics, Denison has an excellent Econ department which is the usual major for students interested in business at a liberal arts college, since they don’t offer business degrees. Within Econ, there is the Financial Econ concentration, which seems to allow for greater specialization, plus there is a Data Analytics major and a Global Commerce major, which can be other possible majors for students interested in business or just interested in rounding out their education. The career services at Denison are excellent, really comprehensive outreach, programming and support for students.