Hello helpful Hillsdale Forum! I am thrilled to say that my daughter will be a freshman at Hillsdale in the fall. I am so excited that she will get to experience the wonderful Hillsdale College community and all the unique opportunities that the college provides. She took part in a 2 week Hillsdale summer program for high schoolers last year (The Roots and History of American Liberty), and the good feelings from that whole experience helped her discern that Hillsdale was the place for her. She applied to 16 schools in all but in the end Hillsdale won out:)
My question is this – how would you describe Hillsdale in a sentence or two? The college choice decision is now paramount in daily conversations with friends and acquaintances and even though we live only 3 hours away from Hillsdale (Cleveland/Akron Ohio area), the vast majority of people that we know have never heard of it. I want to be able to express Hillsdale’s defining characteristics in a conversational way. The catch phrases of “Judeo-Christian faith” and “Greco-Roman culture” certainly got my daughter’s attention in the college mailings, but they don’t really work well in everyday conversations (at least in the circles that we run in!).
I think that I would start with “a classical liberal arts college in Southeastern Michigan” but how do I concisely follow that up?
We have learned so much from this forum, thank you all for sharing your thoughts and experiences here!
To be honest, I think you would be obligated to note that it is substantially conservative.
How many other schools have a “shooting sports” center and required courses on the Constitution?
It would be odd to describe Hillsdale in one sentence and not mention “extremely conservative” because that is what it is known for in addition to being a small LAC with good academics. A second sentence might mention, “known for not being tolerant of same-sex relationships.” Even though your friends may not have heard of Hillsdale, it has a national reputation for both of these things. A third fact that could be mentioned is the college’s decision not to accept federal funding, which is pretty unique.
So, does that mean no PELL Grants at Hillsdale?
Depends who’s asking. In regular conversation, I describe Hillsdale just as the OP said-- a small liberal arts college in south-central Michigan. No further explanation needed. In conversations with closer friends, I usually describe the reasons I chose Hillsdale-- academic rigor, really strong small community, classical liberal arts. Occasionally the “no accepting federal money” might come up, but not often.
Hillsdale is generally marketed as more conservative than it really is, so I don’t usually discuss that. (Or the same-sex relationships point-- why on earth would you drop that into a low-key conversation? The veracity of the claim is an entirely different question.)
I would be very interested to know where they student body matriculates to.Like others have posted when selecting a school with a reputation as “conservative” I would think it would put you in a box. Do other Graduate schools snub this school?
I am under the impression that Deerfield Academy is having trouble with there college placement and can only surmise that it is because of the Koch funding. When you pick a “side” are you punished ?
Although they emphasize conservative values in many of their publications their faculty were not consistently of any one political viewpoint (at least not while I was there). This is a good thing, otherwise you go from “Oh no liberal atheist state school professors!” to “oh no, conservative, hyper-religious professors!” Side note: I’ve attended several state schools while acquiring my degrees…I’ve yet to run into that crazy liberal atheist professor, and Hillsdale didn’t have any professors that tried to push beliefs on students either.
The students, on the other hand, tend to be extremely conservative. And not just politically, but in day-to-day behavior as well. My class might have been an anomaly, but they were quite a judgmental, fundamentalist group. The school itself though didn’t seem to overtly support that behavior in their daily practices.
Honestly, solargem, I don’t think struggles to move into post-graduate work are the result of students having chosen a side. My impression from talking with faculty at my various affiliated universities and at conferences is that nobody knows Hillsdale in academia, and that’s what might be making things difficult for students who hope to go on to graduate/post-graduate work.
Faculty members are the ones on committees deciding who gains entrance to their graduate programs. No more admissions offices, just faculty in the specific department/area of study. It’s really important that you appear credible as a candidate, valuable even, and I’ve sat on committees where we simply have no idea where the school is, we look up faculty in the applicant’s major and they have minimal to no recent peer-reviewed work…and some committee members feel that if you studied at a school where the faculty have few significant publications then you likely did not receive the same quality education/rigor as student B who attended UVA and studied under bla bla bla. It’s “politics” but not social or government based, just academia being academia. And it does make sense to a certain degree. If you got a major from a small school (such as MVNU) that promotes itself specifically as a teaching/not research school, there can be skepticism that the education students received was up-to-date, as the professors would not have been required to publish and stay current. Although it doesn’t remotely discourage research, Hillsdale has no faculty publication requirement, so their faculty do not publish as often in peer-reviewed publications as professors at larger research universities. This means at worst a grad committee says “what the heck is Hillsdale?” at best their point of reference is “that school Rush Limbaugh promotes?”
Planning a career that requires graduate work frequently means selecting schools based on how well-known the faculty in your planned field are. And that’s difficult for an 18/19 year old to do if they don’t have access to academic journals to find out what a faculty member’s reputation actually is. I don’t miss being that age and having to make those choices.
I have, and this was at a small regional state university (philosophy professor).
Enter Swarthmore and Brown. The liberal strain is strong with these two.