And just to clarify my point (along with MwFan and MYOS)-- there are colleges which are havens for kids who want to work in government, on campaigns, on the Hill; colleges which produce a lot of activism regardless of the student’s professional inclinations, and colleges which swing hard in one direction (thinking of places like Hillsdale and Liberty) where a kid who holds different views might feel marginalized.
In my experience, Dickinson falls into NONE of those categories- hence my observation that it’s not very political. On any campus you’ll find kids who want an internship in DC, will take a semester off during a Presidential cycle to work on a campaign, or kids who start writing for the local newspaper/website and then get involved in local issues. But these kids don’t set the tone, they just have their interests in the same way that the swing dance students, the a cappella singer students, the varsity golf students have their interests. Nobody would accuse a college of being “too musical” just because it has students who sing, play, or appreciate music in their spare time.
Princeton review lists rankings based on student feedback. Dickinson has a few excellent rankings in PR’s top 25 lists, including Best Classroom Experience, Best for Making an Impact, and Everyone Cares about Conservation.
My son is a senior at Dickinson. He has been very happy there. One of the strengths of the school is that there really is something for everyone, even though it is a small school. The academics are excellent and there are lots of cultural, academic, professional activities that take place on campus. They recently had a Nobel Prize winning physicist on campus and the U.S. Poet Laureate, Ada Limon, was there for a one-week residence. They balance STEM and non-STEM nicely. Most popular majors are business, psychology, sciences, economics. I would not say that Dson is a particularly “political” campus. There are students who are interested in those things, but it is not an “activist” campus and doesn’t draw students who look for that sort of campus culture.