<p>Hi!
I'm a high school senior who is trying to decide which college I should attend and I'm having a very difficult time. Out of all of my college choices, I would have to say Dickinson College, Gettysburg College, and Denison University are my top three. I'm planning on majoring in psychology, and I most likely want to go on to get my Psy D. and become a psychologist. I know I want to study abroad and join Greek Life.</p>
<p>I'm currently leaning towards Dickinson. I fell in love with it's dedication to sustainability, global education and it's campus when I visited. In second is probably Gettysburg, and third Denison. </p>
<p>If anyone who attends/attended or is a parent of either could give me some insight, it would be greatly appreciated!</p>
<p>I am the parent of a Dickinson grad (my D1). Great study abroad, and I also think they are better than many LACs at helping you get ready for the “real world” after college. My kid loved her four years there and got a very good job after graduation. I met a psych major when touring campus there with D2 who had a post-graduation job lined up with the Nielsen rating service. D1’s friends are also pretty much all employed – a couple took a while to land due to the lingering impact of the recession, but all now have professional jobs they seem to like as far as I know. The only one I am not certain about wanted to work in publishing, which is a very tough field to break into no matter where you go to college.</p>
<p>We are from the Midwest (several states away), and my daughter found her fellow students to be really welcoming. She also developed close relationships with her professors, and keeps in touch with a couple of them even two years after graduation. Of course all three schools are good, but I can vouch for Dickinson as a very good experience for my daughter.</p>
<p>I live near Denison, and my father is a graduate of Kenyon which is Denison’s main athletic rival. So I know a little, even though I did not attend.</p>
<p>If you never visited, Denison has a beautiful campus which sits high on a hill/ridge, and the town of Granville is too cute for words; almost too perfect. It also has the advantage of being about 45 minutes away from Columbus which is the most prosperous city in Ohio – plus it has a major airport. 75% of Denison students are from out of the state. So, Denison is not some provincial college; it is rather sophisticated. Greek is pretty big. I doubt that Denison would disappoint you.</p>
<p>Academically, all three of these schools are very equivalent. They all do the sustainability thing, and the global education thing, and study abroad. Sorry, but none of that is special anymore. All the small liberal arts colleges do this stuff. Make your decision based on something else; scholarships, sports, close to home, whatever. Hard to make a mistake with those three, but I have heard that Dickinson has a “high school” social life. </p>
<p>Wow… way to slam a school you have never even visited. While all colleges have study abroad these days, Dickinson has a reputation for one of the deepest and strongest study abroad programs in the country. Here is a link to the Dickinson site on it: </p>
<p>My daughter participated in two different programs to study off campus junior year. First semester she was able to study abroad in a country where there are very few study abroad programs. She had studied the language of that country before going to college, and wanted to spend a semester there. Dickinson allowed her to direct enroll in a university there and transfer the credits back – several other colleges told her she either couldn’t study there or would have to withdraw for a semester and re-enroll when she came back. While the OP may not have type of experience in mind, it may be useful to know that there is flexibility and a deep commitment to study abroad at Dickinson. My daughter spent the second semester of junior year in the Washington DC program that Dickinson participates in through the Washington Center; she was able to intern at the Department of State during that semester for credit.</p>
<p>Regarding social life, I can only comment that my daughter and her friends did not seem particularly “high school” to me. They seemed pretty typical for college students – actually a little more mature than most. I have actually been to all the campuses you are asking about, and doubt that the social life varies much between them.</p>
<p>As far as the number of students from other places, Dickinson has a larger pool of international students than most LACs, and 75% of their students come from out of state.</p>
<p>I can corroborate the report of Dickinson’s commitment to the study abroad program. Son of a good friend went to a middle eastern nation that became involved in syrian conflict while he was there. They allowed him to remain with his host family and to continue his studies and language lessons. An invaluable experience for the young man. I would rank these schools as the OP has: D, G, Denison. Outside of these things, I would say Denison has over the years acquired a rep as a party school and as a bit more conservative than average; I say this merely to suggest that you might look at these elements more closely for yourself if they concern you.</p>
<p>I second (triple) the comment re: Dickinson’s commitment to study abroad, the width and depth of offerings, and the attention to international issues (there’s also the War College nearby which can shed very interesting light upon international events). Even the language majors focus on culture in addition to the more traditional literature curriculum.
Denison has had serious alcohol problems, more severe than at most colleges, with over a hundred alcohol poisoning per year if my recollection is correct (“problems” serious enough to involve police or hospitals, meaning the kid is in such a state they may fall into a coma and have to be hospitalized). This would personally concern me as a parent since there are other problems associated with heavy drinking. It’s true it’s very pretty and very strong academically but I can’t recommend it due to the alcohol-related risks.
Gettysburg is especially strong for history and engineering. Greek life there is stronger than at Dickinson. Perhaps a bit more conservative.
The town is smaller and prettier than Carlisle (still using personal recollections) but there’s less to do. Not that Carlisle is a hub of activity either but it’s a bit more lively apparently in terms of movie choices, theater, restaurants, etc.
Go ask on the colleges’ respective forums, current students and alumni will give you more details.</p>
<p>You might get more info if you post on the pages for the individual colleges. I’ve heard good things about all of these colleges, and they have a lot of similarities, so you wouldn’t go wrong at any of them. If there are significant financial differences, that could be a deciding factor.</p>
<p>My daughter is a freshman at Dickinson, planning to major in psychology, although she hasn’t declared her major yet. She is having a great experience there, although she has to work very hard, harder than she had expected. She is happy with the social life there, and has made friends through the usual ways - in her dorm, and through EC activities. I think it is great that she has made friends with upperclassmen through ECs, and from them has gotten lots of advise about classes to take or avoid, study abroad, etc. Over spring break, she was full of ideas about studying abroad two different places, one semester each, since she was having a hard time deciding which place to go - Italy or Australia. </p>
<p>Just this weekend, at an EC activity I went to watch, I met a bunch of other parents of Dickinson students, at all grade levels. Everyone spoke very highly of the school, and their student’s experience there. The two seniors had been admitted to very competitive graduate school programs. A parent of a senior told me that all the things that Dickinson says in the beginning turns out to actually be true, in terms of what they learn, what the schools values are, etc. </p>
<p>I don’t know as much about the other two schools. My daughter visited Gettysburg, one of the few visits that I wasn’t able to go on as well, and for reasons I never really understood hadn’t like the school and didn’t apply. My husband said the campus was quite nice, and he hadn’t understood why our D didn’t like the school from the visit, although she liked a lot of other schools that are supposed to be very similar. </p>
<p>Good luck with your decision. You have some great choices.</p>