<p>Hi</p>
<p>I'm a little confused as to what separates Oberlin, Kenyon, Grinnell, Vassar, Macalester, Davidson and Wesleyan. I understand how they differ in location and size, but how do they differ in terms of student body and atmosphere? They are all kind of blending together, and I'd appreciate some help.</p>
<p>Thanks</p>
<p>Hi awesomesauce3: I could answer this, but one of the student bloggers, Patrick, covered this in a very Oberlin-tour-guide-info-session fashion already [on</a> the Oberlin blogs](<a href=“http://blogs.oberlin.edu/misc/miscellaneous/what_makes_us_d.shtml]on”>http://blogs.oberlin.edu/misc/miscellaneous/what_makes_us_d.shtml). </p>
<p>The short version of what makes us different:</p>
<p>We are the big small school (2,800 students between the college and the conservatory), the conservatory (we’re the only place in the world with both a music conservatory and LAC of both of our high calibers on the same campus), the art museum (ranked in the top 5 collections on college campuses in America), our natural science offerings (we were the first undergraduate institution to offer neuroscience as a major, and you can do research with a professor starting in your first year), our awesome student body (we cover a ridiculously large range of interests and background, only compounded by what Oberlin had to offer), and our student co-operative association (OSCA houses and dines 1/4 of our campus).</p>
<p>That’s just a teaser, I highly encourage you to read his post, and if you have any questions leave him a comment; he’s ace at answering things.</p>
<p>Don’t dismiss location as an irrelevant factor. Geography can shape a lot of things from the types of outdoor activities to the social climate. It’s not an automatic, but it can be a factor. Sometimes a significant factor. </p>
<p>Wesleyan and Vassar have a northeastern vibe, regardless of the fact that both schools draw students from every region of the country (and overseas). Davidson is in the south, and does not have a rep quite as liberal as the midwestern schools, particular Oberlin, Grinnell and Macalester. Kenyon has frats and sororities; Oberlin students disdain frats and sororities–there are none. Vassar has a disproportionately female student body for obvious historical reasons, far more disproportionate than the other schools. And Macalester is in a city (St Paul) which offers opportunities that are not as convenient at the other schools on your list. That can be either bad or good, depending on your interests and tolerance for distractions. Location can certainly shape the student body as well as the atmosphere.</p>
<p>Get hold of a good college guide like the Princeton Review and read about the schools. In addition to CC, there are other very good Internet sites that will provide direct comparative, side-by-side information about the schools on your list.</p>
<p>Sounds like your list is very similar to my son’s. I don’t know what your interests are, but my son was looking for strengths in academics (humanities), athletics and the arts. He was interested in playing Div 3 tennis and is a jazz musician. He applied to Wesleyan ED1 and was deferred and deferred from Vassar ED2. I think Oberlin would have been a surer bet for ED, but initially he was concerned about the ultra-alternative rep of Oberlin’s student body. We liked Macalester a lot, but he did not make such a big play for the school. Ultimately, he was rejected from Wes (in spite of a double legacy) & Vassar, accepted by Macalester and Oberlin, and has decided to go to Oberlin. I always felt that Oberlin’s music culture made it a hands down win, but it took him awhile to get around to giving that its due weight, even though music is what he spends all his time on when he isn’t studying (go figure:)</p>
<p>Oberlin is thought of as the Wesleyan of the mid-west. As Plainsman mentioned, there is a definite female majority at Vassar, but my son had the best overnight visit there and the campus is GORGEOUS. I loved Macalester’s international and Minnesotan urban feel, but my son doesn’t have an international focus particularly, and was a little daunted by the idea of those winters…It is also a little bit squished, as a campus, and a bit small in student numbers. We visited Kenyon but my son found it waaay too quiet. I agreed.</p>
<p>Broadly speaking, I think Wes students are intensely intellectual and have a maverick cast. Vassar students seem very arty. Oberlin’s are totally outside the box creative. Kenyon students seem more gentle and a bit more mainstream. Macalester students seemed very grounded to me–the college really emphasizes student-career transition & connections. Huge generalizations, of course! You’ll just have to go through the same tortured year deciding that we have just completed! Good luck!</p>
<p>Oberlin has a really nice size–2800 students–if you are looking for a slightly larger LAC–which my son was.</p>
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<p>I’ve heard Wesleyan described as the Oberlin of the northeast. :)</p>
<p>On our visits to various LACs over 2 years ago I saw a lot of differences between them. One of the things that really impressed us about Oberlin, and made my son choose it, is that the education seemed student driven. Oberlin presented itself as helping students lead the inquiries that were of interest to them. And this has proven to be the case. At Wesleyan by contrast, the presentation was one about how the professors were going to hand down a body of knowledge to the students. Who knows maybe it could have also been just a difference of style between the presenters. Also, when we asked the admissions people at Wesleyan about internship opportunities, they said that they guessed that some people did internships. Since this was a key interest of my son’s, these two items nixed Wesleyan for him, and clinched his choice of Oberlin. We were also extremely favorably impressed with Grinnell, Vassar, Bennington and Beloit. But, each has its’ own distinct personality. I was very concerned about the fiscal condition of Bennington, as before the crash their endowment was only about $10 million. For my son, Oberlin looked very different from the other schools and was the clear favorite. It has also provided him with an excellant education and opportunities way above our expectations in his two years as a student.</p>
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<p>It would be unusual to find someone at Wesleyan talking about “a body of knowledge” as though it were some sort of bucket of water that students carry strapped to their heads until graduation day. I think what you may have heard was some name-dropping. There are a lot of published professors at Wesleyan and students are rightfully proud to be associated with them whether they are in their classes or not. To that extent, yes, there may be a certain amount of role-modeling going on.</p>
<p>My son had to choose from among four of those colleges on your list and a few others, so I wanted to give you some useful notes. I had to scrap that response because I can’t help you in that way. As I look at what tilted things one way or the other for my son, I think a lot of it came down to factors that were a complete surprise to me. Maybe to him, too. You can try to get your head around these schools and compare similarities and differences and put them into neat, easily-categorized boxes…but when the time came to make a decision, all those other factors that everyone talks about were merely indicators that were shaped and informed by one very personal question which has a very personal answer: “What college is the best ‘fit’?”</p>
<p>I don’t know how to account for answering that or how to tell someone else how to plan for it or inform someone to go about it wisely. My son’s decision – once he had one to make – went in all sorts of directions I had not anticipated but, in the end, it came down to that intangible, mythical thing called “fit.”</p>
<p>And here’s the important thing: the place that’s the best “fit” is NOT determined by the place that has the most of the things you’re looking for. I contend that it’s the other way around. You’ll find that you’re defining the things you value most and seeing things more favorably for one college over the others because of how, deep down, you’re feeling the “fit.”</p>
<p>I think Inquisitive Mom points to this in her response…because for all the “good science department”/“lots of research opportunities”/“most volumes in the library”/“best dining hall options”/“first to offer a major in the history of neurobiology”/“Zonker Harris Day or albino squirrels” pros and cons you could possibly list, I think that when you’re choosing among top liberal arts colleges, it all boils down to which student body you want to be around the most. (Not where you’ll “blend in” so much as which group of people you want to be around.)</p>
<p>johnwesley’s point is well taken but, in the end, it’s all about your own personal perceptions. So, for Inquisitive Mom’s son, I think it was imperative for him to honor his perception. Especially because it was one he arrived at intentionally and after a thorough inquiry. But johnwesley is right to come here and warn others to arrive at their own perceptions and form them as independently and intentionally and intensively as Inquisitive Mom’s son did and not just embrace the conclusions and value judgments of strangers.</p>
<p>I think these lists of which school offers this major and which one has the best wifi and which school’s colors would make for the coolest quilt from grandma…they’re just opportunities to reveal the answer to the one all-important question of “which college gives me the right vibe?” And you need to answer that by getting onto the campuses and spending time around students. Depending on how you feel about that, even on a subconscious level, your answers and priorities as to all those other questions will fall into place. Do you really want to choose your college based on all the stuff that the admissions offices tout? Like the supercomputer or the electron microscope or the observatory or the Cap’n Crunch they serve at all three meals? How you feel about those things and the importance you assign to them really come down to being a manifestation of your predisposed preference as to where you want to be and who you want to be hanging out with.</p>
<p>It was not that the presenters as Wesleyan explicitly talked about “a body of knowledge” not that there was name dropping (I remember none). It is that all the education they discussed was from professor to student and they did not discuss the dialectic that the Oberlin folks presented. It was a striking difference. But, as I said, we each see a slice when we go on a visit. We could have had a particularly bad visit.</p>
<p>I agree wholeheartedly with D’yer Maker, it is very individual about what school is good for an individual student. My sons spent a lot of time exploring the type of learning environment, teaching that works best for them. Doing this before the visits made the visits much more illuminating, then if they didn’t ways of understanding how what was being presented would work for them.</p>
<p>Hi awesomesauce3, You may also want to investigate how the LACs on your list differ in their approach to graduation requirements beyond those required for one’s major and how you feel about a wide open vs. more structured approach. For example Grinnell has no distribution requirements outside of one’s major; the freedom to choose courses is central to the way Grinnell organizes its curriculum. Vassar and Wesleyan have more of a middle ground; they have technically “open” curriculums but loose distribution requirements. My oldest attended Wesleyan and she was only required to take 3 courses each in natural science, social science, and humanities outside of her major to qualify for honors. With Grinnell, Vassar and Wesleyan’s approach, it will be up you to develop a broad yet in depth liberal arts education. My daughter was able to do this at Wesleyan, and it grew out of her own motivation, not a prescribed set of rules. </p>
<p>I am not sure how all of the LACs you cite differ in terms of their requirements, but I think it is important to do this research in advance. For example, if you have very focused interests or areas that you would like to study in depth, you want to look for colleges where there’s plenty of room to make your own choices. My youngest falls into this camp, and in retrospect she wishes she had investigated this before selecting Oberlin. She is a rising junior. Although she has been very happy with many aspects of the school, she has found the requirements to be far too cumbersome for her liking. In addition to requirements for her major, there are distribution requirements for humanities, social science, natural science, cultural diversity, quantitative and writing intensive, limits to how many courses she can take in one division and limits to what she can take in her department. It takes a spreadsheet to figure it all out! Because of the division/department limits, she may not be able to study abroad. Some students need this type of structure, others less so. She wishes she had more freedom to choose her own broad program with more flexible requirements.</p>
<p>S looked at Oberlin, Vassar, Macalester and Grinnell 3 yrs ago. He decided to ED at Grinnell as the best personal fit for him - interests, personality, academic organization and strengths, etc…See the Why Grinnell thread on that forum. The generous merit aid didn’t hurt either. But Oberlin was a close #2 and his best friend is there and loves it.</p>
<p>Note that Vassar and Macalester are urban schools, which has a definite impact on the campus culture. Students can and do live off-campus or leave campus for entertainment. That can be a plus or minus depending on the kind of community you want.</p>
<p>Just to clarify Studiomom’s comment regarding Oberlin’s requirements. My D2 is a student there and doesn’t find the requirements cumbersome at all. They are amazingly flexible. For example, she will be a junior in the fall but has already fulfulled the quantitative requirement without taking a single course in the math department. You can fulfill cultural diversity by taking foreign language courses, and so on. Every category requirement can be fulfilled with a variety of courses that actually cross over to several different subjects. </p>
<p>No spreadsheet needed. Anytime you want you can run a program within Presto that will allow you to do “what if” analyses. You can plug in any major or majors and it will take your courses and automatically slot them into the areas where there are requirements, then tell you what else might be needed. Most of the courses you will take to earn a degree at Oberlin are discretionary. They aren’t requirements. On top of that, you can earn some credits toward your degree by taking “ex-co” courses. </p>
<p>As far as not being able to study abroad because of rigid course requirements, that is simply not accurate. Both my D2 and her boyfriend (also an Oberlin student) are headed to different foreign countries this summer to earn credits toward their majors. This was all done through the college.</p>
<p>Studiomom, I don’t know your D’s major, but it might help if she talked to more people at Oberlin and asked a lot more questions. Her college has much more flexibility than what you’ve seen on paper. And you don’t need a spreadsheet. :)</p>
<p>My son also has had a very easy time with the requirements. They are very few and very flexible.</p>