Diversity at Colgate

<p>Is Colgate really not that diverse? I wanted to apply during the summer but now I am unsure.</p>

<p>What measure of diversity at Colgate are you questioning? What happened last summer that now puzzles you? What aspect of the colgate.edu website or maybe hearsay has surfaced? And what is your plan to visit Colgate, possibly alongside some other northeast colleges this Fall to learn what each school offers?</p>

<p>You will get better feedback if you focus your questions along these lines, in my view.</p>

<p>Good luck!</p>

<p>Small rural liberal arts colleges certainly would not be my first choice for “diversity.” If that was my top priority, I’d head for USC, NYU, or other larger urban schools like BU. Or I’d look into schools which have made enormous efforts to take “one of everything” as if they were peopling Noah’s Ark. In this regard, Amherst comes to mind. It’s a worthy goal, I suppose, and there’s much to be said for being very diverse so that students of all types learn from each other and so on. </p>

<p>That said, though, most people who go to college put quality of education at the top along with factors such as an appealing environment, interesting students, a variety of academic programs and other opportunities, and so forth. Whether a college had 15% African-Americans or 20% wouldn’t interest me very much. Or whether it’s “non-white” varieties score was heavily Asian and few Hispanic or vice versa wouldn’t interest me too much. I would not like to be part of a college or university which was too homogenous or too heavily white, suburban, preppie, and so on. But these are the kinds of students who tend to populate a lot of colleges, so it’s not that easy to find colleges with truly broad diversity of the type that has large numbers of Asians, blacks, non-Americans, Hispanics, Indians, or whatever your ideal mix would be.</p>

<p>Colgate does fairly well in this regard, though, enrolling “somewhere” around 25% minorities. I couldn’t tell you much more than that or which groups make up which percentages, but while it’s still pretty white it’s also fairly diverse. Example: One of my students (I’m a high school teacher), a Hispanic boy from Los Angeles, attends Colgate as did a black student from the same school and my own daughter who is Japanese-American, also from the same school. Not a white among them! My daughter is a Senior, and one of her roommates is Hispanic-black while the other is Korean Asian. Except for the obviously missing Eskimo, Arab Muslim, or Cuban, this is pretty impressive. </p>

<p>I was also on campus two weeks ago for four days to visit my daughter (Go Colgate Rugby!) and I saw and talked to a lot of African-Americans, Asians, and others as well as your standard suburban white kids, as well. It’s pretty diverse, I’d say, for a small rural college in the countryside. </p>

<p>Hope that helps a little.</p>