<p>I should note that Dickinson also has distribution requirements–2 each in humanities/SS/science, in different departments. Oberlin’s requirements are similar with 3-3-3, not sure about department distro. Both, IIRC, have language/first-year seminar/diversity requirements in addition. General education should not be a deciding factor.</p>
<p>(One efficient way to find these requirements, often buried in the catalog, is to search “graduation requirements.”)</p>
<p>Cool facility:</p>
<p><a href=“http://oncampus.oberlin.edu/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab=community&url=%2Fbin%2Fcommon%2Fcourse.pl%3Fcourse_id%3D_2841_1&[/url]”>http://oncampus.oberlin.edu/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab=community&url=%2Fbin%2Fcommon%2Fcourse.pl%3Fcourse_id%3D_2841_1&</a></p>
<p>See that little triangle in the lower right? Have DD stage a polite sit-in to start an organic garden there. Portobello mushrooms go in the shady part up top, before they go on the burgers. Then the whole experience goes on her resume. Career-building at Oberlin, Wesleyan, Macalester. That’s how it’s done.</p>
<p>I agree with the poster who said it’s not really about which is the better school. More about where your daughter will feel more comfortable. She can get a fine education at either if she so chooses. My sense is that Oberlin is more Kenyon than Kenyon (higher % of those smart, artistic kids from high school–the ones with the funky clothes and piercings), and Dickinson students might be a tad more traditional. Which student body does she see herself fitting in with better?</p>
<p>Plainsman: It is obvious from your posts you are a great dad. I am sure you have set an an example of hard work and dedication for your daughter or she would not have been accepted to such great schools. She will head off to Oberlin or Dickinson and find her passion. Upon graduation she will find a career that reflects said passion and that is enhanced by her education. She is already highly motivated, so send her off with love and she will find her way.</p>
<p>Hey, you raised her.</p>
<p>Plainsman, </p>
<p>I went back and read some of your posts. It looks like Oberlin was your daughter’s first choice and you are really taken with the place. (So I’m thinking that it’s a good match socially.) I wouldn’t let one professor’s comments dissuade me from my choice. I don’t think in reality, either school has the edge in job placements. I do think Dickinson may make a better effort-- but Oberlin has a better reputation. Those factors, plus the $, would seal the deal for me.</p>
<p>Carlisle is a pretty nice college town, though things close pretty early (which was a turn-off for me as a native). I always liked that the college is right in the middle of things. I don’t know a lot about Oberlin other than knowing someone who attended the school and enjoyed it.</p>
<p>I have a friend who is currently a freshman at Dickinson. It was not her first choice, but she is enjoying her year even though it is very close to home and she can run home in 40 minutes (yes, she’s a long-distance runner). My friend is, I think, planning on doing biology/pre-med, but she likes the people she’s met and her extracurriculars (predominately track and cross country). She also got a tour guide job, which she appreciates having because as a local she can easily keep working there over breaks.</p>
<p>Carlisle is a conservative town in a pretty conservative area, but some people don’t mind that. Dickinson has pretty nice facilities as well. I don’t know a lot about the school but I do know a little about Carlisle. 
There’s not a lot to do outside of Dickinson, but I imagine the campus culture makes up for a lot of that.</p>
<p>I don’t think that there’s any question Oberlin leans left. But everyone I know who has gone to Oberlin has adored it. It’s one of those colleges that retains a strong impact on its alumni’s lives 25 or 30 years after graduation. My daughter has several friends there now, and she has visited at least once a year for the past five years. While sometimes she chuckles over its hipper-than-thou aspects, she says it has been a great place for her friends – they are very engaged in their studies and very happy in their lives outside the classroom. They love the co-ops, too.</p>
<p>Dickinson may be an up-and-comer, but I don’t think it’s in Oberlin’s class yet, or even in the adjacent class. That’s not just a matter of disembodied “prestige”, or imagining what some future employer will think of your degree (two things I discount heavily). It has to do with the students it attracts. The students I know around here who have chosen Oberlin, or who have considered it seriously, rightly or wrongly would not look twice at Dickinson. Oberlin gets a lot of strong academic students who were near-miss waitlistees at Swarthmore or Williams. Dickinson doesn’t, at least as far as I know.</p>
<p>Dickinson is a lot more conventional than Oberlin. The 25% fraternity participation reflects that. It’s not trivial. But that may be attractive to the OP, comparatively. I suspect the rate of federal drug law violation at Oberlin is much higher than at Dickinson.</p>
<p>Finally, it matters that Oberlin is a short, doable bus ride from Cleveland. It is possible to do some big-city things from time to time. The equivalent bus ride at Dickinson gets you to Harrisburg. Cleveland may be down these days, but it has a lot more going on than Harrisburg.</p>
<p>“I suspect the rate of federal drug law violation at Oberlin is much higher than at Dickinson.” -JHS</p>
<p>Oh God! I hope you’re kidding.</p>
<p>Personally, I’m not a fan of frats and sororities, which is a major reason why I’ve told my D to ignore Lehigh, to toss them, and she has. 25% isn’t much, and the fact that the Greeks at Dickinson have to eat with everyone else means Greek life at that school is marginal. </p>
<p>Thanks to all of you for helping me to see there is a difference between Oberlin and Dickinson in terms of prestige. I hadn’t picked up on it as much as some. I knew Obie had higher SATs, but I didn’t really dwell on it. Frankly, I was surprised my D got in and was given a scholarship. Her safety didn’t even offer a scholarship. Maybe this is a “don’t look a gift horse in the mouth”, “thank our lucky stars” moment. Maybe Oberlin really wants her. Her ECs and essays seem to fit the Oberlin culture perfectly. That’s my guess.</p>
<p>I guess the test for us on our visit this weekend will be: is Oberlin TOO liberal? If my D doesn’t think so, then she’ll probably pick Oberlin. If she does - if we all cringe at the extreme leftist culture - then she’ll pick Dickinson. </p>
<p>HeartArt: Thank you so much for the compliment. We all try to do the best for our kids even though we parents are far from perfect.</p>
<p>I tried to interest my daughter in Oberlin, but she really didn’t want to consider Ohio for some reason. She is a sophomore at Dickinson. As a freshman, she loved it with that wide-eyed exuberant first-year love, and while some of the romance is gone, she is still very happy. The other two schools she very seriously considered were Brandeis and Connecticut College, and she is still glad she went to Dickinson.</p>
<p>I think my daughter would agree that there are some spoiled rich kids there, but she has found a group of very good friends from a variety of background, including a few who grew up overseas like my daughter, as well as a couple of locals and several from Los Angeles. We take cooking pretty seriously at our house (and live in a region with fabulous culinary experiences), but my daughter has never complained about campus dining, and she’s actually mentioned several favorites on the caf menu. </p>
<p>My daughter was one of the top students at our small high school, but she still found her first year very challenging (partly due to course difficulty, but I think she also let herself enjoy the freedom of being far from home a little too much). She has come into her own academically this year, and always sounds excited by what she is doing in class (foreign language major and poli sci minor). She’ll be abroad all next year, and while she’s really looking forward to it, she’ll also miss being on campus.</p>
<p>I’ll respond to a couple of specifics that have been mentioned. The career placement assistance at Dickinson seems to be pretty good - my D stopped in just to check it out and they took a lot of time with her and gave her some good information about possible summer opportunities that would build on her junior year abroad and fit well with future career interests. Regarding the distribution requirements, I was surprised at the some of the ways they can be met. For example, the quantitative reasoning requirement can be met with an econ course or music theory. So I think there is more flexibility than one would find with core requirements at many schools. As for the first-year seminars, many of them sound really intriguing. However, my daughter got her second choice, and it provoked what was really the only quasi-complaint I heard her voice: “It <em>could</em> have been good.”</p>
<p>My daughter was turned off by the big Greek emphasis at several schools she might have otherwise considered, and my sense is that it is not really a dominating factor at Dickinson (but that’s really just based on not hearing her mention it). Still, I think they have rush starting with sophomores, so if the 25% membership figure is in relation to total school population, then it is actually a bit bigger proportion of eligible students.</p>
<p>One last thing - if your daughter is not interested in study abroad, there are several other possibilities: a semester in DC, for example, and I think my daughter mentioned another friend would be in NYC for a semester. I imagine that is fairly common, so the opportunities might be similar at Oberlin if your daughter decides she’d like something like that in the future.</p>
<p>“I guess when people think Oberlin they think of crazy liberal hippies who are smoking something. It’s not as though Kenyon is in any way shape or form conservative, but for example when Obama won the election at Kenyon people just went crazy with their car horns and such, at Oberlin roughly 20 gay couples decided to have an Orgy in the middle of the town square to celebrate (no BS). So, in many ways Oberlin is more hands on liberal.”</p>
<p>Plainsman: I was looking up some info on Kenyon on CC and came across this.</p>
<p>One thing I want to mention… Even though Dickinson has a middle-of-the-road reputation, I know several kids who went there whose politics are definitely left. I don’t know them well but I believe they are returning and doing just fine.</p>
<p>I hope no one reading HeartArt’s post believed it. Not that it seems likely that anyone would. But just in case, here’s what really happened at Oberlin the night of the election:</p>
<p>[Oberlin</a> Blogs | Blog Entry: “November 4th in Oberlin”](<a href=“http://blogs.oberlin.edu/community/life_culture/november_4th_in.shtml]Oberlin”>http://blogs.oberlin.edu/community/life_culture/november_4th_in.shtml)</p>
<p>Not my post, I am quoting from Foolsgold on Kenyon thread dated 2/9/09.</p>
<p>HartArt:You might think twice about what you pass on from unreliable anonymous sources, especially something so obviously ridiculous and offensive. What nonsense.
OP: Students debating over Oberlin and other schools are more likely to be agonizing over chosing it over University of Chicago or Brown, or Juilliard than Dickinson.</p>
<p>I can’t imagine anyone agonizing over choosing Oberlin over any of those three.</p>
<p>I posted some positive information about Oberlin previously. But, if I were getting ready to send a daughter off to a certain college, I would read EVERYTHING about it on this site, good, bad or otherwise. I am only pointing out a post that has been on CC for two months now, if it is not true, then great, lets clear that up. Again, it is not my post.</p>
<p>@danas: I not only imagined it, I did it - Oberlin con-college over Juilliard and Columbia and some other great schools, and no regrets.</p>
<p>IMO, the preponderance of liberal arts colleges are not vocational training programs, and do not pretend to be.</p>
<p>Many of the smaller colleges have relatively few private sector, out-of-region recruiters coming to campus.</p>
<p>Even at some heavily recruited universities, only 20% or so of their liberal arts graduates interested in employment may get their jobs via on-campus interviews.
At least though, in that case, there will be interviews to be had, and 20% is a lot more than zero. And possibly a larger school with great name recognition among employers may be of some benefit in off-campus intitiatives.</p>
<p>Many choosing to attend a liberal arts college do so with recognition from the outset that some sort of postgraduate studies or training program may be necessary before their “launching” into their eventual career will be completed.</p>
<p>Most graduates will be left to their own devices, in the end, for the therereafter. How they are helped or hindered by their college attended, once they’ve graduated, can be speculated upon. In this day and age, internships may be helpful if used wisely. </p>
<p>Nevertheless, it is certainly worth investigating what each college will do for its graduates interested in immediate employment, there may well be some differences that may appropriately be given some measure of consideration.</p>
<p>Danas: more on the choice of Oberlin: my daughter is considering it strongly. She would be giving up Yale, Swarthmore or a big award at Vanderbilt (versus 1/2 the award at Obie). I know someone there who chose it over MIT.</p>
<p>Both great choices. I know kids have done well an loved either school. My feeling is that Dickinson has more of an universal appeal. My best friend’s daughter fell in love with Oberlin but her cousin who is much like her, graduated from Dickinson and loved it there. Another good friend has a D at Dickinson who is thriving. Congratulations on having such a difficult choice!</p>