Kenyon vs Oberlin vs Colagte

I’m trying to decide which college to go to and I am super stuck. I am going in as a political science major and intend to double major with possibly environmental science, but honestly I’m not entirely sure what i want to do so this may all change. If anyone has any opinions or advice for picking between these schools it’s very appreciated.

Can you go to accepted student visits?

These are distinctly different schools. Oberlin’s campus culture is very, very different than that of Colgate University. I would need to know more about you, your interests & preferences before commenting further on specific schools, but I think that it is safe to write that Colgate & Oberlin are not overlap schools.

Does Kenyon even offer an environmental sciences major?
Because I just googled “Kenyon College degrees conferred” and found no such degrees from there in 2017 (the only one I looked at)

Of the other two, I agree with #2. My kids are more Oberlin “types”, and after the Colgate information session my son wouldn’t even let us do the campus tour. [ Which was kind of a bummer for us, after a stressful drive where we basically got lost because our GPS couldn’t find the place, and the campus buildings looked nice]. I imagine many or more people would have the opposite reaction; “different strokes for different folks”.

To give some notion of the differences:

Politically the Oberlin College student body runs (with exceptions of course) middle of the road democrat to quite liberal, and a subset of them are somewhat noisy about it. “Oberlin students for Trump” will likely not be a large group.(The conservatory students however are much more mixed). They are not big on sports, overall, and relatively smaller numbers of them plan to go to Wall street.

I went to Cornell, and Colgate plays us in a number of sports, particularly hockey. I learned on CC that Colgate students think we have a rivalry with them in sports. Actually we don’t think about them at all. I recall wondering, back in the day, why that group in the Colgate section was cheering so rabidly at our games…
Anyway they must care enough about it to “buy” some near-professional hockey payers, and think about having rivalries. I dont think they even play hockey at Oberlin.

Colgate has fraternities. Oberlin has food coops.
Oberlin has a big music scene. Lots of performances (music, theater) on campus.

Etc., hopefully you get the idea.

About what Cornell student may think or may not think about Colgate, I defer to the last poster. But then I wonder what he he means by what he says.

Maybe Cornell students don’t think about Colgate sports much. But then Cornell football and basketball have not been on much of a tear recently, especially regarding the series with Colgate. Not a great result for them.

About Colgate buying near professional ice hockey players, well, that’s a bit rich coming from a school which has lots of colleges to allocate their various recruits and which has had some success over Colgate in recent years. So what’s the jibe about these over-qualified Colgate players, I wonder. Has no Cornell player ever gone pro?

So where do Cornell people focus? I suspect that Cornell has enough on its plate with its relative position in the HYP Ivy hierarchy. Can’t be easy… So that’s possibly where their attention and concerns end up. Best of luck to them all!

By the way, we encourage college sports fans and applicants to look at how successful Colgate teams have been this year with football, men’s soccer and men’s basketball winning Patriot League titles and going post-season. Just last week we had a tremendous showing against Tennessee in March Madness. Not bad for a liberal arts college of 2850 students. Very gratifying.

Go ‘gate!

My alma mater has mostly been bad at most sports, most of the time. Save hockey which they are often relatively good at. It’s amazing how many Canadians seem to have a well-developed interest in hotel administration. And in my day agricultural economics, not sure where those people go now.

My point for this thread though is, Colgate, a far teenier school, strives to (rabidly) compete in sports at that level (far larger school)… People there seem to care about their teams actually doing well in their sports. And get all jacked up about it. The paragraph above starting “By the way…” most definitely does not equally apply to Oberlin. IMO that is indicative of some of the differences in the student bodies (Colgate vs Oberlin)…
And that was my point.
Sorry I brought in alma mater to make it.

Many students get “jacked up” when they win and at schools considered by some to be even more prestigious than Cornell.

Harvard and Yale really like to win and Stanford wins at an elite athletic level. Some people refer to this as “school spirit” and “fun activities” for undergrads.

But not sure why this has anything to do with OPs question.

Quick observations on general fit type stereotypes —

Colgate is a beautiful LAC with a preppy vibe and great academics. And a strong east coast alumni network. Including NYC.

Oberlin is strong academically but definitely more of the SJW vibe than Colgate.

Kenyon is laid back and academically fantastic too. But a bit less known in the east. But just as well known or more to grad schools and your more sophisticated employers.

FWIW. Imho.

“But not sure why this has anything to do with OPs question.”
Because his question was about Oberlin vs Colgate.

Oberlin student body is not much interested, from what I observed when D1 was there.
I perceived that to be a difference.
YMMV.
Go in peace.

Ah. Actually it’s about oberlin Colgate and “Kenyon” according to thread title.

And wasn’t sure what “Cornell”, the poster’s alma mater as they mention, had anything to do with it. And it seemed a bit mean spirited to denigrate the schools athletes as paid professionals. Which is silly.

Colgate and Oberlin have little in common, other than being good LACs. Personally, I think Kenyon is fantastic. It’s probably the most “halfway” between the other two. Kenyon profs are regularly voted best in the country, according to their peers. In fact, Princeton Review’s list a couple of year ago had something like eight profs in the top 300, whereas Harvard had four. The students are intellectual, but also down to earth and creative. I think Kenyon has a lot of recognition. I’m from California and people have definitely heard of the school. Kenyon does offer environmental science.

If I had to summarize the other two colleges, I’d say Oberlin has the most socially aware and artistic vibe, and Colgate is smart, preppy and monied. They will all offer you a good education and have strong alumni networks.

Aren’t Princeton Review rankings based on student surveys ?

Three different environments.

@Publisher , I might be wrong, but my understanding is that this list is based on peer surveys, in addition to other sources, including students. But it’s not a bad thing if students are rating their profs, is it? https://cdn.princetonreview.com/uploadedFiles/sitemap/home_page/rankings/best_professors/bestprofessors_name.pdf

This is old, but it tells you how they compiled it. https://www.princetonreview.com/press/best-professors

I’ve only visited Kenyon and Oberlin. Much of what has been said above about student vibe rings true. If you haven’t visited, I will mention that Kenyon’s town is very very small, although there is a small city about 5 miles away including a commercial strip with Panera/Chipotle/Starbucks/Walmart type stores. My kid thought it would be too small without a car, which she did not have. But your mileage may vary.

All are academically excellent. Congratulations!