I want to go to grad school and also get a PhD.
It is really sad I can’t visit as I am an international but it seems as many people at Colgate are laid-back people, the people at Oberlin seem cooler and more “special”. After going off social media with these people, I realised this doesn’t really matter to me and I will fit in somewhere anyways and it is bad to go off stereotypes.
COA: Oberlin is 1500$ cheaper if I subtract the aid in loans from the merit aid. This is negligible according to my parents.
Academics:
Colgate seems to have a better focus on behavioural neuroscience which is what I am interested in and their professors are researching in that area.
Oberlin professors seem to have more of an interest in cellular neuroscience which seems quite boring to me but their cognitive sciences concentration seems really amazing. Oberlin’s major is a bit more general and the courses I want are in the psych, cogsci and compsci departments.
After seeing all that I can’t say which is better or worse except that at Colgate class sizes seems to be smaller. First-year seminars are guaranteed for every freshman while at Oberlin you have to register.
I am also interested a lot in other subjects and would love to major or double minor in other subjects and I think it will be easier at Oberlin because of no common core except Colgate’s common core seems really interesting in itself.
Research:
Colgate seems to be definitely better at research with study away programs to the NIH and many other places and summer research with professors even in freshman year while Oberlin doesn’t have much info given except that they too offer research and many students partake in it.
Since I want to get into grad school it seems Colgate would offer me lots of help. They would help my career. They also aren’t particularly embroiled in controversy and seem like a safer option.
Oberlin seems like a place that would be lots of fun and there is a certain thrill in choosing the nonconformist option(I have always been that kind of a person)…
Actually more people get PhDs coming out of Oberlin. If memory serves,. it is #1 in this area among LACs by absolute numbers, and top ten by percentage of students… Proportionately more Colgate students go the employment route immediately after college… Though I’ve no doubt people interested in going on for a research degree are well supported.
I perceived a significant difference in campus culture at these two schools. At our Colgate information session the student presenter was dressed in a fashionable outfit, with pearls. For some reason the pearls made a big impact on my wife. Oberlin students tend to be very down to earth. With a decent hipster contingent. Down the road I can see the Colgate grad in a wealthy NYC suburb, and the Oberlin grad in a loft in Brooklyn. I’m not sure large chunks of these two student bodies would get along all that well with each other.
As for behavioral neuroscience vs cellular neuroscience, feel free to give these as much emphasis as you want.
If one school does not offer any advanced courses in the area you think now that you might want, that may be relevant.
But recognize too that, hopefully, your vistas will expand considerably once you start college. What interests you most now may not be the most interesting to you two years from now.
With all those future PhDs obviously Oberlin students get prepared for research. In my daughter’s area if you earned above a certain GPA in relevant courses you qualified for departmental honors which gave you the opportunity to do an Honors thesis. Maybe 25% of the class in her major did so. She was not in the sciences though. And I’ve no idea about research opportunities prior to this, one way or the other. The summer programs and opportunities she had access to seemed relatively plentiful; to me,
But I never compared them to anyplace else, or in the sciences.
Probably a pretty generalized view. But the kid could have been wearing costume jewelry and her parents insisted she dress appropriately for important meetings. Like representing her school with prospective parents and students.
I see her at the head of the table in the board room or with a surgeons mask on myself.