<p>Hey Guys, I am considering either going to Reed or Oberlin, and was wondering if their was anyone in a similar situation. And, if so, it would be great to hear which place you or someone you know is leaning towards, and why.
I'm having a hard time deciding which place to go to.
Thanks! </p>
<p>Although it sounds like you are looking for input from fellow perspective students, I can’t resist adding my two cents as a parent who knows something about both institutions. I served on the faculty at Reed from 1991 - 1998, have stayed close to many former students, and have close friends still on the faculty there. Our daughter just commited to the Oberlin Class of 2018. I have visited Oberlin twice as a parent. Both colleges are of the highest quality academically, both have pretty campuses, and I get the strong sense that students at both places get a great deal of attention from the faculty and go on to excel in all ways. Reed is a wonderful place with many intensely intellectual students and an outstanding faculty, but I always felt like it could have been stronger in the arts and offered more outside the classroom. One special feature of Reed is that all students do a senior thesis. Oberlin seems much stronger in music and the arts, and seems to offer the inspiring academics with more going on outside the classroom. I think both are great places. I wish you the best in making your decision.</p>
<p>If you haven’t visited each of these schools, you need to. Oberlin and Reed are very different schools with different atmospheres and personalities. Reed is very quirky and according to other parents that have visited multiple times over the years is growing more so. Oberlin, on the other hand, although very liberal, is becoming more main stream and devoting more attention to athletics. It is more like Kenyon and Williams. Reed is more like Bard. Choosing the right school is all about what you personally want in a school and from your college experience. Hope this helps.</p>
<p>I don’t know if Reed is really getting quirkier… it just gets commented on anew out here every year as people visit and figure out what it is like. :)</p>
<p>Why do you think Oberlin is moving more to the mainstream? I haven’t had that impression… it came across to us as quite different from Kenyon, for example, when we visited last year. Food choices, housing choices (co-ops, unusual on a LAC campus), competitions on campus to use the lowest amount of water, the (ahem) waste recycling project in one of the buildings – they still came across as very liberal still. Nothing wrong with that, but they are not Kenyon by a long stretch.</p>
<p>I have to second the comment about visiting to get a sense of what is the best fit for you. I think the social atmospheres of Reed and Oberlin seem different. One thing I was somewhat reluctant to say before is that there was a lot of drug use when I was at Reed, a pretty lively drug culture. I was a liberal, progressive, young faculty member in those years and it really scared me though I am no prude. I will leave it to current Oberlin students to comment on substance use there but it does not seem to be as big of a part of the student culture from what I can see so far. Over the years, Reed has really struggled with retention and graduation rates. I get the sense that both Reed and Oberlin attract the types of students who like to experiment and create themselves, which may translate to less than linear paths through college. i would guess that Oberlin’s freshman to sophomore year retention rate is much higher than Reed’s. Students at Oberlin seem way happier, but admittedly, I do not have the longterm, up-close view I had at Reed. </p>
<p>^ “i would guess that Oberlin’s freshman to sophomore year retention rate is much higher than Reed’s”</p>
<p>This is WRONG!!! Oberlin’s retention rate was 93%, and Reed’s retention rate was 94% for the most recent cohort groups. c.f. Common Data Set § B22:</p>
<p><a href=“http://oberlin.edu/instres/irhome/www/cds/2013/”>http://oberlin.edu/instres/irhome/www/cds/2013/</a>
<a href=“http://www.reed.edu/ir/cds/cds1314/cdssecb201314.pdf”>http://www.reed.edu/ir/cds/cds1314/cdssecb201314.pdf</a></p>
<p>“I get the sense that both Reed and Oberlin attract the types of students who like to experiment and create themselves, which may translate to less than linear paths through college.”</p>
<p>This is shear speculation. Reed tends to be very structured for a LAC, has requirements more akin to a university like the U of Chicago, expects a very high level of proficiency in the major field, and requires a senior thesis . Oberlin is closer to New England LAC’s allowing more exploration.</p>
<p>Reed’s administration purportedly is attempting to change the college’s drug culture through policy changes. It’s unclear whether this amounts to any real change. Oberlin’s never been known to be a place for squares. Students at both schools “smoke.”</p>
<p>I would read the student reviews for Reed and Oberlin which you can find online. A few of the goods things about Oberlin is that it has a full varsity sports program, and active club sports; the coop program where the students can board and/or live, prepare their own meals, and run the coops themselves; and the conservatory which adds unlimited musical opportunities. Reed cannot match that. </p>
<p>While Reed indeed may not be able to match that, can you get to anyplace useful in Portland and back to campus easily, by public transportation? If so, Oberlin can’t match that!</p>
<p>But IMO a healthy campus vitality is more important.</p>
<p>IIRC Reed is really teeny, isn’t it? And Reed has a required humanities course sequence, and a required thesis, doesn’t it? Those features are very un-Oberlin.</p>
<p>People often try to lump these two together, maybe because they both incubate relatively lots of future PhDs, and back in the 50s they were the places people like Pete Seeger could perform. But they seem relatively different to me, in material ways.</p>
<p>Reed has a decent co-op program, although it’s limited.</p>
<p>A varsity sports program is a GOOD thing? That is YOUR opinion. Reed believes that a competitive sports culture detracts from the academic focus of an institution.</p>
<p>I’ve spoken with a few alums and Oberlin has enough drug use.</p>
<p>That is all. Out of curiosity, where did you choose to enroll, OP?</p>
<p>Division III athletics is a very good thing. As an athlete, I was able to participate in an activity which I loved, and did not have to be quasi-professional to do so. It taught me how to balance my time between academic and non-academic pursuits. It also taught me to deal with competition. Even if you are not an athlete, it benefits the campus in bringing in talented people in non-academics. And, non-athletes are given a chance to try out and make the team.</p>
<p>Non-athletes are given a chance to try out and make the team?? You are kidding right? Division 3 is still a level of athletics. Any school that allows non-athletes on their varsity team has to have a horrible sport program. Division 3 isn’t pee wee sports!</p>
<p>That’s right. I have seen it with my own eyes. Generally, they are not as good as the athletes who go there to play the sport. But, I have seen some go out and make the team. </p>
<p>If you go to Oberlin’s website, you will find stories of people who went out for teams and made it.</p>
<p>Again, that is YOUR opinion, and not everyone will share it. If it helped you, then good for you.</p>
<p>I am not sure what you are addressing. I was a student and athlete at Oberlin, and I saw many people who were not recruited as athletes go out and play on varsity sports teams. It was not unusual. At Division III, you do not have to be a quasi-pro athlete to play on a team. </p>
<p>Not everyone would agree w/ a <em>competitive</em> sports culture. However, if you’re playing football or whatever just for the fun and/or for physical well-being rather than, say, “YAY WILLIAMS IS THE BEST! WILLIAMS KICKED AMHERST’S BEHIND!!!”, then that’s a completely different thing.</p>
<p>Why would a brainy place like MIT finance more than 30 varsity teams? Are they delusional? Maybe because they see that a large majority of the so-called achievers in this country are former high school and/or college athletes. Probably, their most active alumni in terms of time and money are former athletes. </p>
<p>Back to the subject at hand. Someone close to me went to Reed. She was a bright, attractive, happy girl excited to be going away to college. When I saw her two years later, she was wearing a shoulder to floor tunic, unsmiling, unhappy, and seemed to be suffering from some post-traumatic stress disorder. I heard that she had problems with men and drugs. I am sure she was not typical.</p>
<p>I think that for the general population at an LAC having good IM sports participation is more important than NCAA D3 teams. People who can play varsity often don’t because of travel and practice commitments. However, without any varsity sports whatsoever it’s difficult to attract slightly athletic students needed for IM.</p>
<p>Even puny christian colleges have some non-D3 varsity sports: soccer, B-ball, XC, tennis. Reed must attract too many conscientious objectors to athletics.</p>
<p>I’m not sure what the point of contention here is, or if the thread is even relevant/useful to the OP at this point, but I will log my own impressions of Reed’s sports culture: Reed doesn’t have representative sports teams, per se, except in a handful of sports (fencing, rowing, rugby, ultimate, basketball, and football/soccer are the only ones I’ve heard of). In each of those few sports it is entirely possible, and in fact more or less the norm, to join the college team with little to no prior experience. The level of sporting achievement/dedication is normally very low. The student body doesn’t care about sports or attend games.</p>
<p>There you go.</p>
<p>I, too, knew a studious, calm, pleasant international who went to Oberlin. Two years later, he looked like one of the children from the Lord of the Flies, only he smelled like smoke, and was quite vocal about his use of drugs.</p>
<p>Let’s keep anecdotal experiences to ourselves.</p>