pros and cons of middlebury

@doschicos @TheGreyKing thank you!

Um, college courses are supposed to have about 8 hours per week of work associated, or you aren’t learning much. Why are you going anyway? You have 4 classes, taking less than 10 hours a week, and then 32 hours of studying-welcome to the real world!

@joy12345 Current Midd Student here!
Workload wise:
There are two flavors of econ majors here, those who love econ and those who wanna get rich. Those two categories can of course overlap, however the econ major is kind of unique in that its basically as hard as you make it. Do you wanna go to econ grad school? You’ll wanna write a thesis and take a lot of math classes. Just wanna get a good paying job? Then you can skate by in a big, strong department. That being said I’m a thesis student in hard major. I work a lot, but I don’t live in the library. I have a job, I volunteer, I hike, I ski and I even party. My thesis buddy (we have the same advisor) is on the track team here and he has time for a life too! So its all relative.

I’ll do unique pros and cons since I’m sure you know all the small school pros judging by your application list.

Pros:
Midd is way more collaborative than competitive. People don’t really compare grades ever and almost everyone works on homework assignments together, which is encouraged.
Midd has a big fitness/outdoor culture. You’ll always have a buddy to run or hike with and there are people around to teach you how to do everything from roll a kayak to ice climb.
Midd has amazing research opportunities in most departments (including econ). Its normal to get published if you’re a research inclined student.
It’s just beautiful here.

Cons:
We’re very isolated, more so than many small LAC. This can get claustrophobic sometimes if you don’t learn what you need and how to get off campus.
The grading is maybe a little harsher here than other places? In the hard sciences and math departments in particular.

All this talk about Middlebury feeling isolated and claustrophobic is, in my opinion, exaggerated. After Midd, I attended Cornell. Ithaca felt much more isolated than Middlebury to me. It takes 4 hours to get anywhere from Ithaca. Yes, Middlebury is small, but it’s easy to get other places. However, the school does so much to keep you active and engaged, that I never felt stuck in the middle of nowhere. It’s also a very nice town. I never felt the school was too small. And remember, when I attended, the school had about 500 fewer students than it does today.