<p>I'm considering applying to Kenyon and have a few questions. How are the political science, English, and foreign language programs? Does it have good graduate school placement? How are the study abroad opportunities? Are most people involved in sports? Also, how are the students politically? I'm somewhat moderate, and don't want to go to a school with a vast majority of extremely liberal students.</p>
<p>I have a similar question too, but regarding the economics department at Kenyon. Can any current Kenyonites give us some insights?</p>
<p>I’m not sure what the polisci program is like, but the English department is really strong. Kenyon is mainly known for its English department. Foreign language is pretty good there too; there’s a program called Kenyon Intensive Language Method (KILM), and the school says with this program students can become fluent in a language in like 2 years.</p>
<p>Political science is very strong–some say it’s the best department. Many of the faculty are neocons and/or Straussians. </p>
<p>English, I’m afraid, is so-so. There’s a good deal of methodological diversity. That is, you’ll be able to find faculty whose critical approaches are in alignment with your own. The trouble is that there’s no pedagogical coherence across the department. So. What, in the opinion of one professor is excellent work will be, for another, lackluster. The younger faculty are much better than the older faculty, generally. Many of the professors do very interesting scholarship. At present, the creative writing program is pretty wretched–the quality fluctuates dramatically depending on whom the department has hired for the visiting faculty posts. But the tenured CW professors are uniformly bad and lazy. </p>
<p>As for the MLL department, I think it depends which language you’re interested in. I’ve always thought the program was very good. They seem to do well with graduate school placement. Linguistics courses, though, are hard to come by, and when they’re taught, they’re taught by non-specialists. </p>
<p>About half of the junior class studies abroad. IM sports are big. K is almost entirely affluent and white; politically, the students are as you’d expect, more or less.</p>
<p>“English, I’m afraid, is so-so.” ^^^</p>
<p>Huh? That’s certainly not something you hear very often. I think most people would disagree with you…</p>
<p>My son’s an incoming Freshman, so I really can’t comment from experience. But again, that statement goes against EVERYTHING I’ve ever heard or read before. Do I remember reading somewhere else that you’re a “disgruntled ex-Kenyon student?” Not sure you’re the best person to be giving advice?</p>
<p>Would anyone please tell me more about the Economics and Math Departments at Kenyon?</p>
<p>Both strong with rigorous coursework.</p>
<p>Well. China, the College markets itself as writerly place for writerly kids. Because of this literature is celebrated at Kenyon as it is at few other institutions (and this is, so far as I’m concerned, is a great asset). Because of the department’s reputation, I think that its faculty, on the whole, tend to be slightly more accomplished than the faculty in other departments.</p>
<p>But, as I suggested before, the department (and this is not the case with, say, the history department or the philosophy department) does not have a unified educational program. And this leads to harmful pedagogical inconsistency. The English department is such that you might have a professor on Wednesday whose approach to literature cannot be reconciled with the approach that a different professor had taught you on Monday. This, as a student, is maddening. It means that, if you wish to do well, you’ve got to cast a fresh set of critical tools for each professor, rather than (as is the case in the history department) calibrating/refining/perfecting a single critical implement. There are other problems as well (the unavailability of upper-level courses, for instance, the sorry state of the <em>Review</em>, the inability of many English majors to produce properly punctuated sentences), but the central problem is the lack of consensus among faculty. </p>
<p>And this business about me being “disgruntled,” it’s really not so. I don’t at all regret having spent the time I did at Kenyon. The college has its limitations. I wanted to specialize, and I found that I couldn’t do that in Gambier, so I went elsewhere.</p>
<p>Riceward, one question:
If you’re not disgruntled, why are you on here years after you left assaulting Kenyon’s most esteemed department?</p>
<p>To everyone else:
Riceward might not be entirely incorrect. It is true that many of the English professors are, shall we say, individually minded. Then again, the department is larger than any other, and it has an excellent reputation. Even Kluge, alum and current writer in residence, notes the lack in coherence in terms of grading and philosophy within the English department in his book Alma Mater. However, many English majors love the classes and the professors. You can have an excellent experience with the English department even if Riceward did not. English is not a subject in which I’ve taken classes, so I can’t speak from personal experience. As for Econ and Math, I have had great experiences with both. Neither is huge, but both have excellent faculty. Math is probably the most difficult major at Kenyon. The math department is in Hayes, one of the science quad buildings, so all the computer labs are new and really nice. If you declare the math major, you get a key to the math majors room, which is pretty sweet as its a really nice area to do work on the third floor of the science quad with pretty limited access.</p>