<p>Hey guys, I've been having a REALLY hard time deciding between these two schools. They are both great schools, comparable in many ways, yet different as well. Anybody have any advice or information? (I'm gonna post this on both boards)</p>
<p>First off, Colgate is REALLY REALLY REALLY cold.</p>
<p>Second, the academics at W&L, I believe, are superior</p>
<p>Third it has a whole different feel, W&L is really a southern school, complete with "y'all"s, honor system and politeness and all (and frat life) and Colgate is very northern liberal artsy (very liberal, very artsy and you can't get much northern without hitting Canada)</p>
<p>Haha thanks for your reply!!! Yeah...I hear the weather is bitter at Colgate...but I'm from New Jersey and the weather kinda sucks here too... I'm visiting Colgate tomorrow and driving down to Lexington next Monday to visit Washington and Lee. Everybody I've talked to from both schools has been super friendly and helpful...I wish people from one school would just be mean so my decision would be easier!!!! jk</p>
<p>Would you rather go to a school named after a toothpaste or two of the country's greatest generals? jk (Colgate is actually named after a successful entrepreneur, who founded the toothpaste)</p>
<p>Colgate and Washington and Lee are both small schools in really small towns so you would think they have similar social lives. However that is not true. Washington and Lee has thriving fraternities and sororities which are the base of campus life (they have to be in such a small town as there is nothing else to do). W&L in general has been very supportive of Greek organizations (although it has cracked down on underage drinking of late). Colgate is not supportive of its Greek system, being a northern school, and I've heard has been trying to seriously weaken it, hoping perhaps to even shut it down.</p>
<p>Other than that the schools are very similar, W&L's admissions criteria (mean SAT scores and such) are just a little higher and last year it was about $6000 cheaper but those are small differences. Washington and Lee has always ranked a bit higher than Colgate (this year W&L is tied for 13th on USNWR list of top liberal arts schools, Colgate is 16th). But these differences are all pretty small, I guess kinda tiebreakers if you're still undecided about everything else.</p>
<p>THE biggest difference between these two schools, which are so similar in most everything else, is the type of culture you will find. W&L is southern, so you will hear a lot of southern accents (I was shocked when I got down there, hearing "y'all" so many times), more conservative (though from my experience it's close to 50-50) and you won't find friendlier people, southerners also seem a lot more relaxed than us northerners, even though they work just as hard. Colgate has a more northern culture, frats are much less popular, people are generally cold and there's a lot of hockey (as a hockey fan, that is a big plus for Colgate in my book).</p>
<p>So it really is about what kind of culture you prefer to spend your next four years in. Personally, I have lived in New York City for 11 years and I want to try something new and the politeness of the south is very appealing to me (although I am a Democrat) but I could picture myself being very happy attending Colgate, just not as happy as at W&L.</p>
<p>you're kinda making Colgate sound like a hippy liberal school, when it really isnt. its still a very fratastic school and used to have one of the strongest greek systems in the country. true its changing, but the frats are still very popular and dominate the social scene for the most part</p>
<p>i think if you visit both schools you'll be able to see which one you like better. good luck, they're both fabulous schools</p>
<p>also if you ask me the north and the south are just as friendly as each other, but people down south tend to be a little fake sometimes. people up north, however, sometimes can just be plain rude. it pretty much balances out</p>
<p>Living in Maine, I agree that northerners can be extremely rude. I haven't yet experienced the "fakeness" of the south, however, and will hold judgement until I get down there. I'm sure I'll like it better than Maine, though.</p>
<p>tcolgate, maybe you're from a weird friendly part of the northeast (we call them loonies and hicks) but here in NYC and where I've travelled in New England, people seem just overall rude.</p>
<p>im from Texas, but have been to the northeast more times than i can count and find little to no difference in how people treat each other</p>
<p>I kinda have to agree with tcolgate, even though I'd rather stay in the south for school-- fake niceness accompanies the fake tans down here. Which is odd when you consider the fact that we actually get sun, so fake 'n bake doesn't really make sense. But whatever. I think people in the south are really easy going and nice, but don't assume that everyone is-- it's a different lifestyle, but we're not a different species. Tragically, there are rude people in Texas, too. They're just a little more orange from the tanning product...</p>
<p>~*~</p>