<p>i love colgate.It has always been my first choice.and i have read lots of report about how good colgate is.unfortunately, my korean parents only care about rank.i think colgate is better than 21 right?</p>
<p>Justifying, denying, rationalizing and even discussing in a paragraph or two what this publication’s rankings mean would be fraught. After all, there are 100s of threads on this site about how people feel about these rankings. And you can always buy the publication and review the categories with their scores and see how Colgate fares relative to its peer group and visit campus to discuss particular areas of interest.</p>
<p>Suffice it to say here that there are many excellent LACs in the US with dedicated faculty, staff and alumni. Their locations, size, resources, missions, curricula and outcomes will vary. These are special places which in my opinion rankings do not quantify, appreciate or represent. </p>
<p>Colgate is rather unique as it’s larger than most top LACs in terms of student and faculty numbers, retains its generations-old core curriculum and supports D1 athletics. Its academic index, in particular and according to this ranking, is very strong. Its ability to generate a larger proportion of scholarship students is also increasing- despite these challenging economic times- due to its very successful $440 million capital campaign. It has a beautiful and safe setting with much of its campus on a hill and many of its amenities integrated with the town of Hamilton mere minutes away. </p>
<p>So I would encourage you and your parents to do your research and see where your priorities really lie and how they overlay the offerings they discover at the top LACs. There is no other way to approach this ranking question. Imagine yourself as a senior at one of these colleges and consider what steps you will have taken to distingish yourself as a scholar and a person. That’s the outcome you seek; you are not going to wear a badge with your college’s US News rating, will you? After all, it’s only a tool for those that use them in this manner; ask any top LAC president or Board member and you will hear the same views.</p>
<p>Good luck with your applications and college search!</p>
<p>Thank you SO MUCH!! I love what you wrote.it really mean alot to me!</p>
<p>Rankings are what people who cannot think for themselves use to make decisions. This may make sense if you’re comparing cars or TV’s which someone bought and tested. But, did anyone go to most of the colleges and compare them to each other? I don’t think so. The rankings are based on a lot of guesswork, questionnaires filled out, SAT scores, size of endowment, and other factors many of which have little to nothing to do with the life of a student who attends them. In fact, almost any college in a group of 20 or so (10 above and 10 below) is about the same in terms of its quality. Williams may be ten ranks above Wesleyan or Vassar or Colby or Bowdoin, but it’s not THAT much better, and in some ways it may not be as good as some of these schools. Rankings mislead people into taking them far more seriously than any sensible person should. </p>
<p>I have no problem with ranking colleges on hard data like “number of medical school graduates” or “size of endowment” or “top schools for journalism students.” Why you would care about a schools’ endowment is another question. </p>
<p>The rankings of colleges used by different publications vary so widely that who knows which is the “best” college? The top colleges in the Forbes Magazine list, for example, vary greatly from the U.S. News list. Other publications and websites have different rankings. A lot of this is done purely to sell magazines and the ranking criteria are somewhat questionable in many cases. And they change over time. One year, the U.S. News rankings had CalTech as the #1 university in the country. Lately it’s been Harvard or Princeton, and CalTech is down the list a ways. I wonder if the top ranking every year of Ivies has anything to do with the fact that typically U.S. News management has attended such schools and prefers to see them top ranked. Did CalTech get worse? Of course not. In fact, it got much better. </p>
<p>A brilliant friend of mine, much smarter and more creative than I will ever be, attended Brandeis University which is ranked below Colgate. Why? I have no idea, but for some reason U.S. News isn’t as impressed by Brandeis which gave him a great education. At some of the “top” ranked schools, you will attend mostly large lecture classes and no one will know your name in the classroom. Do you want that? At some top ranked schools, you will even find some very average students. One of my most uninteresting B students got into Harvard a few years ago due to racial and other factors. I have no idea why colleges do this, but Harvard did not benefit, I assure you. </p>
<p>A friend’s son is at #1 Williams even though he was a B student (Colgate has some B students, too!) mainly because he is an ethnic minority and his parents can pay full tuition. At least he is pretty smart. His roommate, he says, is about as dumb as dumb gets but he is a top football player. Williams admitted him to win football games even though they knew he was only a marginal student. You go to #1 and expect to find a campus of brilliant people only to find out that many students are not like that at all. </p>
<p>Reed College in Oregon is a case in point about the abuse of rankings. Reed used to be highly ranked, but it found the rankings so silly that it refused to provide the information U.S. News asked for every year. It boycotted the whole rankings business. Ever since, Reed, one of the most intellectually challenging colleges in the country has ranked around #50. Payback? You decide. </p>
<p>Hamilton College which I know very well due to friends who went there, and through students I’ve taught who attended, offers nowhere near the variety of educational, athletic, or extracurricular opportunities Colgate does. As good as it is, it is a smaller college and isn’t as enriched with variety as Colgate. Colgate is a larger and worldlier university with an enormous overseas program used by nearly 60% of its students. Hamilton has good writing programs and other programs and a pretty campus and smaller size. But Colgate has one of the most beautiful campuses in the country, so the comparison isn’t even close in that department. Colgate plays Division I sports, Hamilton plays Div III which is a step up from high school at best. Colgate has a long history of top quality graduates going into journalism, medicine, teaching, business, and even major sports (hockey and football, particularly). My wife and I visited Hamilton and Colgate, and she said she found Hamilton uninspiring. US News which had always ranked Hamilton a few steps below Colgate, has recently reversed the order. Why? I haven’t the slightest idea, but I can guarantee you Colgate is even better today than it was when the rankings were different. Did Hamilton becoming dramatically better? I’ve seen no reason to think so. But, that’s what the numbers added up to for U.S. News. Maybe Hamilton’s endowment grew, maybe its professors have slightly higher salaries, or . . . who knows? </p>
<p>One thing to ask yourself is what rankings mean. In the case of U.S.News, it’s the result of a complex formula. You get points for number of volumes in the library (how much do you care about that?), financial endowment (beyond half a billion dollars does that matter to you very much?), and other factors of more or less importance. It even includes a ranking for what other colleges think of a college. That’s right, they include a chance for other colleges to rank other schools they compete with lower. That this sort of ranking system is a little suspect and is not always very accurate is an understatement. You can say, I think, that colleges ranked within about 10 spots above and below are about the same quality. Beyond that, their differences matter more than their rankings. </p>
<p>Is Wesleyan or Colby or Vassar or Middlebury better than Colgate? In some ways they may be, but in others they are not. If you attended all of these schools for four years and then attended Colgate for four more years (who could possibly do that experiment?!), how would you rank them? I imagine very differently from the way U.S. News does. You’d put the place you were happiest and got the best education on top. I’ve seen nearly all of the colleges ranked ahead of Colgate and some ranked below, and I can tell you that a number of these colleges are not as good academically, athletically, or in other factors relevant to the daily life of a student as Colgate is. This is the problem with the rankings – they do not rank according to the life of a student, but according to endowment, rankings by other colleges professors (how would they know?), library size, and other factors which are really not indicators of anything a student cares about. </p>
<p>The only thing that really matters is how good a college or university is for YOU. Is is the place where you will get the best education? If it is, it ranks #1 for you. If you attended a higher ranked school which you didn’t like, where students were snobby or where they studied endlessly and no one had any other fun interests, and where there were no decent sports to be involved in (or watch), where there was no serious foreign studies program, where the school was not very attractive–you would be at a top-ranked college, but would you be happy? Go where you want to go and where you can get the best education.</p>
<p>And remember that there are over 1,000 good colleges in this country with even the bottom 100 in that group being good schools for some students. And another 1,000 or more below that which are maybe “fairly” good schools. I attended for a few years a gradaute school at a state university which is not even in the top 100 in the U.S. News list (I lived in the state and tuition was virtually free). I got an excellent education from amazing professors. For me, that university was wonderful, but in rankings it doesn’t even exist. Of the 1,000 good colleges in the nation, any college which ranks among the top 50 is in the Top 5% in the entire country. That’s like getting a 95 on a test. Would you be disappointed it wasn’t even higher? If you can go to any school in the top 5%, I wouldn’t worry a whole lot that you’re not in the top 1%.</p>
<p>A lot depends on what your ultimate goal will be. Colgate is a great place for pre med and pre law students. It offers small classes and a supportive atmosphere. I chose Colgate over U Penn many moons ago and it was an excellent decision.</p>
<p>PS : My son who wants to continue playing varsity sports at D
III level, is more preppy, extroverted, and less academic than I was may be a better fit at Hamilton.</p>
<p>wow thank you for this, especially you ColgateDad. Colgate and Hamilton are two of the schools on my list so your comparison of both has been really helpful.</p>
<p>Describe the competitiveness at Colgate, especially among pre-professional students.</p>
<p>Having transferred to Colgate from a similarly ranked LAC, it’s really what you make of your experience. I had wonderful academic experience at both schools. Colgate just met my needs better than my last LAC. Both offered excellent opportunities for ECs and post-graduation preparation. The only real difference was the cultural and academic fit, which cannot be measured by rankings.</p>
<p>You have to feel good on a campus to know it’s top-ranked in your book.</p>
<p>My only thought is - “only” 21 out of 1,000?</p>
<p>I think that is a pretty good rank (if that is important to you).</p>
<p>Colgate has an enduring image of being more traditional, conservative, preppy, Greek and sports oriented than other LACs. And somehow those get translated into peoples’ minds as making it less serious, less creative, less intellectual and academic than other LACs which are thought of as more innovative or in the current mold. Hence, I think the lower rating. In truth, Colgate does have those elements - but mixed in and along with what all the other LACs have. Those traditions and their presence enrich Colgate, not diminish what you will get from attending. And the contacts will enhance your life after graduation.</p>
<p>I would actually argue that Colgate is not the place to go if you are pre-med/dent/vet. There is not enough exposure to biomedical research or clinical volunteering to compete with people who attend similarly prestigious universities that are attached to a medical school. Furthermore, the science departments typically give out Bs/Cs versus As–and while they argue that everyone (admissions officers) knows how “hard” Colgate is, a B at Colgate WILL NOT compare to an A from a higher ranked and more prestigious school that suffers from grade inflation. The letter committee is on top of their stuff (they get out your recommendation letter nice and early), the advice that pre-med students receive before this is awful, unless you want to end up at a D.O. school Most profs talk about how great Colgate is, and how recognized–and sure, that’s true in some circles. For medical schools, its some unheard of LAC that can’t compete with powerhouses like Northwestern, UMich, and WUSTL (not to mention the Ivys etc). </p>
<p>That’s my two sense.</p>
<p>Cadriethiel,</p>
<p>I read your two sense (cents?) and wondered where’s the evidence to support your many opinions.</p>
<p>Please supply some substance. Over to you.</p>
<p>This is a topic onto itself. I agree with most that it does not matter where you go to college before applying to medical school, as long as your GPA and MCAT’s are competitive.
(<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/pre-med-topics/44231-does-college-matter-when-applying-ot-med-school.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/pre-med-topics/44231-does-college-matter-when-applying-ot-med-school.html</a>) </p>
<p>I believe Colgate has addressed this by offering a semester at the NIH to make up for the schools remoteness. I hope!</p>
<p>([Colgate</a> University : National Institutes of Health](<a href=“http://www.colgate.edu/academics/offcampusstudy/nationalinstitutesofhealth]Colgate”>http://www.colgate.edu/academics/offcampusstudy/nationalinstitutesofhealth))</p>
<p>In addition to the NIH program (something like 30 hours per week in the lab seems like quite a bit of research experience…), there are other opportunities as well. A friend of mine who was pre-vet was able to “intern” with local vets, both big and small animal. There’s shadowing opportunities for pre-med as well. Colgate also has “early assurance programs” with George Washington University and University of Rochester med schools, so they know Colgate and its grading practices well.</p>
<p>Also, even with grade deflation at Colgate, I think transcripts include class rank, which provides context.</p>
<p>From Cadriethiel’s earlier post on CC. I’m confused as to why Colgate is not the place to go for pre- med/dent/vet.</p>
<p>“I had a 3.42 after my freshman year. Now going to a top-ten medical school. Its not ideal, but it can be done–I spent the next 3 years busting my butt to raise my GPA.”</p>
<p>“You asked if research positions are readily available–definitely! As there are no graduate students at Colgate (except for 3-4 in education each year), laboratories are staffed by undergraduates. Each summer, nearly 100 students stayed on campus to work or do research (in almost every department) that was fully funded by the university. It was possible to start in a lab as early as your freshman year, and I had the opportunity to work in 3 different labs during my 4 years at Colgate. The professors are very dedicated to teaching undergraduates not only in the classroom, but in the lab (or field) as well.”</p>
<p>Darn. I meant two cents. <em>sigh</em> </p>
<p>I knew my post would generate some negative reaction from people who are unwilling to look at Colgate’s faults, especially if you went through the trouble of looking up my previous posts, lol. I also didn’t provide substance as I didn’t want to type out an essay unless there was interest in me doing so. That said, I’m definitely glad there is interest (I love talking about Colgate–both the good and the bad!)—but I’ll just speak to my experiences as a recent Colgate alum and now as an MD/PhD student at a top ten medical school…</p>
<p>First of all:</p>
<p>I loved my experience at Colgate. I loved the research and the molecular biology department. I liked that I worked with professors one-on-one, rather than as a lab monkey for a disenchanted post-doc at a larger research-focused university. I won the top award in the mol bio department at the end of my senior year, graduated magna cum laude (freshman year axed my chances at summa…) and successfully defended a high honors thesis. More importantly, I knew almost every professor in the molecular biology department well. I babysat their kids, knew their wives, and joked around with them in general. The classes were amazing; I feel like I actually learned about biology, rather than memorizing it by rote. I know I got a great education.</p>
<p>BUT:</p>
<p>I got a great education. Thanks to Colgate.
I got into a great medical school. Thanks to me.</p>
<p>Getting into medical school requires a few things:
- Good grades. This is what hurts our students the most. Colgate is determined to prevent grade inflation. That’s great in theory, except that it hurts our graduates when we apply to a graduate program after Colgate. I believe the average grade in most bio classes hovered around a B-/B. The professors and pre-med advisors constantly tell us that all admissions offices know that we “grade hard” and that they appreciate how prestigious Colgate is. This is probably true for UR (U of Rochester) med school, but that’s about it. Personally I wasn’t aiming to go to some middle tier med school after paying 160k to attend Colgate, but that’s up to you. Every top medical school is going to be looking at Ivy school candidates with great GPAs. Our “tough love” system wins us no love from PhD and MD programs. Why bother reading about how hard Colgate is when you can just accept a candidate with a 4.0 from a Ivy or a state school? </p>
<p>Yes, I hate the idea of choosing a school based on getting the best grades you can—without having to struggle and bust your butt to get a 3.7 like I did. Most medical schools won’t have heard of Colgate, too many good liberal art schools out there anyway. Medical school admissions is a game, unfortunately, and if you want to get in, you’re going to have to play the game. I know too many Colgate grads that are spending many years doing a masters degree (40k-80k) or research because they are trying to make up for a bad GPA. Others gave up on the MD and are going DO (I have one friend in an podiatry school too). We don’t send many kids to top schools. The girl I know at UPenn Med didn’t take any science classes at Colgate. She told me (when I interviewed at Penn) that her roommate was now at an Irish med school because Colgate science classes tanked her GPA—she remarked that she was so glad to have done a post-bacc after Colgate instead!</p>
<p>I interviewed at a ton of top schools—and a few remarked upon my low GPA (3.7). I suspect that my GPA probably kept me from getting interviews. </p>
<p>Finally, for those at UR and George Washington…that’s great? But, with the great brains we’ve got at Colgate, I think we should be aiming to do better than that.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Great MCAT. This is more person dependent than school depending IMHO. I got a 38 but that was on my own time.</p></li>
<li><p>Good recommendation letters. This is the area that I feel Colgate excels at—but I’m biased because I got the best recommendation the committee gives out each year. Sucks for you if they rate you as only well-qualified (aka sub-par) instead of “extremely recommended”. Nevertheless, Colgate is a small LAC and thus, you have the opportunity to get to know profs really well, and get great letters! </p></li>
<li><p>Clinical exposure and volunteering. The hospital doesn’t permit student volunteering, and the general lack of exposure to medicine can really hurt students. Especially when you compare it to kids who have worked in a university hospital for four years in multiple departments. You have to go out of your way to find clinical exposure/experience elsewhere. </p></li>
<li><p>Good pre-med advice. This is another big area that really suffers at Colgate. Ursula in the career center worked as the pre-med advisor at Dartmouth (another mediocre medical school…) before she came to Colgate. The first time she sat me down to talk about medical school she asked me about my plans to start a family. Was I sure I wanted to pursue MD/PhD? It might impact my ability to be a mother! I didn’t go back to her for advice after that. Similarly, most PhDs at Colgate told me not to go for MD/PhD—because it wasn’t a real PhD. At Colgate, there aren’t many MDs (and certainly no MD/PhDs) to get advice from. </p></li>
</ol>
<p>Furthermore, I was told by another advisor to aim for a 3.5 in order to get into medical school. This is not realistic when the average medical school matriculant (those accepted) has a 3.7. In general, the staff continues to hold the unrealistic view that every medical school knows how prestigious Colgate is—giving undergrads a false sense of security.</p>
<ol>
<li>Research—the NIH is great if you decide to go ahead and do that. I chose to go to Australia instead. I don’t think people outside of Colgate care so much as those at Colgate do though. Nevertheless, you will end up doing your honors or high honors thesis at Colgate, and while the research is great—its not going to be high impact biomedical research that other students at big universities have access to. I met a lot of kids who had nature papers etc. under their belt already, while publications are not a major factor in the process, they don’t hurt. In the end, I spent two years as a research assistant to gain good biomedical research experience.</li>
</ol>
<p>In order to present an alternative viewpoint, I would argue that Colgate supports the pre-professional student more than a larger school such as U Michigan and U Penn. My experience in knowing the professors, ability to do biological research and work as a teaching assistant as an undergraduate, without competing with graduate students for these slots was an asset. I would also assert that it is easier to get an A at Colgate than a larger school, for example by showing the professors the earnest desire to improve, by revising and rewriting papers after consultation, for example. At Colgate teachers have more time to spend with individual students than in schools with a predominance of lecture hall settings. Don’t be swayed by rankings. This may actually be a particularly good year to apply in lieu of the slight variability of ranking on the US News and World Report. I suspect that Colgate with be back in the top 20 again.</p>
<p>I think the endowment is important because it influences how generous the college can be with financial aid. My D was accepted at Boston College, Colgate, Washington and Lee, Wesleyan, USC, Colorado College, Texas and a few safety schools. Colgate gave her the most financial aid and by far the lowest family contribution. Net cost she was 10-12 grand a year less total cost at Colgate. Colgate even cost us less than Texas. I know a bargain is not the reason you pick a college (community colleges are the cheapest) but the ability of a middle class family to send a kid to a place like Colgate without taking on any debt is truly priceless.</p>