<p>i would imagine that alot of the money is given out in financial aid and gives an ability to practice needs-blind admissions. In terms of library vs. more sabbaticals for professors, I think that having satisfied professors is more important than a good library!</p>
<p>âi would imagine that alot of the money is given out in financial aid and gives an ability to practice needs-blind admissions. In terms of library vs. more sabbaticals for professors, I think that having satisfied professors is more important than a good library!â</p>
<p>This is an excellent point SDonCC. Grinnell is need-blind. They are also able to spend incredible amounts of money on things directly benefitting the students like their MAP program etc⊠Grinnell has a wonderful library(meaning good enough) and I would rather take a happy professor any day over a library that may be a little better. Unhappy professors make for unhappy students on a day to day basis.</p>
<p>^
Tis true, Dâsmom, but none of us has any idea if Grinnell professors are happier than Oberlin professors and less happy than Swarthmore professors. I donât know how any prospective student can make a decision by speculating on the existence of a solid link between endowment size and the âhappinessâ of professors. Iâm sure there are a few professors at Harvard, Stanford and MIT who are absolutely miserable. </p>
<p>Anyway, hereâs congrats to Pohakuâs D for entering Oberlin in the Fall. Itâs a great school. My D is finishing up the last week of her frosh year. It has been as academically challenging as she anticipated, but she was determined and focused and did well. She has very much enjoyed her first year experience, the sole fly in the pudding being her roommate from hell. But next year sheâll be in a different dorm with a roommate she wants to be with. Itâs all good.</p>
<p>IIRC Oberlin also has need-bind admissions and a good library.
There may well be some differences, in aggregate, in aid packages, and in merit awards.
But what matters to a particular person is what award you get, not what the aggregate looks like. And whether there are particular programs there that appeal to you personally, not whether there are other special programs that you may not care about.
So this is still very much a personal process, which is at best only poorly informed by these so-called rankings.</p>
<p>Iâm not going to touch the debate about rankings (at least, not till Iâm done with exams!), but wanted to address this - it pops up a lot and I donât want people to be misled.</p>
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<p>Unfortunately, we donât have need-blind admissions, though we do meet 100% of demonstrated financial need (as calculated by Oberlin) - see [url=<a href=âhttp://www.questbridge.org/cmp/partner_schools/oberlin/home.html]here[/urlâ>http://www.questbridge.org/cmp/partner_schools/oberlin/home.html]here[/url</a>]. According to [url=<a href=âhttp://www.oberlin.edu/stupub/ocreview/2005/11/4/news/article8.html]this[/urlâ>The evolution of financial aid policy explored]this[/url</a>] article, we went need-aware in 1994.</p>
<p>I stand corrected, wonder how I missed that. Maybe did they switch it back for a couple years, in between? Else I just missed it.</p>
<p>Nope, Oberlin has been need-aware ever since 1994. But itâs also extremely important to know that Oberlin is one of the most generous colleges among its peers with respect to financial aid: as the article cited by quaere says, Oberlin is one of the top three top-25 liberal arts colleges (with Smith and Mt. Holyoke) with the highest proportions of low-income students. Oberlin spends a bigger proportion of its budget on financial aid than almost all of its peers.</p>
<p>Thanks! Sheâs looking forward to it with a lot more interest and excitement than the application process. Now we just have to set up Skype so she can commune with her cat while she is away.</p>
<p>Skype is great!</p>
<p>Yup, used Skype myself this past academic year. Itâs great.</p>
<p>I always feel so 21st century when we Skype with the kids. Oh wait - this IS the 21st century!</p>
<p>Congrats pohaku! Oberlin is great. My son is going to Grinnell in the fall and a good friend of ours child got into Oberlin and will be attending. Both are superb schools and I think it all comes down to finding as close a perfect fit as possible. I have heard wonderful things about Oberlin and have friends who have gone there too(many years ago). I really like both of these schools and think they should be ranked 1 and 2 of all the LACâs (LOL)!</p>
<p>Also, I just used Skype for the first time the other day and it was very cool. I am excited about using it when S goes off in August. </p>
<p>PS: Plainsman, I am happy your d had a great first year. :)</p>
<p>We will probably hold her cat hostage until she talks to us first, then weâll put the cat on for her. I wonder if we can train the cat to use touch pad controls?</p>
<p>Pohaku, itâs kind of funny because we moved east from Minnesota when my D started HS. Had we stayed in MN (we couldnât because I took a job with another company) my D wouldâve gone to either Carleton or Grinnell. She wanted to go to college within a dayâs drive of home. Once we moved 1100 miles east, that eliminated Minnesota and Iowa and put the East Coast and nearby Midwest colleges on the radar screen. Thatâs how Oberlin came into the picture. Itâs in the Midwest, our favorite region of the country (herâs too), itâs the only LAC within a dayâs drive that reminded her of the more homespun, friendly pace and culture of the Upper Midwest, rather than the more frenetic pace and NYC/Boston orientation and culture of her East Coast HS. She had little enthusiasm for colleges in New England or New York, so she concentrated on PA and Ohio. She liked Oberlin best. However, had I not moved the family, my D wouldâve felt right at home at Grinnell.</p>
<p>Itâs interesting how life can take unexpected detours, presenting new sets of options.</p>
<p>Our daughter wanted to be farther from home, so she was primarily looking for schools out east or on the west coast. She was also accepted at Carleton and Grinnell, either of which we would have liked as she would have been closer, but ultimately she chose Oberlin. All are great schools, and I donât think she could have gone wrong with any of them, but in the end, she is attending and we are not.</p>
<p>^</p>
<p>Well, youâll find the Oberlin, Ohio area to be much more like Minnnesota and Iowa than any place on the two coasts, thatâs for sure. I realize the students come from all over, as do faculty, but most of the administrative employees in the various offices are locals. In talking with the âordinary peopleâ they remind both my wife and I of the friendly, down-to-earth manner of people in small town Minnesota. Living in the east, we miss that easy âoh, let me find out for yaâ civility. Iâm sure Northfield, Minnesota and Grinnell, Iowa offer the same. I love driving out there mainly to visit my D, but I also prefer the culture over what you tend to find here in the northeast.</p>
<p>Donât buy the magazine. It only encourages them.</p>
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<p>They do a notoriously bad job of that, just as they do with various other elements of the survey (e.g., self-fulfilling peer assessment surveys, artificial faculty strength and expenditure measurements.) They take the aggregate of each schoolâs faculty payroll and divide it by head count. Paradoxically, what that means, is every time a college decides to one-up the competition by hiring a slew of newly minted Ph.Ds, they actually wind up diluting their USNews ranking. That accounts for most of the rotation between, say, Amherst, Swarthmore and Williams at the #1 spot from one year to the next because â unlike the Ivy League â LACs prefer to tenure their own professors.</p>