Occidental College

Date: Mar 02 2008
Major: Economics (This Major's Salary over time)
Absolutely terrible school. The only reason why I stayed for two years because I had such a close, tight nit group of friends to get me through the rough times, academically and socially. They were truly the best friends I ever had. Yes, people are generally friendly, but many students are complete alternative weirdos which espouse ideas that aren't accepted by mainstream society. The campus president, head of the black student alliance, made such outrageous comments about campus diversity that it made the front pages of the L.A. Times. The president and the school were completely embarrassed,led to the president's resignation, and made a problem about diversity on campus when there was no problem.

Social life can get quite awkward. Many girls here are in-the-closet sluts, who are normally not interested in dating, but rather hooking up who they think are the hottest guys on campus (trust me, I've seen this happen plenty of times). They exploit Oxy's liberal atmosphere and general acceptance of radical political and social beliefs. People can be very superficial, because of the Hollywood mindset of L.A. One of my best friends is the typical "hot" Oxy guy, who has hooked up with several Oxy girls, but he himself is bisexual on the outside, and a closet homosexual on the inside.

Also, do not expect there to be much to do on campus on weekends, except for maybe drinking and smoking. The school sponsored dances, are yes, excuses for people to slobber all over each other like in high school (dance floor hookups). So you better have a car or a close friend with one, or else your dead ;)

Academically, the school is a toss up. Music, theater, DWA, and the language departments are spectacular. Great professors who are actually care about your academic success. The science majors have it the worst, because they are studying all the time and their professors put unreasonable demands on them (I was in a marine biology course, and dropped it after a month and a half because it was way too hardcore for me). A girl who recently transferred to Oxy from Yale said it was harder than Yale - that's not a good sign, considering Oxy's reputation is no where near that of Yale.

I was in the econ dept., where I really only had one good professor, and that was the first semester of my freshman year. Most of the professors in the dept. are self absorbed and are only interested in furthering their careers because they went to prestigious schools to get their Ph'ds (Oxy's econ dept. is supposedly on par with that of Harvard). I had one professor told me

if you took this course at any other college, you would've gotten an A.

It is this kind of arrogance among the professors in the dept. that made me leave the school.

So for me, I can't really recommend Oxy to anyone, maybe a few very intelligent, but very liberal, alternative, and quirky people who are majoring in some of the better departments here. The financial aid is great, but that was not enough to keep me here. If you're more of a normal, moderate person like myself who is interested in going to big sporting events, having fun on campus, actually talking to and meeting girls who are interesting and not slutty, and are more professional/goal oriented, I would suggest looking at a large or medium sized university with more academic and social options. If you're still looking at liberal arts schools, the one's in the Northeast U.S. are better, especially for business since the schools have bigger endowments and have more powerful alumni to help students get good jobs.