Oberlin College

Date: Jun 03 2012
Major: Music - Performance (This Major's Salary over time)
Oberlin was perfect for me, though it was a surprise when I arrived. I was quite naive and not very worldly, so sudden immersion in this environment was a shock. It was good for me, in retrospect, but it was also hard. I came from a small, rural, and quite conservative high-school. Oberlin students around me were varied and so different from one another… I had never encountered gay rights activists, but I quickly became fully convinced that gay rights were civil rights. I had believed that feminism was something to be laughed at (no kidding) but I wasn't allowed to keep that prejudice for very long. In these respects, I grew and improved because of my experience at Oberlin.

Academics were excellent, and I had many wonderful professors. (Thanks Randy Coleman, Sandra Zagarell, Norman Care, Stephen Plank, and many others!) I had a few duds, whom I will not name. Nil nisi bonum.

Not everyone will love Oberlin. I came to embrace and share the liberal values of my fellow students, but those who didn't experience such a transition probably did feel alienated. Oberlin students can be self-righteous—I'm sure this is true everywhere, but college-age students who are trying out a new radical ideology can go overboard with self-righteous attitudes. I know some did. I hope and believe that I was not among them. My own perhaps unrepresentative observation of friends does suggest that self-righteous college students often grow into friendly tolerant adults.

I gained a tremendous amount from the excellent training I received at Oberlin, and it seems to me that the reputation for academic excellence is entirely deserved. When I applied for graduate school, excellent programs recognized and respected Oberlin as a good place to get strong undergraduate training. I was accepted at several different top-10 programs, and was fortunate to have a choice among them.

May I add… my first year at Oberlin was difficult for me. I was sad, lonely, I didn't know how to write well and my study habits weren't good. My fellow students seemed like an alien species. While I did arrive with discipline as a musician, academic excellence and rigor were new for me. No one had ever expected these things from me. I could have dropped out after my first semester, and if I had done so I would have nasty things to say about Oberlin instead of the nice ones I can now report. I'm glad I stuck it out.