Hamilton College

Date: Jul 29 2013
Major: English (This Major's Salary over time)
I attended Hamilton for one dreadful year, in the middle 1980s, and it astounds me to read these reviews. So little has changed, but today, thanks to the Internet, the ugly little secrets are harder to conceal. As an admittedly snobbish brat myself, I deliberately selected Hamilton based on its aesthetically outstanding campus and preppy quality. Little did I know how disappointing all of that was. Back then, the drinking age was 19. Not only the students but most of the faculty and administrators were confirmed alcoholics. I'll never forget drinking with the admissions director at the on-campus pub. He was about fifty. After about ten beers he said, "Well, time to hit the road!" It was I, the teenager, who asked him, "Sir, are you fit to drive." He replied, "Nothin' to it, son. I'll take the back roads!" I drank much less than my classmates and that was still a lot. The fraternities had beer & tunes parties at which you stood calf-deep in puddles of putrid beer. It was impossible to study much because the library and dorms were always rowdy. Putting in moderate effort, and depressed much of the time, I was 133/560 during that freshman year. I was well-to-do myself, from California, and even though I was originally from the East to boot, the snobbery was unbelievable. The sun shone about eight days, nonconsecutively. The faculty were good, not stellar, but solid, and the politics predictably liberal/PC. Back then the little town of Clinton had no touch-tone telephone service and one stoplight. Students used to hitchhike rather than walk back up the hill. There were two broadcast television stations. Most of the people I knew there spent their time getting stoned and drunk, or drunk and stone. I left after two semesters…tremendous mistake. My parents paid for it. I can't imagine how it would have sucked if I had had to borrow money for that place. Definitely not worth it.