Colgate University

Date: Jun 30 2004
Major: Undecided (This Major's Salary over time)
I kind of fell into Colgate because it seemed like the ideal place for a kid like me who grew up in the middle of NYC all my life. (Yes, the city itself. Unlike most kids at Colgate who say they are from NYC, I’m actually from it and not Long Island, West Chester or New Jersey). I wanted to get out of the city and meet new kinds of people. I expected rigorous academics with a vibrant social scene; despite the fact that there was very little in the area, I imagined that people would be creative and friendly and focus on making good friends and having fun no matter what.

First off, I can say that the academics were just superb. The professors were generally fantastic people with interesting backgrounds who really liked what they were doing. Small class sizes and accessible professors made for some surprisingly fulfilling learning experiences. There is a wealth of resources available for studying and the wired classrooms have made it such that you might be a hundred miles away from “civilization”, but you can learn about anything from afar.

Unfortunately, on the social side of things, I was just plain wrong about Colgate. Perhaps the whole

go to college in the middle of nowhere

mentality was also ill-conceived. To be absolutely frank (this website said not to be modest, after all), I consider myself a very friendly guy. People seem to think I’m reasonably attractive, athletic and I love to get to know new people. I’ve done a lot of unusual but fun stuff in my life and I hoped to find people who would be even more friendly, attractive and interesting when it came to normal conversation and just having fun.

The reality I found consisted a lot of people who somehow weren’t so interested in meeting anyone new or doing anything interesting. People who became friends with their roommate or neighbor (which is great) weren’t interesting in talking to anyone else outside their social circle unless they had a connection to alcohol (not so great). The generally upper-class suburban crowd didn’t have much to talk about beyond sports, SUVs and drinking. Fine, but that’s only good for ten minutes of conversation. I actually got the sense that few people at Colgate had ever experienced more than sports, SUVs and drinking and had no intention of expanding their horizons at all. Coupled with the small, isolated town of Hamilton, my initial high hopes turned into a really depressing slump.

Now, at this point the average person my age is probably thinking

Well, this kid sounds like a dork who doesn’t like to just relax and have a good time.

I’d disagree. In fact, I might even say that the student body wasn’t willing to relax and have a good time. People were absurdly frantic to look good, be at one of the rare parties, get drunk and hook up with someone. Fair enough, but you can only do it so many nights in a row. And not always successful. The girls tended to get frigid with the guys, which made the guys creepy and desperate, which lead to date rape. That, in turn, made the girls frigid with the guys…and the vicious cycle continued. I expected to get drunk sometimes, find cool girls and meet fun people wherever I went. But the social scene consists almost entirely of the one bar in town (the Jug, which gets overcrowded, which leads to fights breaking all the time…) and the frats. The frats were actually really cool places, but the university is buying them up, thus removing the bulk of the already-limited social scene.

The cookie-cutter description does fit a lot of people at Colgate. I was a White male living in a dorm themed for African-American students. The people in the dorm were great, but the awkward looks and remarks I got from other White students at Colgate when I said I lived there were wildly unacceptable. A conservative mentality prevails such that I would really hate to be a non-White or gay male at Colgate.

A big advantage of Colgate is that it’s so small that it’s easy to get involved in teams, extra curricular activities, etc.. A big disadvantage of Colgate is that it’s so small there aren’t too many extra-curricular activities to get involved, at least not many with more than six people. Teams do well because there’s little to do and the teams have the resources to run a fun, rigorous experience. But, as someone recruited for the Division-1 track team there, I can tell you that being a team sucks up too much time. The other runners basically lived in a bubble with each other. I quit rather quickly.

The one absolutely fabulous thing I did at Colgate was join the local fire department. I had a lot of fun training and responding to fires and it was very fulfilling for someone who likes to do community-service stuff like me. But ultimately, firefighting and the three other major extra curriculars I did (political action, writing for newspaper and academic research) didn’t make up for having nothing else to do. I began to suspect I made the wrong choice in the first few weeks of being there, so I committed myself to getting really good grades for the first semester.

It paid off. I am transferring this fall to the University of Pennsylvania. I’m absolutely thrilled that I’m going to get to go to such a beautiful, fun school right in a big city like Philadelphia. The Colgate faculty and administration were very helpful and supportive with my transfer, which was very nice of them. If you asked me on my first day of Colgate where I would be in a year, it wouldn’t have been at an Ivy League school in the middle of a city. And I should mention that I went to Colgate with a bunch of people from my small high school who had a great time and are staying. There are people who truly love Colgate. I have no hard feelings against the school, but I can only suggest that everyone look closely at every school they apply to as well as apply to different types of schools in different locations. College is about making who you are as much as discovering who you are. Go to a place where you really think you’re going to be comfortable and active.