@kju0303 Obviously, which school is right for you is a personal choice and hard to advise on. I can tell you the experience my son and I had at Colgate: The tour and info session were among the best we had experience (and we looked at a lot of schools over the last 3 years). They had impressive stats and programs I had never seen before at other institutions (98% athletic graduation rate was an example, as it shows that they don’t just take kids to play sports, they want them to succeed, which tells me they are in this for the students). They do not have a grad school, so students do not have to compete with grad students to do research…this is a big deal (U Richmond has somewhat of a grad program, but limited and small). They have a lot of options for students to get money to do independent work also. Yes, their alumni are very strong and that is a huge perk. Colgate’s campus is unbelievably beautiful (we did not visit U Richmond, but spoke to others that did and they did not like the campus). The faculty obviously care about the students, as they were unbelievably generous with their time meeting with my son (the bio chair came in over break just to sit and answer his questions, as an example). We were not on campus during session, but the people we experienced has a real community feel, which was very important for my son. By the end of the day we spent there, he wanted to change to ED II and I wholeheartedly agreed, even though he gave up some very generous scholarship offers to do so. He got his answer in only days since they do rolling ED admissions, which was a big bonus!!!
On the weather, for my son, it wasn’t a problem. My advice to kids is that the weather is a very small part of the college experience. I would caution anyone to make a decision with that as a high priority. If it will make you miserable, that is a different situation, but if it is just not your preference, that would be low on my list when comparing institutions. When comparing academics, I don’t think there is a comparison, Colgate is clearly the winner. My son also applied to U Richmond (but withdrew obviously) so we did look at the program pretty closely. I do believe U Richmond is solid, I just think Colgate does so much on a higher scale. I hope this helps.