Fordham vs Monmouth

Here is food for thought directly from (another) Colgate alumnus:

Your satisfaction with any college or university is up to you and therefore is relevant and personal solely to you. And so about Colgate being in a rural setting, less than an hour’s drive from Syracuse, Utica and several other colleges may well be to your advantage with Colgate’s safe scenic campus and the easy accessiblity to the Villlage of Hamilton, one of Forbes’ most friendly top 20 small towns in the country (in 2012). Nope, there is no clubbing or shopping, but there is access to major cities via SYR airport and Utica’s Amtrak and many other colleges in the region such as Hamilton and Cornell.

There is plenty to do on campus- as an active participant or even a bystander. There are magnificent facilities for academics, sports and recreation and 190 student clubs. Check out some of the day’s offering on the colgate.edu
home page, the same site for Colgate’s various clubs, programs, institutes and career networks and also at gocolgateraiders.com for varsity, club and intramural sports.

Lastly, it is certainly gratifying to hear that Colgate, as a top ranked undergraduate liberal arts university, has graduates with such satisfying careers. A graduate with a major of political science and history would have taken more than half of his or her courses outside that dual major. But how is isn’t there a connection between the liberal arts (and Colgate’s core curriculum requirements) and one’s career? After all, no one at Colgate is earning a professional degree, as such, that would lead to a particular job in a particular field, apart, of course, from those pursuing MA and MAT degrees.

I hope that this assists applicants in evaluation what Colgate has to offer until such time as you can visit the campus and see for yourselves. Again, colgate.edu is a great start.

Go 'gate!

I wasn’t comparing Colgate to Fordham or Monmouth, at least not in terms of what they offer. I was providing a personal example of how you can regret attending a highly ranked college because you didn’t fit in with the environment.

And I’m not criticizing Colgate, nor was my post intended as a knock on the school. Those are my dad’s subjective thoughts on the institution, not my own. They should not apply to nor influence anyone else considering Colgate as an option, especially since he went there over 30 years ago and the environment could have changed. Again, I’m only trying to make the case that fitting into a college is more important than the opportunities it apparently provides.

As for the topic regarding the connection between a degree and a career, my argument is that my dad’s career has been more impacted by the fact that he has a degree, not that he has a degree from a specific institution. My dad likes to point out that when he was originally applying for jobs, employers were more interested in the fact that he went to college, not the college he went to.

Thank you for the clarifications and your insights! I am confident that they will interest other applicants, too.

Good luck with your college search!

Thanks! Although I’m actually a graduate myself trying to offer advice to future students.