General Overview of Colgate University

ColgateDad
Sat, 11 Jun 2011 14:13:57 +0000

Colgate makes extra effort to attract minority students (and not just athletes!). Some years back, Black Enterprise magazine ranked Colgate the 3rd best college for African-American students. Not sure where it’s ranked now or if they still do such rankings? My experience has been that minorities – Asian, Hispanic, Black, foreign students, gays, and so on – find Colgate appealing and generally do well, keeping in mind that Colgate, like so many small rural liberal arts colleges, has a large contingent of “suburban white kids”. as well as ome small-town and rural students not used to “variety” in their lives, if you know what I mean. All part of learning to get along with people, though. My daughter is half-Asian from California, and she and an Hispanic classmate and an African-American classmate were all admitted from her high school the year she got in. It’s not all white kids with lacrosse sticks and popped collars, though there are a lot of them, too.

ED always gives good students at least a small advantage, but be sure it’s your number one school since getting admitted assumes you’ll go to Colgate. Awards, titles, medals, banners, leadership, ribbons, titles (royal and otherwise), and all such general prestige are always worth pointing out in your admissions application. Not sure how impressed they’ll be, but no sense hiding your light under a bushel when you’re applying to college!

Your academic and extra curricular records seem very good, and I imagine Colgate will find you appealing. It’s becoming harder and harder to get admitted (as with most schools) and the entering GPA, test scores, and so on seem to inch up a little with each year with all schools form Ivies on down. Colgate admits 29% of its applicants lately, some years more and some years less, so you’d have about a 1 in 3 (or maybe 1 in 4) chance which means lots of bright, talented applicants who would do well at Colgate will NOT be admitted because there is not enough room. But, you can’t get admitted unless you apply. And, again, early decision will give you a bit of a boost in that area since you’re indicating Colgate is your first choice school. They do take a higher percentage of the generally better early applicants.

Dorms are very nice for freshman, all older buildings remodeled, clean, pleasant, nothing fancy. It’s kind of cool living in a building built in 1820 or so (with modern facilities, of course), and they are not off on the fringes like at some schools, but right on the main quad across from nearly all classroom building. Wake up, throw on shoes and jacket, run a brush through your hair, and run across the quad to first period history class. You’ll learn the drill. Upper class dorms are more modern and a bit fancier and I’d say very nice, a little more like apartments than “dorms”.

Partying is fairly common at Colgate on weekends, as it is in all colleges, particularly rural colleges where there isn’t a major city to distract students. Not being distracted, but being “in” the college and dealing with all it has to offer and making good friends, and so forth, is the advantage of a small, rural colllege. You are really “at” college, unlike students in urban schools where many students are more interested and often more involved in other urban activities (BU, NYU, UChicago, etc.), something which tends to fragment the college experience, I think. On campus life in a small college is cozy and friendly and you get really involved (or else you hole up in your room, but who does that?). But, one aspect of the rural isolation is the the tendency to drink and party to pass the time. This is something you will have to decide about yourself, and I’d imagine a lot of younger Colgate students pass through a period when they try out the weekend parties here and there and either find them fun . . .or stupid and pointless. Not partying on weekends is clearly an option for many students who’d rather do other things, so I wouldn’t be too concerned about it. This is going to be the same at just about any college.

I like your violin experience, particularly, and as a smart, talented young black woman you might be a great addition to Colgate and another link in a long chain of top African-American Colgate students. And coming from Chicago (my home town), you may already know a little bit about cold, wet, windy weather. Colgate has a little bit of that from time to time, too . . . ! Where’s my heavy jacket? Best of luck to you!