Should I reconsider Oberlin as a possible school?

BookLvr
Tue, 17 Sep 2019 19:04:25 +0000

My daughter is a senior this year and IS still planning to apply to Oberlin. It is one of eight schools on her current list, all of them liberal arts colleges. We toured it back in March and she is going to do a fly-in later this month to sit in on classes and take a second look. There is too much about this specific colleges that she loves to cut it off because of this one news story. Some of the things she loves are reasonably specific to Oberlin; others are true of several colleges with a similar vibe.

She loves the idea of vegetarian food co-ops, the Ex-co classes, the progressive political vibe, the strong theater and dance scene, the sci-fi dorm, the $5 art rentals, the environmentally friendly policies, the very competitive slam poetry team. While we were there, we passed a poster for a lecture that encapsulated my daughter’s academic interests so well that I had to do a double take. Two students from her high school who graduated a year ahead of her just matriculated at Oberlin and they are both people of amazing integrity. My daughter’s current (excellent!) calculus teacher is an alum, as is the Shakespeare scholar I heard give a lecture last week as part of an endowed speaker’s series. I absolutely would not mind my daughter joining this renowned, intellectual group of alumni.

Also, here’s my slightly controversial hot take: this is a BIG DEAL here on College Confidential. Is it as big a deal in the country as a whole? I am not convinced that it is. I am a faculty member at a liberal arts college. I brought up “the Oberlin Gibson’s bakery scandal” with a colleague…and that colleague had no idea what I was talking about. This is NOT a scandal on the scale of the Jerry Sandusky scandal at Penn State. Everyone is not talking about it. We are talking about it. Conservative talking heads are talking about it. Some people who follow the news are talking about it. But it is not HUGE news, and I doubt it will be a high impact, destiny-changing story in 5-10 years. Are we equally worried that USC’s reputation is going to tank because of the Varsity Blues scandal? I really feel like USC is going to remain a desirable school in most people’s eyes.