Went to another website & read dozens of student reviews of Oberlin. All of the reviews that I read were made within the past 10 months.

Most common complaints were about on-campus housing, poor quality of food, cliquish social atmosphere, social divide of athletes & non-athletes, and that students from non-high income families felt left out socially.

Positives focused on quality of professors, decent class sizes, acceptance of non-traditional type students, and the beauty of the campus.

Seemed liked a reasonable mix of positives and negatives.

Athlete/non-athlete divides exist at almost every school, but is much more pronounced at smaller schools than at large universities.

My DD just graduated and that was her experience! She was a STEM major and granted, had more friends across STEM and social sciences than arts & humanities, but a good number of friends double majored or had interesting major/minor combinations, and most kids were just typical Democratic-leaning but not always super political kids. She worked campus jobs, including for the admissions office and represented the college in a balanced and yet authentic way. We also visited for Family Weekend a few times and were genuinely impressed by the caliber of instruction, the intimacy of small classes - even her intro STEM classes were 40 students tops - and the engagement and intellectual curiosity of the students. A lot of students study abroad, learn languages, and apply to Fulbright too. I'm a professor at a large public R1 university and while I know my students can get an excellent education at large state schools, I did encourage DD to apply to LACs knowing that it can just be easier to get that personalized instruction with a smaller student body. We're certainly left-leaning but pretty mainstream in terms of appearance and political engagement, and it was really nice to meet DD's friends from across the country (and world) who were just nice, kind kids who cared about helping other people. Some things that get blown up about the environment at LACs, such as pronouns, are just about respecting people and how they want to be treated and referred to as. It's really not much deeper than that and doesn't need to exist in people's heads outside of those spaces as anything other than being respectful.

Another bonus is that school is slightly larger than some of its peers (2,880) and thus has the resources to support a lot of diverse student interests, both in terms of activities and student clubs, academic degrees, and also friendship affiliations. The college is also starting to offer BS degrees to recognize STEM-heavy coursework schedules and also interdisciplinary degrees like Environmental Science and Data Science, as well as Business. There are also a lot of free music events throughout the year due to the Conservatory and the musical inclinations of the student body. Happy to share more about our experience!

Good to hear. It’s one of my DD’s EA apps.

They seem to be going above and beyond to seek applicants.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You lost me at lacrosse players being smart, grounded people.

You probably consider yourself a tolerant, open-minded liberal who preaches against judging or labeling others.

But in reality you're just a geed who's still bitter you weren't one of the cool kids.

Sick burn.

We visited last year and we loved it. My DD applied and was in the cohort of kids that were admitted early last December. We considered it very seriously but ultimately another school offered better options in her major but we were very, very impressed with what we saw.

Anonymous wrote:You lost me at lacrosse players being smart, grounded people.

You probably consider yourself a tolerant, open-minded liberal who preaches against judging or labeling others.

But in reality you're just a geed who's still bitter you weren't one of the cool kids.

Anonymous wrote:The two sophomores I know there are super happy and both sets of parents are pleased with the school. The kids are pretty, popular girls from two different high schools, artsy and left leaning, but not political or super alternative like the school’s reputation from the 90s would imply.

From the 1990s ??? LOL !

The Gibson Bakery incident occurred in 2016 and continued for years thereafter in court & on campus. The Gibsons did not receive total payment of over $36 million until December, 2022.

The Oberlin supporters posting in this thread are, at best, disingenuous.

An athlete who graduated a few years ago confirmed that the typical description of the Oberlin community as far left, judgmental, and a divide between athletes and non-athletes still exists in full. Neither the athlete nor the parent had any reason to be untruthful about the community vibe at Oberlin.

Anonymous wrote:You lost me at lacrosse players being smart, grounded people.

lol my reaction too

The two sophomores I know there are super happy and both sets of parents are pleased with the school. The kids are pretty, popular girls from two different high schools, artsy and left leaning, but not political or super alternative like the school’s reputation from the 90s would imply.

Student athlete DS loves the school after visiting and spending a weekend with the current team. I hope his EA application works out.

You lost me at lacrosse players being smart, grounded people.

Yes, we visited and my kid was really turned off by what he saw of the student body.

Clever post.

Honestly, I am not trying to start anything, but I wanted to share my experience from Family Weekend this past weekend. I was on campus for three days visiting my DD, who is a first-year, and this was my second time at Oberlin after move-in. What I saw was nothing like what often gets described on this board. My daughter’s entire friend group is made up of very “normal” kids. She is even “talking with” a lacrosse player who seemed exactly like the smart, grounded student-athletes she went to high school with. She and her friends went to the Lacrosse party on Friday night. I also stopped by the infamous Gibson’s Bakery, and while I was there I asked the owner’s wife how relations with the college are. She simply said, “fine, the past is the past.”

I visited two classes with my daughter: Intro to American Politics and Survey of Christian Art. The politics class had 26 students. Maybe one had what some would call an alternative style based on hair or clothing, but otherwise it was a room full of focused, thoughtful college students. The discussion was about election integrity, and the professor went out of his way to present a range of perspectives. The art class was definitely more eclectic, but in the way you would expect from students passionate about the arts.

I am sharing all of this because I had genuinely braced myself for the visit. I thought I might see protests or a campus where everyone was trying to outdo each other in being the most alternative or “weird.” That simply was not the case. I cannot speak to Oberlin of years past, but the Oberlin I experienced this weekend was a place where kind, bright students were the norm, not the exception.

Again, I am not trying to spark a debate, just offering my firsthand experience. But I am curious if the people who post such negative thigns about Oberlin have actually visited or personally experienced the school. I realize this was just my experience, but if you have a student who loves the arts, loves writing, and loves being surrounded by people from all over the country and the world, Oberlin deserves to be on your list.