Anonymous wrote:The answer is none of the above. There is no good reason for anyone to attend either Oberlin or Skidmore.

Skidmore is the destination of choice for prep school kids with good weed connections.

Regarding rankings, Oberlin dropped because USNWR changed their metrics pre-Covid to include salary post-employment. This is obviously not beneficial for a school that draws around 20% of their students for their conservatory- no one goes into fine arts with the objective of getting rich. For many years, Oberlin was ranked in the 30s, which is probably a better reflection of the school in relation to other LACs.

As for STEM, I’d take a look at the top majors of each school per their CDS. Oberlin ranks Biology/Biomedical sciences in their top 2 majors, whereas Skidmore’s top majors are Business, Psychology and English. Their most popular STEM major is neuroscience, which has half the majors of their English dept. Full disclosure, my kid chose between Oberlin and another LAC for Bio this admissions cycle, and we were really impressed by the students we met and their faculty. My kid researched Skidmore and the number of Business majors was not appealing to her, plus the couple of kids we know who’ve graduated in the past few years didn’t have great experiences. YMMV

Anonymous wrote:When considered by medical school matriculation percentages, this analysis placed Oberlin 29th among LACs and Skidmore 76th:

https://www.collegetransitions.com/blog/from-pre-med-to-md-understanding-the-pathways-to-medical-school/

By this standard, Oberlin over-performs its U.S. News rank and Skidmore under-performs its U.S. News rank.

Anonymous wrote:Definitely Oberlin, from an academic standpoint alone.

Care to provide details? Otherwise this is pretty unsupported.

Anonymous wrote:Have not been to Skidmore, but have been to Oberlin. I struggle to imagine that a student would be able to get sufficient clinical exposure at Oberlin unless they spent several summers pursuing it aggressively. No medical center. Middle of nowhere. And yes, before you attack, I do medical school admissions and yes, clinical hours are very important.

If you do med school admissions you should be cautious making the above comment. Clinicals are very important but you can easily cover that base from either of these schools. There is a small hospital near Oberlin and a level 3 trauma center 15 minutes away. Skidmore has a large hospital only a mile away and I know several kids who did medical assistant work there during their gap years. Almost everyone takes a gap year which makes getting good clinicals or research hours much easier than it was in the past.

Skidmore students do far better than average when it comes to med school admissions and given Oberlin's strengths in getting kids into Phd programs I would expect them to do even better. Both schools are fit schools but either one is a great place to do pre-med.

Anonymous wrote:Have not been to skidmore, but have been to Oberlin. I struggle to imagine that a student would be able to get sufficient clinical exposure at Oberlin unless they spent several summers pursuing it aggressively. No medical center. Middle of nowhere. And yes, before you attack, I do medical school admissions and yes, clinical hours are very important.

Allen Hospital is on campus and The Cleveland Clinic is nearby. It appears this is good enough for medical schools since Oberlin makes the list of “feeder schools” for med school.

The answer is none of the above. Their is no good reason for anyone to attend either Oberlin or Skidmore.