Colgate University

The pizza in their café food poisoned me. My son has loved it here and made great friends although he’s always asking me for money. It seems like his homies tend to have something filthy rich about them, but they are nice people. There is also a very large stoner community here.
My son also thought it would be easier to get to NYC but he was disappointed to find that Buffalo is where he has to go for fun.

Great place. Need to brave the cold weather.

Class of ’76. Go to all class reunions. My kids went to Ivies (Yale, Princeton), several of my classmates sent their kids to Colgate.
So, I think I have a long term perspective about what changes, what remains the same. Also can compare to other top notch institutions.
Colgate is rural. End of story and why it gets 4 stars instead of 5. It is not for those who like an urban environment. Having said that I came from a very urban environment (Puerto Rico) with a very different cultural make up than the mainstream and I LOVED it.
I lived in frats, off-​campus, in the dorms, went to France a semester, etc. If you have a thirst for experience Colgate offers more than enough. If you expect an urban environment that spoon feeds you, forget it, it’s not for you.
But above all a University is for friendships and education.
The isolated rural environment and small class size forces you to meet and interact with many other students who are «not your type“and you would have never socialized with at a larger school. Those who say the school is too homogeneous probably never reached out or learned to appreciate a person beyond a snap judgement. I still keep up regularly with a bunch of my classmates and to this day my best friends are Colgate classmates, all on different life paths and great distances from me.
As for the education, all my classes were small sized and with a full professor. That is far superior to what my own children got at Princeton and Yale where most courses were taught by Teaching assistants and professors were hard to get in touch with.

Beautiful place.

Extraordinary university on a drop-​deap gorgeous campus.
The college is located on «the» hill, and it is truly beautiful. If you ever want to see a place that looks like your dream college, it’s worth the trip to upstate New York to see Colgate. It is truly an impressive-​looking school that far outshines most others in the sheer beauty of the location.
Academics are first-​rate. As an alum whose father and brother attended Colgate, and whose daughter now attends Colgate, I pretty much know the goods and bads — and always come down on the strongly positive side. If I didn’t, my daughter who was a straight A high school student with top scores would have gone elsewhere. That includes one or two Ivies and other top liberal arts colleges she chose Colgate over.
If you want an easy education, there are lots of schools where the academics are less important. Colgate’s academics are often as good as the Ivies, and you get the small classroom experience where you are taught by professors, not teaching assistants. Most are smaller classes not enormous lectures. You are involved in the academics from your first class freshman year, instead of working your way up the ladder to get into seminars with actual professors after years of waiting. Anyone who finds Colgate’s academics lacking needs to figure out why and do something about it, and that might involve a transfer if their specialized academic needs aren’t being met. Find out before you enroll if your interests are covered.
All colleges in small, rural towns have a sense of small town isolation. If you want a hip, trendy, urban experience, I suggest NYU, MIT, UCLA, or USC. If you want a large college with an enormous student body, go to Cornell or any large state university. If you want to avoid a heavily WASP student body, a number of other colleges do that better than Colgate. but not very many. Amherst, for example, has a tremendous racial and ethnic diversity. Colgate less so with only about 25% black, Asian, Hispanic, and «other». Not diverse enough for you? Go to another school.
It’s a small, somewhat homogenous, rural Ivy-​like college with top academics, excellent athletics, great facilities, a first-​rate faculty, in a beautiful but somewhat isolated location. Peers with similar characteristics would be Williams, Bowdoin, Hamilton, Middlebury. But, if you like that kind of «real» college where you are 100% at the college — as opposed to living an a dorm apartment and taking some classes nearby — or where people have other fascinating interests besides college academics and sports (and Colgate excells at sports), there are many better places you could go to. For what Colgate offers, and has offered for nearly 200 years, it’s about as good as it gets.
To the embittered commenters who hated their Colgate experience, I’m very sorry that you did. But you have to take Colgate for what it’s worth. If it’s not your style, transfer please and don’t ruin your life by bitterly hating the place and resenting your four years there. If you moved to a small town but you hated small towns, what’s the point? How sad to be trapped in a place you don’t like and make no effort to do anything about changing your situation? If you put me at NYU, USC or dozens of other colleges, I’d hate being there — but I’d figure that out and do something about it. For me, Colgate was as good as it gets — if you can get in, and that’s not easy.

Forget about US News and World Report. If you’ve ever set foot here, where do you want to be? Answer: Nowhere Else.

yeah, this place is garbage. i mean there is absolutely no way to sugarcoat it. its a bastion of rich, white elitism — which is about as fresh as a foghat concert these days.
every once in a while ill get a colgate resume on my desk. they all say the same thing: volunteered for hamilton’s sidekicks program (read: attended the information center at the hall of presidents while on two halcyon a xanax and my period); summer internship in m&a group at JPM (read: did coke and drank gin and tonics with my terrible girlfriend for 3 weeks in nyc). its all the same. there were only a small handful of people that offered the community-​at-​large something authentic and original. i liked those people. they will always be my friends. i will never allow anyone close to me to attend colgate university and they will never see a dime of my money.
advice to current students: (i) live off campus; (ii) upper-​deck the toilet at theta; (iii) the falafel at hamilton whole foods is tasty and underrated; (iv) makes friends like Matthew J. that kid is so hot right now.

I would advise anybody against it.
At no point did I feel I was getting a worldclass education.
The lion’s share of my classmates were politically uninvolved, academically apathetic (and talentless), socially cutthroat nabobs-​in-​waiting.
It’s uncomfortably homogeneous. Act out away from mode, in any way imaginable, and you are ripe to be ostracized. There was a lot of racism and homophobia.
There’s nothing to do socially, aside from Greek life and completely ineffectual clubs.
There were a lot of fist (and lacrosse stick) fights.
The food sucks.
I’ll grant that Colgate has some nice facilities, and the backdrop is beautiful, but the school that I experienced needs a wholesale personality overhaul (and I’ve seen no evidence that Rebecca «Hatchet» Chopp has accomplished that).

If you wanted a University that qualifies as Picturesque — this one is right up there. With stunning stone buildings and amazing views of the foothills out most windows, I’d be happy to be a student there. That being said, I can’t give it more than three stars because after having listened to over 60 students kvetch a little bit about the social life and the lack of options for busing down to Syracuse or getting to other locales from Campus — I can see some challenges. Nothing that couldn’t be addressed by a little reprioritization. But really — when you are in a campus town type environment, you want to have a hugely vibrant set of social opportunities. Instead, you have «The Jug» to quote some of the members of the current Colgate population. Eating opportunities are limited, dating has become nearly a lost art. I will give tremendous credit to the professor and students who have created the «Bring Back The Date» program at Colgate. 5 students out of the 2800 have made the decision to try to influence change. By creating this program, the students have taken a stand for providing an acceptable alternative to the collegiate hook-​up culture. In fact, I’ll add back a star just for the innovation. :)

Great education. Wonderful friends who I’d have been lost without. Professors that I keep in touch with ten years out. I would have never gone abroad if it weren’t for the fact that everyone I knew was, and Australia was one of the best experiences of my life. But I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t isolated.
Colgate’s made some great strides since I was there-​attempting to downplay Greek life as the only social scene, The Colgate Plan seems well thought out, and Rebecca Chopp is taking things in a great direction. I’m so convinced on that front that they see my check for the Annual fund each year. That said, I never really found my niche there. It could be entirely my own fault, but I’m still a little sad that it was the case. It could also be because I was a part of the biggest class to ever enter Colgate and resources were strectched far further than planned. The administration rolled with it, even when the same thing happened the following year (I guess there can be too much of a good thing)
I’m still involved with alumni admissions because it’s a great school for the right kid, and I want to be sure the right kid-​the one who will take advantage of it to the fullest in ways that I never did-​will end up there.

colgate is homogeneous– you go to colgate because you belong at colgate– for the most part
its a good school– solid education, and its a good time

Great place to spend four years of college. Colgate is in a small town in up-​state New York. The weather can get brutal in the winter, but by no means unbearable. The professors are awesome, classes are small, and as an undergraduate, you get a lot of attention. An entering class has about 750 kids, and by the end of your four years, you will know many of them, if not by name, you will definitely recognize them and know who they are. Everyone is smart, even athletes that are recruited to play at Colgate. That being said, we know how to work hard, and know how to play hard. There are a lot of preppy kids at Colgate, but there is every sort of student.
Contrary to the belief of many older alums, the Greek system is doing quite well at the University, after the school purchased all of the Greek houses. The University has done a good job to stay on top of renovations, although at times maintenance to the houses can be slow.
The new library is amazing, and the science building which is currently being constructed will be a great addition to the campus.
Because we are in rural New York, Colgate does a great job of providing funding and bringing a lot of lecturers, musicians, and bands to campus. There are never enough hours in the day to do everything I want to do. Spring Party Weekend is one of the most fun weekends at Colgate, in which the school brings typically a really big name on campus in April. This year we had The Roots come to Colgate.
Complaints about Colgate? Not much. The weather was definitely something to get used to. Sometimes, the «downtown» lacked much diversity in terms of places to go, and restaurants to eat at. But, what made Colgate, well, Colgate, was the people– my friends, classmates, and professors made Colgate a great place to spend four years.

«Colgate, Alma Mater
Fair Esteem of all our Lays
Colgate, Alma Mater,
Ever Bless Thy Days»