What are the most important characteristics of the academic experience at Colgate?
The most important aspects of the academic experience are, first of all, its breadth. Our general education program is extraordinary. We are one of a declining number of institutions that offer a general education program and I think ours, which has been a part of the Colgate experience for some 70 years, is extraordinary. Our off-campus study program represents another set of opportunities, unmatched by other institutions, providing two dozen locations for students to study away from Hamilton. Study group students are exposed to other ways of understanding the world, and their world view expands as does their self-confidence in being able to function effectively in another environment. Finally, the intense concentration experience brings students and faculty into close contact — at the laboratory bench, in a thesis, in a small class in poetry, in musical or theatrical performance, in a small seminar — and obliges students to engage ideas in a very direct and public way. Those intens
