On the up and up

Introduction
I've found this school to be great all around: the academics are challenging, with small, intimate classes (typically under 20 kids per class) that make it difficult to duck under the radar...a good thing if you want to come out with a good education. Outside the classroom, too, there is a stimulating range of options - lots of extracurriculars to get involved in, for a wide variety of interests. Not so wide is campus diversity: the school's relatively preppy and white across the board. Two other drawbacks are the weather (constant rain and chill) and the tiny size of the college town...which is only a problem for those seeking a larger city/community to explore, but still worth mentioning as a red flag in case that applies to you.

Campus Life and Social Life
Social life is OK - but it requires some intuition and motivation. In other words, you have to know where to go and what to look for. Weekends generally involve studying/sports/another activity during the day, followed by a long night of partying. The atmosphere here follows the old "work hard/ play hard" model of college life...which makes this a stimulating and fun place to go to school. Academics
The workload is heavy enough to intimidate my friends at other schools when I report to them how much I have to do in any given week...but it's never so overwhelming that you can't take part in extracurricular activities too. The English department is great (and hard), as are International Studies and International Business and Managment. The sciences are also well-known for being reputable and well-funded (for example, a new science complex breaks ground this year.)

Regardless of major, all classes are taught by professors (or instructors in a few cases), not TAs. We do, however, have TAs on hand in large classes and labs to help you out as needed.

In terms of specific professors, insider tip: Winston (English) and Aleprete (Poly sci.) are especially awesome.

Student Body
Most people come from the East Coast, although there are quite a few international students as well. Almost everyone is involved in an activity outside of academics, and people are generally pretty busy around campus. It is a typical liberal arts school in the preppy/listen to OAR and spoon/know everyone sort of way.

In Closing...
Dickinson is on the rise - big time. The endowment grew by 30M last year, and it is poised to rise quite a bit in the rankings in the next few years. Study Abroad programs are very strong and a large portion of the student body spends at least one semester overseas. The study abroad programs and generous financial aid packages were the reason I chose Dickinson over Duke.