Reed College

Going to Reed is great if you are severely 'nonconformist' and want only to be a scholar. If you fit into normal society, even a little bit, you do NOT fit in at Reed. If you actually care about having serious career and internship opportunities Reed is NOT the place for you. If you care about your GPA Reed is not the place for you. Do not buy their whole "people understand we don't have grade inflation" business because it is a flat out LIE unless you are going to apply to very prestigious PhD programs. They are the only ones who care about that. To everyone else, and even to most of those programs, they will just see a GPA that is substantially worse than anyone else's at any other school because there is a taboo at Reed over giving out As. Also think that many jobs, internships, and grad programs have cutoff GPAs and they make no excepts and they could not care less about reed's grade policies and the GPAs many of these programs want are almost mythical at reed. Also don't buy the whole "you can be an individual here" business. Unless you are exactly like everyone else (communist, nudist, hipster, sci fi nerd, preferably vegetarian, atheist or at least non-religious, and a hardcore feminist) you will NOT fit in and NOT feel welcome. The level of conformity pressured at reed is staggering and much higher than normal society! There is NO diversity at reed! Diversity at reed is like the diversity between punk, emo, and goth rock; unless you are an insider in that scene you will never notice the difference. It's like the difference because white, off white, and light beige. If you want to get involved in student government or clubs, know there are none of the traditional clubs and no clubs that will advance your career goals. Also you will not get into student government unless you are the exact ideal of a stereotypical reedie. Also since reed is a school for 'scholars' it is designed to be much more difficult than necessary. I have heard plenty of accounts of alums who went on to PhD programs at prestigious universities which were significantly easier than reed. Do not expect to have much of a social life and forget about being able to go off campus and escape the suffocating reed bubble. Also know reed does not allow double majors (only in theory but advisors will work hard to keep you from it) and both study abroad and internships are theoretically encouraged but again made incredibly difficult to actually do. Yes the professors are great and always there for you, the administration is extremely accommodating, but no matter what you do it will never be good enough. Do not expect professors to ever give more than minor praise and do not expect praise without at least a dash of criticism. The most common past times at reed are 1) pretentiously talking in an area where people can overhear your conversation about the meaning of life or something like that 2) complaining about how much work you have in a one-up-man-ship fashion 3) boasting about how little sleep you've had in the last few days (even though you actually slept more than that) 4) complaining about how broke you are (the ones that complain the most are the kids who are not on financial aid and whose parents are actually very well off but since it's not a hipster thing to be well off...basically at reed the more money your family has, the more you dress like a hobo and try to pretend you are in a dire financial state while forgetting everyone knows about your facebook pictures of you and the family going to India over fall break and spending spring break in Spain or all your brand new apple products). I would describe most students who actually fit in and like reed as 1) pretentious 2) pedantic 3) self-righteous 4) smug 5) disconnected from reality. So in closing going to reed was personally a HUGE HUGE HUGE mistake and I would never recommend it to anyone unless you feel identified by having a complete disconnect with mainstream society and are ok with doing two or three times more work than anyone else at any other school but graduate looking like you did substantially less. You also need to be ok living in an environmental saturated with pro-reed/ conform to reed standards propaganda and which does not allow for deviation from the typical reedie without being completely ostracized.

3rd Year Female -- Class 2013

Faculty Accessibility: A+, Education Quality: F