Skidmore College (reviews)

Skidmore is an overall good school. Both town (Saratoga Springs) and campus are great places to be. Especially beautiful during the warmer months of the year.

Academically, the student who wants to be challenged can find many courses that give that opportunity. Professors are encouraging and approachable. Student services are really good, the college really pays attention to each student. Their commitment to facilitating you is almost excessive, given that no one will do that for you in the outside world.

So, Skidmore is a great place to spend your college years; good people, good social life and relatively good academics. Nevertheless, places like Skidmore can be dangerous. In terms of critical thinking, the school appears to be encouraging, but in reality the ideology of the organization gets in the way. I happen to be on the left of the political spectrum, so my time at Skidmore was not painful. Skidmore students might consider themselves on the left, but in reality they are all liberals in the American sense. This results in a problematic discourse. For people there, society has very specific problems and everything around them can be explained by pointing at those. Political correctness is the prevalent way of thinking. I believe that Skidmore means well, but in reality, they end up creating a more oppressive system than the systems they criticize. Patriarchy, racism and homophobia (all, real problems of course) are terms that you will hear a lot around campus, but real power structures are never really attacked. Capitalism is never really questioned and it does not feel like people really understand its dynamics. The school is comprised by many rich students, which probably does not help the situation, since much of the student body appears to be living in a bubble. Other drawbacks include stress culture and quality inconsistency across the departments.