Kenyon food is disgusting. Terribly seasoned, always overcooked, and covered in laxative oil. You take a bite of the food and you don't know whether to shit or puke. The administration is also super grimey, and as of late, have been trying to destroy the party scene. It's absolutley ridiculous we're in the middle of nowhere and the people in the surrounding towns are either obese or addicted to crystal meth. Kenyon is also known for having really friendly people. This is true. usually when you see someone on middle path, even if you don't know them, you say hello or nod or make eye contact. However, this friendliness is quite conducive to spinelessness, and many Kenyonites are rather passive-aggressive. For example, if someone is making too much noise in the library, people will complain about it on allstu instead of turning around and telling you to shut it. Kenyon is also known for having busted girls. There's some cute boys, but many of them are pussies. But they mean well.

the amount of parent involvement at kenyon sickens me. when i heard parents were pushing for the dorm locks, i spent a lot time thinking about why i came to kenyon in the first place. I did not come to still be under the control of my parents, I did not come so the administration could hold my hand, and i sure as hell did not come and have my mother sign up for the PTA! honestly, kenyon makes me feel like a child. if I had known this before i put my deposit down, i wouldnt have come. i probably wouldve gone to colby. and, even though its so beautiful here and i love the village, im really looking forward to my year abroad to stretch my wings.

This is a temporary stage in our lives and everybody knows it. This is very, very sad environment in which to exist if one needs meaning in one's life to survive. It's very stifling.

kenyon has been a bit of a disappointment for me. Academically speaking (keep in mind--ive only been here a semester!) and socially (repetitive and limited). there is almost no political activeness on campus that i've seen. people here are very friendly, but can be fake. i've found that kenyon is a bit more high school-y than i expected, maybe that comes with the size and the location, but don't expect people to be super-mature and to have completely outgrown high school. getting off campus is virtually impossible unless you want to go to the local wal mart for an hour. if you consider yourself a city person, don't come here. its SO isolated. I cannot stress this enough. You must love nature and be willing to stay in one place for months on end.

The weather is horrible. I'm from Texas a place where there is snow 2 days on the ground... and then it doesn't come back until the next year. That's how it's supposed to be ..you see it .. you enjoy it.. and then it leaves... However at Kenyon... it just stays and stays and stays The boys look semi-appealing until they open their mouths. A lot of them talk about how much money they're going to make, how much money they already have.. or how much the girls at Kenyon blow. I hate the fact that people are dependent on alcohol to have a good time. You can't attend a stand up comedy show, or a party without being semi-buzzed. It's pathetic. The students are brilliant.. but seriously.. seriously.. can we work on social skills first???

Seriously, the administration sucks.

Residential Life at the moment is terrible - although students are all housed and mostly happy, the administration of Res Life is driving their CAs away and their policies are making life difficult for a lot of people. This year, nine CAs have left and not many are interested in returning for another year.

Let me reiterate... the food is very very bad and hard getting away from, since there are very few (4) restaurants in the direct vicinity, and not many more in the town (Mt. Vernon) a little less than ten minutes away.

Kenyon used to be more of a hippie school, but now that it's harder to get into, there are a lot more emo over-achievers that suck. They don't contribute to the social scene.

Kenyon is like another world. Its place on the Hill gives it a sort of oasis-y feel, and Gambier's main drag is tiny and intimate enough to appear almost fabricated, like a theme park's Main Street. When I visited Kenyon as a prospective student, I was honestly kind of put off by how strange the campus felt, how secluded and Pleasantville-like it was. Of course Kenyon has its imperfections--there are at least three power outages a year, the housing can be dicey, Middle Path gets mercilessly icy in the winter--but its beauty and cohesiveness as a campus makes it unlike any other school (in my highly biased opinion). Kenyon students have a fierce sense of loyalty and affection towards their alma mater, and it's showing itself most strongly in the controversies regarding the changes that Kenyon is going through as it becomes a bigger, "better" college. We worry that the integrity of the college will be compromised as the administration seeks to solidify its "New Ivy" position--most of us (myself included) curse the day Kenyon was called that, because having the most AP credits and the highest ACT isn't at ALL what Kenyon is about. Kenyon is about community, plain and simple--at Kenyon you will find yourself in the midst of a student body with diverse viewpoints, upbringings, and origins, but I think there's a common thread that makes us who we are. I can't put my finger on what it is, but I'll say that it takes a very unique person to think that spending four years in the depths of rural Ohio with 1600 other kids is a good idea.

Students are predominantly liberal. Very casual dress. Most students are from wealthier backgrounds. I think most of the students have a skewed view on what is really important. You will hear complaints about administration having to stop a "bonfire." However, the bonfire was a safety hazard. Or you will hear complaints about the dining hall.

This stereotype is partially true. We have a group of students who party a lot but we also have a group of students who don't.

Kenyon's REEEEEEEALLY small. But in spite of that, I often see a bunch of people I have never seen before, which is always nice but very confusing. Theres more Kenyonites than Gambier-ites, so I don't think it's really a college town. It's more like a college nook. It's quaint.

The thing that amazes me about Kenyon, and, admittedly I'm a part of it as well, is the students' ability to talk the place up for hours at a time. I love it here. Within 5 days of being here it felt like home. It's a very small school, so it's not right for everyone, but it's not so small that I can never meet new people. Every week I make new friends. It's also amazing to see how many people know someone who went to Kenyon. It's a school of around 1,600 and yet every time I turn around someone is or knows a Kenyon alum.

For some people, but most people are very in touch with what is going on.

Professors here are great. You'll never have a class taught by a "teaching assistant." Not only are professors around for office hours, but they're always willing to meet with you another time if you can't make those hours. With most of my professors, I feel like I can go in just to chat; I don't necessarily have to go to talk about a paper. I enjoy seminars more than lectures because they're smaller and discussion-based. I get to know people better in seminars, and that always includes getting to know the professor well, too. It's expected, and common, to participate in class dicussions. Frankly, when I meet a quiet and shy student I sometimes wonder how he or she ended up at Kenyon. Freshman year, I took a seminar in the Integrated Program in Humane Studies (which combines classics, history, and philsophy). We had great discussions, and at the end of the semester the professor invited us to his house for a croquet party. That was one of my favorite classes, followed by a 400-level English seminar on James Joyce. Students definitely get into intellectual conversations outside class, whether it's over dinner or in allstu (all-student, entire student body) emails. I got to know my English professor, Kim, really well when I went abroad. She was the resident director for the Kenyon-Exeter program for English majors, and the group of twelve students spent the entire year studying at the University of Exeter in England. Kim was a teacher, a stand-in mother, and a travel guide all in one. She saved us from dorm rat infestations, got us to 17 different plays, and put up with us without complaint. Study abroad in general is really popular here-- about 60% of the junior class goes abroad. Students are generally non-competitive. While people may commiserate over how much work they have to do, they don't compare grades. I don't know what GPAs my friends have. The academic requirements are great in that there is no single class you HAVE to take. If you wanted to go through college without taking an English class, you could do that here. We have distribution requirements, meaning that you just have to have a unit (two semester-long classes or one full-year class) of credit in each of four areas: social sciences, natural sciences, fine arts, and humanities. There's a Quantitative Reasoning (QR) requirement which requires you to take one semester-long course in something math/science related. Students who aren't into math and science can take courses like statistics, economics, Solar Energy, Science Fiction, or Surprises at Infinity. I'm not a fan of the language requirement (one full year of a language course). You can pass the requirement by scoring a 3 or higher on the subject's AP exam or passing a placement test at the beginning of the school year. I took four years of French in high school but apparently didn't learn enough, because I couldn't even pass out of intro French when I took the placement test here. So I took a year of Latin, which I was dreading. It ended up being okay-- it was a lot of memorization, but it was somewhat interesting. I was pretty much forced to take statistics this year to fulfill my QR requirement, and I've never studied that much for any other class. I was so relieved to pass the class, especially since sophomore year I had to drop economics 2/3 of the way through the semester. In econ, I understood the concepts but would get a test and not know what to do. The professor made it more complicated than it needed to be, and often half the class would go to his office hours for help. You don't have to get to Kenyon knowing what you'll major in. In fact, being undecided is encouraged because you can take a variety of classes and figure out what your passions are. You don't have to declare a major until fall of junior year. As an English major, I'm part of the largest major. There are about 75 English majors this year (compared to, say, four music majors). There are usually some really interesting topics (I'm loving my James Joyce seminar), but the unfortunate thing about having so many English majors is the competition to get into particular classes. The registration system isn't the best. This year, a few English majors actually spent the night in a tent outside the English cottage so they could have the first spots in line for class registration the next morning. It's discouraging to get shut out of a class in that way. Kenyon makes you think critically, and no matter what major you're in you'll get great training on being a good writer. I think these are skills that will be useful no matter what field I go into. The unfortunate thing about a liberal arts education is that the degree may not be as specific as some jobs will require you to have. For example, I want to be a high school English teacher. Kenyon doesn't have an education major, so after college I will have to go to grad school for a master's degree and get certified.

No!!