Quote:
Originally Posted by naraht
I'm pretty far to the left politically, and the student organization list looks like something that a student of Oral Roberts University would write as a *spoof* of a Liberal school.
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The list is rather amusing. Most people do not know about Reed. Or you sometimes hear people joke about how liberal it is. But in reality, Reed is a pretty impressive place.
It did not grow out of student revolts and experimentation of the 60s, but out of a desire to provide a flexible, individualized approach to a rigorous liberal arts education. It was founded in 1908, explicitly in reaction to what was then being provided on the East Coast Ivy Leagues. So the college lacks varsity athletics, fraternities, and exclusive social clubs. It instead focused on being an intensely academic and intellectual college whose purpose was to devote itself academic life.
According to Wikipedia, Reed has produced the second-highest number of Rhodes scholars for any liberal arts college—32—as well as over fifty Fulbright Scholars, over sixty Watson Fellows, and two MacArthur ("Genius") Award winners. A very high proportion of Reed graduates go on to earn PhDs, particularly in the sciences, history, political science, and philosophy. Reed is third in percentage of its graduates who go on to earn PhDs in all disciplines, after only Caltech and Harvey Mudd. In 1961, Scientific American declared that second only to Caltech, "This small college in Oregon has been far and away more productive of future scientists than any other institution in the U.S."
