Reed College

Reed College is a liberal arts college with 1341 students as of the fall of 2004 (45% men and 55% women), located in Portland, Oregon in the Eastmoreland neighborhood. In August of 2005, The Princeton Review ranked Reed number 1 in its category "Best Overall Academic Experience For Undergraduates."

Reed's reputation

Reed is a highly-regarded liberal arts college with an idiosyncratic reputation for academic conservatism and excellence together with a freewheeling campus environment. Reed students and alumni over the years have cultivated an image that includes an extreme academic workload, a sink-or-swim social ethic, and a reputation for heavy recreational drug use.

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Academic

As stated above, The Princeton Review in its publication "The Best 361 Colleges," published in August 2005, ranked Reed number 1 in its category "Best Overall Academic Experience For Undergraduates." It also ranked number 1 in the "Students Never Stop Studying" category. It, of course, also ranked number 1 in the category of "Students Ignore God On A Regular Basis"

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Reed has also gained notice for refusing to participate in the annual US News & World Report college rankings. According to a statement on The Reed Web site the College has done this because they "actively questioned the methodology and usefulness of college rankings." Reed further claims that US News has depended on limited data provided on the College's Web site to rank Reed, a practice which Reed claims is incomplete and has caused it to be ranked lower than it would be otherwise.

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Reed has produced the second-highest number of Rhodes scholars (31), for any liberal arts college, as well as over 50 Fulbright Scholars, over 60 Watson Fellows, and 2 MacArthur ("Genius") Award winners. A very high proportion of Reed graduates go on to earn Ph.D.s, 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. Reed is first in this percentage in biology.

Related Topics:
Rhodes scholars - Fulbright Scholars - Watson Fellow - MacArthur ("Genius") Award - Ph.D. - Science - History - Political science - Philosophy - Caltech - Harvey Mudd - Biology

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Reed's debating team, which had existed for only two years at the time, was awarded the first place sweepstakes trophy for Division Two schools at the final tournament of the Northwest Forensics Conference in February, 2004.

Related Topics:
February - 2004

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Loren Pope, former education editor for The New York Times, called Reed "the most intellectual college in the country."

Related Topics:
Loren Pope - The New York Times

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The academic workload for freshmen can be especially daunting to the unprepared: a reputed 500 pages of weekly reading in the first semester Humanities class alone.

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Social/Political

Reed students frequently self-identify as "not fitting in" when they arrive. Combined with the isolation of long periods of study, this leads to an unusual campus environment; the stereotypical student is often referred to as "socially retarded". There are frequent "traditional" student events -- especially at the beginning and end of semesters and around breaks -- designed for "blowing off steam", and at which beer, nudity, and hijinks are usually present.

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Reed has a reputation as politically left-wing. Whether in fact Reed is more liberal than similar colleges is difficult to determine, but Reed's academic tradition of open and passionate debate spills into the political arena and, combined with the social environment mentioned above, often leads to the appearance of radical liberalism.

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Drug Use

Reed has had a reputation as a haven for experimental drug use since the 1960s, and into the 1980s an intense drug culture flourished, with marijauna, hashish, peyote, hallucinogenic mushrooms, LSD and cocaine circulated widely and synthetic agents created after hours in the chemistry labs by creative students, notably "Tim H's Magic Dust." More recently the basis for the drug use image is largely historic, following a national trend and giving way to changing values. That Reed pursues a drug and alcohol policy focused on internal rather than police intervention is one cause of the lingering perception, in addition to the notoriety of the college's annual Renn Fayre celebration (see below), and the perceived legacy of the hippie movement.

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