Leftist friendly colleges?

[Skyhilist]

Hey, everyone. I wasn't really sure where to put this so I just put it in non-political.

I've been looking at colleges recently (I'm a senior this year and live in the USA) and was wondering if anyone had any recommendations for colleges that are in areas where there are a lot of leftist voices.

If anyone could give me some feedback on the ones I've looked at so far, I'd also really appreciate. Right now my top three are Oregon State (Corvallis, OR), UC Santa Barbara (Isla Vista, CA), and Humboldt State University (Arcata, CA). Does anyone have any idea what might be the best of these three for getting involved in anti-capitalist activism?

As for other schools, I know that I am definitely going to major in zoology, which only about 80 schools nationwide have. If you're not familiar with any of these (https://bigfuture.collegeboard.org/college-search), could you maybe recommend a particular region in the US that might be good?

Any help as always is greatly appreciated comrades. Thanks!

[MarxSchmarx]

If you are serious about getting involved as an activist, I suppose the UC schools tend to be pretty well represented on that front but frankly none of the university leftist scene does shit all. If I were you, I would not waste my time choosing a school based on its activism. At best it will be crap and at worst it will make you a worst activist frankly than if you had never gone to university.

Otherwise I'd shoot for the best school you can get into in terms of its overall reputation assuming you have the financial wherewithal.

BTW:

In America, do not choose a school because it has a nominal "zoology" major. The coursework when it gets down to it is basically the same as you would get in a biology/ecology and evolution department in any other school. Often the "zoology" monicker is kept around because of bureaucratic inertia. And little else. It's a terrible reason to send money to a particular school.

If you want more details about this, PM me and I'd be willing to talk more about how the undergraduate biology system in North America works.

For others, in essence, these programs are cash cows that exist as feeders to clinical programs, primarily medical school or train secondary school teachers in biology (and do a pretty poor job at that). There are few if any component of the coursework that is non-medically oriented, and what nominal zoology courses you will take are just glorified taxonomy. That is simply a waste of your time and money. You don't need to spend thousands of dollars to learn that (I didn't study zoology, but read my posts and you will see that I know more about this field that most people).

These relictual zoology programs are, frankly, rip-offs. With very, very few exceptions, most of the reputable zoologists and top notch scientists in organismal biology no longer work in formal zoology departments. Sometimes, I suspect that the reason they exist is to lure (often out of state) students who don't know better to enroll to provide desperately needed revenue.

Most people I've mentioned this to retort "I know, I know the risks" and blah blah blah. They are basically in denial about how the system works. I can only conclude they read somewhere on the internet how bad it really is but don't care to listen to other people who tell them the way it is.

My advice to you is to apply to the best school in terms of overall reputation as determined by places like US world and news report that you can get into. It does not matter what you do later in life, the people who will hire you will only look at whether they know about your school/program and if it has a good reputation. Period. More often than not, that is a function of how low the acceptance rate is. The higher the acceptance rate, in general, the less well regarded the school after you graduate.

If it is a private school (harvard princeton etc...), most people are able to find a way to finance it. If it is an out of state public school then I would only enroll if it has a spectacular reputation in a well regarded specialty (and "zoology" as a formal degree is no longer really in this category) and you know exactly what you want to do (e.g., math at UCLA, philosophy at Rutgers).

If you can't get into that calibre school, then I would just visit the places you got accepted into and go to the place you felt the best vibe.

[Flying Purple People Eater]

If you are serious about getting involved as an activist, I suppose the UC schools tend to be pretty well represented on that front but frankly none of the university leftist scene does shit all. If I were you, I would not waste my time choosing a school based on its activism. At best it will be crap and at worst it will make you a worst activist frankly than if you had never gone to university.


This so much. There were so many shits in academia that classified as 'politically leaning towards anarcho-communism, libertarian left, post-blanqui blah de blah blah' where I am right now. And you know what, they didn't do jack shit! I swear you could start an entire political party from scratch with the number of idle posturing leftists standing around! They went on about mayday and ending exploitation but didn't attend a single march. To be honest I'd rather a single Trot handing out fliers to a billion of them.

Kind of similar to this website so I'm being a tad hypocritical, but the point still stands.