Dickinson Defined

A Dickinson liberal-arts education combines active learning in the classroom with engagement in the wider world. From this combination of inquiry and engagement, students gain a "useful education"—as articulated in our Dickinson Dimensions—that embraces our historic purpose and prepares students for lives as citizens and leaders.

Every college and university has different academic strengths, different extracurricular offerings and different residential experiences.  These variables, among others, are those that prospective students and their families must examine, no matter which schools they are considering.

While all of the information necessary to complete such research has been reported by this and other colleges for years, the data was not always offered in an organized and simple way. Dickinson and other leaders in the field of higher education are working to change that through a number of vehicles.

For example, we actively are participating in the University & College Accountability Network (U-CAN), which is run by the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities (NAICU), the largest organization representing nonprofit, private institutions in the United States.

And Dickinson has invested numerous resources into creating its own Web site that promotes transparency and accountability: Dickinson Defined.

We have two different ways for you to use Dickinson Defined:

• Explore Interactively
  This allows you to click through different categories to view questions and answers about Dickinson.
• Create a Custom Profile
  This provides a list of all the questions in Dickinson Defined, allowing you to check the ones you want displayed.