Academic & artistic excellence
We offer one of the world’s great undergraduate educations. We will cultivate your curiosity and help you master the tools necessary to engage humanity’s most vexing challenges, debates, and artistic frontiers.
Oberlin College and Conservatory
Video Description: Oberlin Scenes
This silent video makes quick cuts, with each of the following segments lasting 2 or 3 seconds.
From an aerial view, the Oberlin campus comes into focus, followed by:
- A dancer stretches in a dance studio.
- A conductor leads an orchestra, viewed from behind and above the musicians.
- A baseball player fields ground balls during practice.
- A bicyclist pedals along a path toward Memorial Arch.
- A professor teaches in a classroom.
- A trombonist rehearses.
- A swimmer performs the butterfly stroke.
- A silhouetted person approaches the curved wall outside Hall Auditorium at night.
- Several groups of students work in a science lab.
- A student is animated while explaining the artwork behind her.
- An athlete runs past a building on a cold morning.
- The strings of a double bass vibrate as they are played by a jazz musician.
- A student explains an idea.
- A pianist practices on a Steinway grand piano.
- In a museum gallery, a group of students gazes at a painting.
- A singer and piano accompanist rehearse in a sunny room.
- A student in class holds a pen while speaking.
- Holding a boom microphone, a student makes a recording.
- A student cook prepares fresh vegetables.
The video then loops back to the beginning.
One college, one conservatory, one community. Infinite possibilities.
Oberlin's college-conservatory synergy inspires profound connections between intellectual and artistic exploration, theory and practice, creative freedom and professional discipline. We are a place for those who seek a rigorous education with integrity and purpose, designed for impact.
There are many great colleges and many great conservatories. There is only one Oberlin.
Learning & Labor
It's not just our motto, it's our practice. Hands-on experience is a critical part of an Oberlin education. In research and scholarship, in creative work and performance, we make the connections between learning and doing, between imagination and action.
A restlessness of innovation
From the very beginning—as the first college to adopt a policy to admit Black students and the first to grant undergraduate degrees to women in a co-ed program—we have championed critical work that yields necessary progress: new discoveries, new music and art, new ideas, new ventures, new cultural practices and norms.
Find your people. Find your muse.
With its longstanding commitments to access, diversity, and inclusion, Oberlin is the perfect laboratory in which to study and design the world you want. You'll always feel that you belong here—we'll celebrate you just as you are, without compromise. We're a place where individual flourishing is a collective endeavor—we believe that it takes more than yourself to be yourself.
Photo credit: Matthew Lester
Faculty mentorship
Every Oberlin experience is a collaborative enterprise between students and faculty. Your faculty mentors—world-renowned scholars, artists, teachers, and citizens—will guide and push you, invested fully in your promise and in your future. They will challenge you to approach your education with a critical mind and a resilient heart.
An ideal location
In a quintessential college town in the heart of the Midwest, our picturesque location provides small-town charm and safety. It gives us lots of room to breathe and the freedom to explore and apply new ideas. Whether on campus, in the city of Oberlin, or in nearby Cleveland, you'll find an expansive menu of cultural, social, and service programming.
Ready to launch
When our students graduate, they land in the most interesting places. We do amazing, life-changing, creative work. Our alumni use their Oberlin educations to give the world more joy, hope, meaning, and justice—serving collectively as a global force for good. In every field, on every stage, Obies help people find the way forward.
“Not only are my teachers brilliant at what they do, they’re some of the most compassionate and supportive people I know. They’ve offered me invaluable guidance and pushed me in new creative directions that have ultimately made me a better artist and a better human being.”
- Josh Augustin ’20