I'm a junior in high school (1999-2000), so I was
interested in seeing the posts on gay-friendly colleges. I
have the book, "The Best 331 Colleges" by the Princeton
Review. Here are the complete lists from the book:

Gay Community Accepted (in order):

Pitzer College, Simon's Rock College of the Bard, Wells
College, Bennington College, College of the Atlantic, Smith
College, Mount Holyoke College, Whitman College, Marlboro
College, Connecticut College, St. John's College (MD),
Vassar College, Reed College, New College, DePaul
University, Barnard College, Goddard College, Grinnell
College, Earlham College, Wesleyan College.

Not Accepted:

Duke, Notre Dame, Texas A&M, Truman State University, Grove
City College, Hampton University, Wheaton College (IL),
Westminster College (PA), Miami University, Johns Hopkins,
University of Michigan (Ann Arbor), University of
Connecticut, Washington and Lee, University of California -
Riverside, Denison University, College of the Holy Cross,
UCLA, Hanover College, Ohio University - Athens, Knox
College.

I've researched this topic a little. I live in Texas and
I'm seriously considering University of Texas. I went on a
college tour in the northeast over spring break. We
visited 15 schools, but our tour guide told us of others
that were similar to ones we saw. Among liberal/gay
friendly schools mentioned: Brown, Vasser, Skidmore, UC-
Berkeley, UC-Santa Cruz, Oberlin, Columbia, Pitzer,
Carleton, Macalester, Gilford, Wesleyan.

Of those, we visited Columbia in New York City and Wesleyan
in Middletown, Conn. Columbia is a great school and New
York has a large gay community. Wesleyan is one of the
most gay friendly schools in the country. Even though i
thought that it was kind of secluded (its in a small town,
between Hartford and New Haven), our tour guide was gay,
and our group leader told us that they had transfer
students from Berkeley and other liberal places because
they thought that Berkeley was too conservative. They also
have a clothing optional dorm ;-)

As for the Princeton list, most people probably haven't
heard of most of the schools. I was surprised to see U of
Michigan on the bad list.. I'm going to see it this
summer. I had the impression that Ann Arbor was relatively
liberal and U of Michigan, being a large school had a
prominent gay community - I guess that I'll see. I'm also
planning on visiting University of Wisconsin at Madison.
I've heard good things about the school and Madison is a
very liberal area - they have a lesbian representative in
Congress now (Tammy Baldwin). I was surprised to see UCLA
on the bad list as well. I'm going to spend a week this
summer looking at schools in California, and I'll probably
see the UCLA then.

Right now, my top choice is Brown. I doubt that I can get
in, but it's a great school, it's located in Providence,
Rhode Island - so it's not like a small town in the middle
of nowhere, but a mid-sized capital city within close range
of both Boston and New York. It's also the most liberal of
all the Ivy League Schools and has a large gay community.
Most of the Ivy League Schools are relatively gay-friendly.
Harvard is ok i think, and Boston is a huge college town,
so there's a large gay community there. I also visited
Penn and Yale, and they seemed relatively gay-friendly.
I've also heard good things about Cornell. I don't really
know about Princeton or Dartmouth.

In general, I think that most larger state schools have
large gay communities, simply because the more people at a
school, the more likely it is that you'll have more
diversity, and more gay students. I'm avoiding the south.
I plan to apply to UT, but besides there, I plan to apply
to only schools in the northeast, California, and maybe
the midwest.

One person noted that it's more important to decide a
school based on what you are interested rather than the gay
community. I agree, but considering that there are hundreds
of good colleges in the United States, and dozens of great
schools, students are allowed to be relatively selective in
choosing their school in most cases, even if they aren't at
the very top of their class. Personally, I know that I
won't be happy in a place that isn't very accepting of
gays. I also want a medium to large school where there's a
large gay community (it doesn't do me much good if everyone
accepts me, but i can't find a date, and i'm kinda picky
;-). I also know that I'll be most sucessful if I'm happy,
so that's why finding a school accepting of gays is
important to me.

God, this was long.... i guess I just got into this - i
should write a book on this sometime... well anyway, ttyl