Reed College Top Questions

Reed is stereotyped as a small, driven, "quirky" college. Reed students are stereotyped as unathletic, socially awkward, extremely intelligent, politically liberal, and skeptical undergraduates. Oh yes, we have an insufferable amount of hipsters

Whenever my friends from home give me flack about Reed they ask about all the dirty hippie kids who take lots of drugs and eat bugs at Renn Fayre. They also hear about the crazy amount of work that we have here.

A lot of people worry about the drug culture here, or think that there are a lot of atheists and hippies.

Reed is sometimes called "Weed College." People think that Reed students are crazy geniuses - brilliant and completely cracked out. People often also think that Reed students are all rich. Finally, Reed has a stereotype of being a big pressure-cooker and extremely stressful.

the stereotype of "weed college" is pretty prevalent--and they don't call it that for nothing. the fact is, drug culture plays a large role in our social lives. that said, partaking in the chemical bacchanalia really is a choice--no one is going to pressure you into doing drugs if you do not want to or aren't comfortable (for the most part). there's also a myth, perpetuated by the school's own prospectus, that reed is a place full of open-minded, liberated, intelligent, friendly students, that there aren't really cliques, that socializing here is easier for awkward nerds/dorks/freaks--and to some degree it is easier, but people here can be just as judgmental, exclusive, and bitchy as high school. cliques do exist here, and often in extremes (stoners, artsy hipsters, science nerds, ravers, etc.), and if you don't necessarily fall neatly into one of these groups, the middle ground can be hadr to navigate.

That Reed is a very tough school academically that is diverse both in ideas and the race and gender of the students and faculty. That we're a bunch of nerds who party hard, do a lot of drugs, and are godless anarchist hippies. That we're very awkward people socially.

The stereotypical Reedie buys all his or her clothes second hand, and spends all the money he or she saves on cigarettes and coffee - the former are smoked outside the library and the latter consumed huddled in fetal position within it.

A lot of people in the portland community think reedies are upper-class rich kids. in the woodstock area, reedies have a more informal, reputation of being "crazy", artsy hippies (mainly because of renn fayre i think). Other stereotypes I've encountered are that we smoke a lot of pot (for the most part not true) and that we study a lot (for the most part very true).

The school is very academically rigorous, intellectual, and traditional in its academics. The student body is much less traditional; usually liberal (and self-righteous), supposedly there to "learn for the sake of learning," participate in heavy recreational drug use, are non-mainstream and a little weird and crazy.

Reedies are rich hippy drug addicts that are snotty and talk about Heidegger all day while smoking Camel unfiltereds and drinking coffee. They are all really smart.