Reed College is a small
liberal arts college located in
Portland, Oregon, in the quiet
Eastmoreland neighborhood.
Reed was founded in 1911 as a co-educational institution by river trade magnate
Simeon Gannett Reed[?] and rapidly gained a reputation for academic excellence. It has no connection with the journalist
John Reed.
Reed is one of the more unusual institutions of higher learning in the
United States: it features a traditional liberal arts curriculum, requiring freshmen (who might insist on being called "first year students") to take an intensive introduction to ancient
Greece and
Rome, though it does very well in the sciences too. It is a haven for intense intellectuals, idealists, and unkempt rich hippies. Traditionally it has a reputation for making room for students who show promise of one sort or another but who did not do so well in high school; this leads to a lot of blossoming scholars inspired by the extremely intense academic experience, but it also leads to a fair bit of attrition as well. In recent years Reed's average SAT scores of accepted students has been around 1400 and GPA was 3.95 in
2003, with around 40% of applicants accepted.
Reed has produced an unusually high number of
Rhodes scholars[?] for a college its size, and a very high proportion of graduates go on to earn
Ph.D.'s, particularly in the
sciences, history, political science, and philosophy. Loren Pope, education editor for
The New York Times called Reed "the
most intellectual college in the country."
Reed's notable alumni include
Steve Jobs (founder of Apple Computer),
James Beard (the chef),
Gary Snyder (the poet), and
James Russell[?] (inventor of the
compact disc).