Colgate's mission is to provide a demanding, expansive educational experience to a select group of diverse, talented, intellectually sophisticated students who are capable of challenging themselves, their peers, and their teachers in a setting that brings together living and learning. The purpose of the university is to develop wise, thoughtful, critical thinkers and perceptive leaders by encouraging young men and women to fulfill their potential through residence in a community that values all forms of intellectual rigor and respects the complexity of human understanding.