Well I've never really looked into this section of the forum, because I'm still of a young age, and not really "Later in life yet". Now I've started looking into colleges and careers, and I'm interested in majoring in possibly English or Psychology. I'm also interested in a variety of arts. I'm also looking for relatively small accepting collages, a medium distance from home(for my first year), such as in state but farther away, or possibly surrounding states. I've got a pretty good GPA of 4.57, and am pretty diverse in good collage qualities such as clubs, volunteer work, etc. Does anyone have any recommendations I should check out? I'd like to find a place that's nice and accepting.
I am not from your country but I would hope that most further education places would be accepting these days - at least as far as official policy is concerned. Do you have a careers counsellor at your school. Can you afford to visit a few university campuses to soak up the atmosphere - explore the social aspects ?
State schools are totally accepting but most of them are pretty big. Wisconsin has some smaller state schools. You need a truly liberal arts school and they are pretty much everywhere. The closer to the East and West coasts, the more liberal.
Any decently large school should have some LGBT support. Here are things to consider: -size of the school -housing options (how do they handle genderfluidity) -activites/clubs you might want to join English/Psych are pretty common majors that any school will probably have. Here's a list of all the schools in Illinois: https://www.illinois.gov/education/Pages/CollegesAndUniversities.aspx
The college I went to wasn't huge, and thus there wasn't much of a gay community. Our GSA had about 5 members when I joined senior year, and that included one straight girl who was just looking to make friends. I wish we had more of a community, perhaps I would have explored that side of my identity more.
As far as private schools, Carleton (MN) and Oberlin (OH) are pretty close and very, very LGBT supportive. When I was at Oberlin, it was about 35% LGBT, and about 3/4 of the entire student body attended the annual Drag Ball. I don't know a whole lot about Carleton's academic strengths, but the English department at Oberlin is reputed to be one of the best among selective liberal arts colleges, and the psych department was also quite good. As far as public schools U Wisconsin-Madison, though it's enormous, has a pretty vibrant gay community. I think it's safe to say that the majority of colleges are pretty open and accepting to LGBT people these days, so almost anywhere will be decent, but if you have the resources to consider a smaller school like Oberlin or Carleton, I think the experience you have, both socially and academically, will be really rewarding.
