Andrew Dickson White entered college at the age of 16 in 1849. White dreamed of going to one of the elite eastern colleges, but his father sent him to Geneva Academy (later known as the Hobart and William Smith Colleges), a small Episcopal college. At Geneva, White would read about the great colleges at Oxford University and at the University of Cambridge; this appears to be his first inspiration for "dreaming of a university worthy of the commonwealth York and of the nation." This dream would become a lifelong goal of White's. After a year at Geneva, White convinced his father to send him to Yale University. For White, Yale was a great improvement over Geneva, but he found that even at one of the country's great universities there was "too much reciting by rote and too little real intercourse."