College Roundup

So on with my opinions and experiences with the colleges I looked at, since I know you’re all positively dying to hear about them. Well, regardless of your wonder or lack thereof, I’m mainly doing this to sort out my own thoughts. That’s right, folks, you have nothing to do with this. Except I cracked and ended up adding some general wisdom and advice at the end for those of you college bound folks. Onward, then.

Dickinson College

Monday morning we headed out from just outside of Philly for the hour and a halfish drive to Carlisle. The town is pretty sweet, I’m not going to lie. I liked it a lot. It’s really historic looking and just, in general, awesome. My friend, Aly, however, did not like it much. But she likes the city type life. That life is not for me, I am pretty sure. Unless said city is St. Petersburg, in which case, I’ll bite. We ended up having to call Dickinson however and ask for directions to the college seeinga s it wasn’t qutie as easy as we had thought. But we found it pretty quickly and the lady on the phone was nice, so all was well.

I walked into the Waidner Admissions Office and filled out a form to go to my interview. It went really well. I refused to tweak out over the thing before I left home, so I hadn’t given it much thought. The night before though I tweaked a little and printed out pages and pages of information about the school and the majors I’m interested in and began brainstorming questions to ask. But by morning time I’d worked all the jitters out. The interview was only supposed to be about half an hour, but we talked for almost a full hour. She was really nice and asked a lot of questions about me and what I’m into and looking for in a school, and then I asked her some questions about her experiences with Dickinson and I just in general learned a lot about the school. She ended up giving me the contact information for a professor Qualls who was voted most inspirational professor last year and happens to have his concentration in Russian history. I have to email him sometime today.

The tour also went really well, even if I was in the back. My guide is a freshman majoring in Russian and something else (I forget what). I thought that was interesting, what’re the odds…eah? The campus is smaller, but still nice. There are red lawn chairs all over campus that I frankly have fallen in love with. The campus definately has personality. There’s the mermaid that’s been stolen on several occassions. There was the guy who walked past our tour and said “Don’t go to college– it’s a bad choice!” And countless other things that just made the campus feel alive and a place that I could concievably spend four years of my life.

It also helps that Dickinson is one of six most internationalized schools in the United States according to NAFSA and, according to Institute of International Education (IIE) “one of eleven baccalaureate colleges throughout the country with a total study abroad participation rate of over 80 percent.” If I want a globally minded campus, this is it.

After the tour and lunch (which was real good), I went and sought out a Russian professor and she was extremely nice as well. She said that the Russian students on campus are a family…they eat breakfast together every morning, eat dinner once a week, and every October they rush one of the main buildings dressed in Revolutionary clothes acting as Bolsheviks. It really sounds incredible.

Overall, my impression of Dickinson was that it’s a place where people are valued, where community is looked for and found, and where education is something you find not just in the classroom but with interaction with those around you. I liked it a lot, and, almost a week later, this school stands out.

Duke University

I walked onto Duke University’s West Campus with a totally open mind. In the last few months, the three schools I visited on this trip have been tied for first place so I was naturally as excited to see Duke as I was to see Dickinson or Chapel Hill. Aly immediately felt something weird about the school and I did too but refused to acknowledge it, intending to give it a chance.

The tour went fairly well. It’s a gorgeous campus. The architecture is stunning. The landscaping is incredible. But for all its visceral beauty, there was something odd about it that I still refused to give into. Our guide was nice, there’s no mistaking that. She loved her school and it showed. But the campus was eerily quiet, and I don’t think it was because of the rape scandal. I honestly think that’s just how it is there. The only semblance of amusement I found there was the group of students in front of the chapel playing some sort of game with rubber balls they rolled and tried to get close to a golf ball like thing on the lawn. (I was told what game it was but forgot it so uh…) The tour was also kind of weird because it was just a cursory glance. On the Dickinson tour we got to see a dorm, a classroom, cafeteria, the inside of a library, etc. The only building I saw the inside of was the chapel.

By the end, sitting near the gift shop sipping on a smoothie waiting to go to a class I had signed up for I gave in. I didn’t like it there. It was just in general a cold campus. I’m sure the people who go there are lovely and have an amazing time, but it just didn’t seem like the kind of campus I was to go to. We ended up ditching out on the class because as soon as I admitted to myself that I did not like the campus I wanted to leave. I’m sure the professor didn’t mind that much that two high school juniors did not show up for his class.

I still intend to apply there just to see if I can get in. It should be interesting. But I know that is one campus I will not live on.

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

The day after visiting Duke, we went and looked at Chapel Hill. I was nervous. I was scared that I wasn’t going to like it. Why would I be so freaked out about this? Chapel Hill is the school I’ve been consistently looking at since freshman year. Something that sticks in my head for that long through all the changes I’ve gone through is something that means something. And even with Dickinson being as awesome as it was, I wasn’t (and still am not) willing to give up on Chapel Hill.

But it didn’t fail me. I adored it. Our tour guide was really nice and personable and showed us around all the sights, gave us her personal experiences with the campus and that helped a lot. The campus has personality. There’s the Old Well (pictured left) which has the superstition attached to it that drinking from it on the first day of a semester before all of your classes will grant you a 4.0. There’s also the tree Old Davie, I believe, that stands in the academic quad. Attached to that tree is a saying that as long as it flourishes, so will Chapel Hill. So they filled it with cement and planted two genetic clones nearby. Also, underneath the original Davie there’s a bench. It is said the person you kiss while sitting on the bench will be the one you eventually marry. That many superstitions and traditions merits ten points at least. It shows a campus with personality, which is something I am looking for, no doubt.

Despite the fact that Chapel Hill was the largest campus in terms of people (and I’m pretty sure area as well), it felt more connected and more community based than Duke did. Our tour was walking around and a Tarheel spoke up, “If you go any place else, you’ll be sorry!” One of the things that’s continually drawn me to Chapel Hill is the immense school pride. Not just with sports, but I mean, literally everyone I’ve talked to who goes there or went there has such great pride for their school. Which is truly saying something. They appear to be some of the happiest students I’ve found. That and Franklin St (their center of student life) is pretty awesome.

We had to leave pretty quickly after the tour however, which made me kind of sad because I would have loved to explore the campus more.

Closing Thoughts

I really don’t know which campus I like more: Dickinson or Chapel Hill. It truly is a tough call. I love that at Dickinson there’s a strong sense of community and of being a second family. I like that its population is just over 2,000: not so small that I’d know everyone, but not so big that I’d just be a number. I made the most connections there, to be sure, and according to The Princeton Review, it’s a safety, meaning I will most likely get in, no worries. Last night I freaked myself out because it was Dickinson I found myself thinking about more than Chapel Hill, which I also loved.

Chapel Hill still stands out because of the sheer beauty of the campus combined with the friendliess of everyone there and just a general feeling that I could belong there. It’s saying something that Chapel Hill is a school that I’ve looked at consistently since freshman year. There are very few things from freshman year that I’m still interested in which is probably why I’m so freaked that Dickinson might be pulling ahead. It’s also not a guarantee that I’ll get into Chapel Hill as out-of-staters have it hard. 82% of Carolina’s student body has to be from North Carolina, but most of the applicants are competiting for the remaining 18% (ie are out of state). It’s pretty fierce competition and I don’t know that I’ll pull it off.

Other campuses I hope to visit? Middlebury in Vermont and Wesleyan in Connecticut. I’ll hopefully be visiting the latter with Aly sometime this summer when she goes to check out Boston schools and the former early in the fall with the padre. Oh yeah, and I still have to go out to Seattle to check out/tour the UW (pronounced U-Dub for all you non-Washingtonians). That will leave only one campus unvisited: University of Florida. But I don’t really see myself as a gator anyhow.

Some wisdom

All this being said– to any of you gearing up to start considering colleges: I really encourage you to visit the ones you’re serious about and even the ones that are only second tier. You never know what could happen. Like I said, I wasn’t expecting to be nearly as impressed with Dickinson as I ended up, nor was I expecting to hate Duke as much as I did. Take time to visit a college for at least a day: it’s the least you can do when you consider that college is four years of your life.

Also, try to get interviews wherever you go. Don’t stress over them…use them as tools to find out about the school. Honestly, that was one of the most eyeopening and helpful things that I did. Just go into it like it’s a conversation, not really an interview. Relax, be yourself. If the interview goes badly, you’ll have no need to worry as long as you were yourself. If anything, you just narrowed your selection that much more knowing that that campus likely wasn’t for you. Think of tackling the whole college thing in such a way that you’re not looking for a college that you’re good enough to go to, but a college that’s good enough to have you enroll. In other words, approach it with the mindset that you’re choosing the college, not the other way around.

And lastly: Be open to anything. Don’t go into your college search thinking you know exactly what you’re looking for and know exactly where you’re going. Let things happen. Don’t be set in your ways. You’ll only be selling yourself and your selection process short.

You can see more pictures of colleges and the trip in general at my flickr account.