TRANSCRIPT:

I’m here on the campus of Trinity University and it’s a small place. It’s only 2,400 students or so, and I just want to highlight the advantage of going to a small place where people recognize you. I was in a session this morning with an academic dean who was presenting on the curriculum and I went up to him afterwards and introduced myself and said hi, asked him a couple quick questions, and then left, had lunch. And I was wandering around the campus later and I’m just walking down the path and here comes that same academic dean. He walks right up to me and says, “Hi, Mark, how are you? How’s your day been?” Starts asking me a few questions and I start asking him questions, we have a little 15 minute interchange, I learned a lot more about Trinity.

Small but Big Community

That would not happen on a very large campus. I’ve been on this campus maybe five or six hours, and already, somebody like him notices me. What would it be like for a student who is on this campus every day for a semester, how many people would they run into like that, whether it’s students, whether it’s faculty, whether it’s administrators? They’re going to see you over and over and people are going to say, “Hey, hi, how are you?”

People worry sometimes about a small school, that everybody’s going to be all up in your face because you can’t be anonymous. You know, one of the problems with American society today is we’re all kind of anonymous, and I don’t know that that’s a good thing. I think that these kinds of environments where people would come up to me after five hours, meeting me for a few minutes and then coming up to me five hours later and saying, “Hi, how are you?” That’s the kind of thing that would only happen on a small campus like this.

So if you’re looking for that intimate experience where you really want to be somebody that people know, you don’t want to be just a number, come to a place like Trinity, it’s really awesome, it really feels great when people recognize who you are and take an interest in you as a person. So think about that.

The post Educational Consultant on the Sense of Community on Small Campuses first appeared on College Admission Counseling.

TRANSCRIPT:

So I’m here on the campus of Stetson University in DeLand, Florida, central Florida. And when I visit colleges I try to meet with admissions officers if I can to just get a sense. To kind of get the quick and condensed version of what they’re looking for. And what they offer as an institution. And so I sat with two admissions officers today and asked them, “So what are the three things I need to know about Stetson University?”

The Size of the School

So the first one is the size. The size of the school is small, it’s a little bit under 3,000 students, and the size offers two advantages. Academically, there’s a lot of connection between students and their faculty. Stetson still requires a senior research project of all their majors. Business is a little bit different. But all majors are required to do a major research project in their senior year.

So that’s one aspect academically. And then the other piece is that in terms of size, the leadership potential or possibilities for students is much greater. Because they have fewer students. So if they have 100 clubs, well, they’ve got 100 presidents of all those clubs. So it’s possible to really gain substantial leadership ability, or experience, on a campus as small as this.

Location, Location, Location

Second thing that they mentioned was location. Because it’s in a small town, it’s not tiny but not in the middle of nowhere. It’s about an hour from Orlando and about 30 minutes from Daytona. So that there are possibilities for things like internships. As well as the connection with the community because of its location here in central Florida. And you should also add that it’s Florida. So it’s warm and you can wear flip-flops most of the school year. Right now it’s a little bit chilly here in January, but it’s actually a quite cold day for Florida.

Get Involved

And then the third thing they talked about was engagement and the possibility to be really engaged. This is a Bonner Scholars school, so they have a strong community service program and they actually recruit kids who have a strong background in community service. They actually put the Bonner Scholars in with the honors program students in a separate dorm. So engagement is a big part of this school and what it means in the community.

So three things: size, location, and engagement. That was what I was told to remember about Stetson. And then you can also remember that this is the rock pile. This is sort of a symbol that every school has some sort of a rock that’s sort of the anchor of the school, but here at Stetson they decided recently to add a whole bunch of rocks because it symbolizes that from many rocks, we have a community of rocks here at Stetson University. So fun place to visit; I enjoyed my visit very much.

The post Admissions Adviser on Stetson University: A Place to Get Involved first appeared on College Admission Counseling.

The post Is A Small College Right For Me? first appeared on College Admission Counseling.