The College Adventures of Mrs. Goldbach and Ms. McCarter, Part I

While many juniors were visiting colleges over spring break, so were we! I started my journey at a large state university, the University of Georgia.  Most of you are familiar with UGA, but I have to admit that I have always thought of it as just “too big.”  But in reality, it’s not, and I understand why so many students are attracted to it.  Things I would recommend: the Honors program, the Terry School of Business, the freshman odyssey program (actually required for all freshmen), and the food, at least in the dining hall I visited. They’re also adding civil engineering this fall and mechanical/electrical engineering in the fall of 2012.  Slowly but surely the student body is becoming more diverse, but it’s also becoming more competitive, regardless of whether you’re in-state or out.

I moved on to Miami University of Ohio, a public university with around 14,000 undergraduate students. Miami’s focus is still on the liberal arts and undergraduate teaching, and their top five majors are psychology, zoology (for pre-med), political science, English (writing), and communications, which includes journalism.  However, I got a chance to spend some time in the Farmer School of Business, a beautiful, state-of-the-art building.  It’s a very hands on program and expect to spend part of your time with group projects. They have a ‘China Business Program’ and students are encouraged to study abroad while at Miami. The School of Engineering is also outstanding, with lots of opportunities for undergraduate research, internships, co-op opportunities, and service learning. Computer science/software engineering is a fast growing major within the school, and I like the fact that like the entire university, the School of Engineering is a combination of technical and liberal arts education. Not to be missed is the School of Education and the School of Fine Arts. If you want to know more about those programs, feel free to come see me. I left able to picture a lot of GPS girls being very happy on this campus, and if you like UVA, SMU, Vandy, or even UGA, you should check out Miami University as well.

Finally, I visited the University of Dayton.  As I expected, this Catholic school of around 7,000 students is extraordinarily friendly and community and service minded. Students at Dayton want to be part of a larger world and want to be involved in that world, and the school focuses on making connections between the curricular and co-curricular and on building community among diverse peoples.  International Studies includes a human rights major; students in the School of Engineering, an excellent  program, have the opportunity to work on projects for real clients; the School of Education includes the applied health sciences for students interested in becoming things like physical therapists or physician’s assistants. The sciences are also very strong at Dayton, and students will have lots of opportunities for research.  The campus is beautiful, so it’s no wonder that 95% of students live on campus all four years.  Juniors and seniors and the opportunity to live in the ‘student neighborhood,” a group of houses owned by the university.  You don’t have to be Catholic to attend, and at least to me, the school seemed more open or progressive than some other Catholic schools I have visited.  I highly recommend you consider UD!