For Three Quick Questions, I send the same three questions to admissions representatives at colleges all over the country.
The three questions are meant to probe some of the things that make a school unique but that aren’t easily captured as a stat to go in a book or web search.
Today’s response is from Dan Becker, admission counselor at Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pennsylavnia.
What is a course, tradition, program or event that is unique to Ursinus College?
CIE (Common Intellectual Experience) is a required freshman seminar that is the foundation for our core curriculum. In this course students learn how to properly interact with texts and authors that date back to the beginning of the Western canon and up to authors still alive today. The course is designed to help our first year students develop the writing, reading, thinking, and discussion skills they will need to be successful in a competitive liberal arts education.
Naturally every college wants to recruit the perfect student--high grades, high test scores, involved in their community, leadership...everything. But what kinds of imperfect students tend to flourish at Ursinus?
When it comes time for us to review a student’s application, a student who may not quite fit the mold of archetypal application, we look for a strong upward trend in the student’s performance. Some students really struggle in their first two years of high school. When a student doesn’t have the strongest application on paper, we look to see how hard the student has pushed themselves in the classroom, and if they have continued to grow and improve over their four years.
When people come to visit Ursinus, what's a place off campus that you recommend they check out while they're there?
CHOW! Is an excellent bistro right on our main street. The quality of the food is excellent and the prices are low (what can be better than that?). I would also recommend visitors take the time to check out the King of Prussia mall (only about 25 minutes from campus). It is the largest retail mall in America.
Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this post, here are three easy things you can do:
Share it on your social media feeds so your friends and colleagues can see it too.
Read other schools’ responses to the three quick questions here.
Is there another school you’d like to see in the Three Quick Questions? Leave a comment and let me know which one!
Apply with Sanity doesn’t have ads or annoying pop-ups. It doesn’t share user data, sell user data, or even track personal data. It doesn’t do anything to “monetize” you. You’re nothing but a reader to me, and that means everything to me.
Photo by Angela Elisabeth.