Friday, November 9, 2012

Students can learn so much about a school from online tours, readings, and even campus visits. The issue is that you can never truly experience something until you have lived it. As far as I know, Clark University doesn't offer 'overnight stays', except for athletic prospects.
Other schools do offer this, and still run into the same issues - it is impossible for a school administration to create a method in which a student experiences exactly how campus life will be. There are certain things that different people care about - use or disuse of drugs and alcohol, class scheduling, rules for dorm life, and most importantly, the general atmosphere of campus.
Some of these can be answered by the school itself - rules, class scheduling. Others, it cannot, simply due to the fact that it is a school. As an example, with drugs and alcohol, the official statement of the school has to be 'not tolerated'. However, we know, as students, that the policies are much different than what is written.
 The best way, albeit unrealistic, for students to experience what Clark University is like, is for those students to attend the school for a week. Filter them into different classes that they may be interested in (they wouldn't need to produce real work for these classes, instead they would be given special assignments on the material that was currently being covered), with real students. Put them into open dorm rooms - the school would have to have several rooms kept open in different dorm halls for this purpose. The explanation that the school would give would be: "These are potential transfer students,". The dorm halls would have activities made to get those students knowing people. In the course of that week, it should be apparent to the student how college life actually is. 

1 comment:

  1. You're right, there's nothing like actually being here. Can you think of ways to get across that experience for those who can't afford such a visit? How about for international students who are usually just too far away for a trip to be practical?

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