My daughter was trying to decide between PTA/Blinn/Park West Apt vs PSA/Commerce. We were pushing Commerce primarily for the fact that she could ease into college with dorm life and meal plans. She would get to go to Freshman camp and do all the things she would miss going to Blinn. She would be just over an hour away from home vs 3.5 hours. I tell you all that to put into perspective that she wasn’t really looking forward to our tour today because she knows Commerce is TINY!
So I will start there. The campus is pretty much the only thing in town. At the edge of campus is CVS, Walmart and Brookshires. There are a handful of fast food places. No Whataburger or CFA, although there is a RUMOR there will be a CFA in the new nursing building scheduled to open in the Fall.
The campus is fairly small as well. Current enrollment is just under 12,500 with expected 13,000 in the Fall. Walking from one end of campus to the other is maybe 10 minutes. The buildings are all pretty similar red brick, lots of trees and wildlife. Overall, despite the cold overcast day you could tell it would be a pretty enough campus. We did not go into a lot of the educational buildings so I can’t speak to them. We did go into the first floor of the library and it was very drab and utilitarian. Not sure if other floors were better, but it was the only building that we didn’t like.
They have a new music building and the nursing building will open in the Fall. You can tell they are getting a lot of money as a new dorm or academic building seems to be going up regularly. It definitely felt like a growing campus - probably all the PSA kids. ?
The rec center was very impressive. The pictures online were accurate. There is a lot for them to do sports wise and the football stadium was very nice.
The student center was equally nice. The one thing I didn’t love is that dorms do not have individual dining rooms. You have to eat at the cafeteria in the SC or choose from several fast food type places also in the SC. All locations are covered by the dining plan including concessions at games, vending machines and one sandwich shop and Starbucks in the library. Some of the dorms are a decent walk to get to the student center, so in bad weather it would be a pain to go eat.
All freshman are required to live on campus. Their options are Pride Rock, Phase III or Whitley Hall.
Pride Rock has apartment type rooms with a shared private bath. I thought these would be my daughter’s favorite, but they were really dark. They are also already full, so it worked out ok since it’s not an option for this Fall.
Whitley is the oldest building on campus and looked like it. It was SUPER dark with rickety old elevators. This was a hard no from my daughter and her roomate.
Phase III is the newest dorm, 2017, and has four floors of private and double rooms with CO-ED bathrooms. Yes, co-ed bathrooms. Think trucker bathrooms. You have your own “stall” with a shower and a toilet. There are then a group of sinks you can use in the open area. You can see the layout online. It is nearly impossible to explain if you haven’t seen anything like it and I most definitely had not. I thought that would be a hard no from the girls, but they said they didn’t mind as much. The common areas are very nice, all wired for laptops and charging. The have very nice kitchens on the main floor if you bring your own pots and pans. The laundry room was very nice. Lots of units that you could have text your phone when it finished it’s cycle.
We didn’t see a lot of people walking around even though it was a school day. Again it wasn’t weather you would want to walk around in so I am sure that made a difference. I did ask a student about the wifi as I had heard it can be pretty bad. They said it definitely went out a lot and could be spotty, so they recommended a hotspot.
Overall, they both liked it better than they expected to and they decided they could do it for a year. They might have even left with a bit of excitement over getting to now have a dorm experience and the all you can eat meal plan.
Lastly they mentioned a lot of merit scholarship dollars go unclaimed because they don’t have enough qualified applicants. Our high achieving PSA kids should have no problem picking up at least something for the year.
Yikes this is long. Let me know if you have any more questions.