DD is transferring from a 40,000+ university to a <2,000 school. She is nervous about not having enough opportunities and a more limited number of students for socializing. She is excited about hopefully forming more close knit groups for studying and more care taken by professors. Is there any advice to share from students who have made a similar switch?
I went from 14k to 1,400. Best decision I ever made. Opportunities and success at any school, regardless of size, is about what you’re willing to put into it. Sounds like she has a good attitude and will be plenty involved to have the college experience she’s looking for.
Remember you may have five good friends at r1 uni or small liberal arts school. The rest of your experience is generally in rooms with 20 other students.
@eb23282 why do you think it was the best decision? Did it help you complete the course of study? Or learn more? I fully support the transfer and think it will be good, but she is apprehensive. Hard to unwind the large to small factor from transferring and starting over factor in the nervousness.
I enjoyed both schools and had good friends and experiences at both schools, but I’m a big believer in “fit” and the smaller school was just a better fit for me. Again, any school is what you make of it, so I could have stayed and probably have been happy enough, but I kinda like my life now and who knows how differently my life would have been had I stayed.
Good friend’s son transferred from large to tiny. He’s a thousand times happier. Connected with profs, has good friends, doing an internship at a prestigious firm in a big city this summer. It’s a LOT more expensive than his old state school, but the parents can afford it and to them and their son, it’s money well spent.
Basically, he had many more opportunities because he was happier. For a lot of kids, it comes down to being comfortable enough to take advantage of resources.
Depending on the exact figure suggested, her new college might not even be best described as tiny, at least from a historical perspective. For well over a hundred years, many, and likely the majority of, U.S. colleges thrived with fewer than, or about, 2000 students, and many, notably those that have achieved this figure by design, still do so today.