I attended the January I2E event with my DD. A few observations. There were a LOT more students there than we expected (they said there were about 900 students in attendance, which is triple what they advertised on their website (“About 300 students will be selected to attend each event”)). They announced at the beginning that the applicant pool was so strong that they didn’t want to turn people away (but I know some people on CC and otherwise did NOT get an invite, so they actually did turn people away). They split the masses into two groups - green and gold - and they did a tremendous job of running the program. The Friday reception at the Waco convention center was well organized - it was crowded and a challenge to interact with faculty, but my DD was able to talk with professors in her area/school of interest. The professors were impressive and it was a fun event. On Saturday, they split the parents and students - on the parents side, they had “breakout” sessions. I skipped the ‘boring’ topics (financial aid, study abroad, honors college details) since all of that info is general and can be found easily elsewhere. But I attended sessions that were set up sort of like actual “classes” that would be taught to the students: one was by a political science professor (about the electoral process, explained using role playing and game theory, which was extremely entertaining and informative), and the other was by a geoscientist (about reconciling the text of the Bible with the science of evolution, which was enlightening and impressive). Then they gave us free tickets to the Baylor-Alabama men’s basketball game, which was great (Baylor won). I re-united with my DD after that for a closing session (typical stuff - a video of the school/traditions, an admissions official with nuts and bolts presentation, then a panel of current students).
Overall I was very impressed with everything about the event. And I am very glad that we went, as we had never been to Baylor (or to Texas) before. After we got home after the event, we talked about it for a while and my daughter has decided to cross Baylor off her list. While it really was a well-run event, I was turned off initially by the sheer number of attendees. While I knew this was more or less a “marketing” event for the school, I had expected that there would be ~300 students there (based on Baylor’s own website). Our intent on going was not to ‘win’ the scholarship (the odds of that - even with 300 people - were slim), so the increased numbers didn’t bother us from that perspective. But it made it a much less intimate experience; everything was crowded. Even with the smaller break-out sessions, there was never a real opportunity to have any meaningful interaction with the faculty or administrators simply because there were so many people there. Even with that - and the little annoyances like bad traffic, limited parking, waiting in long lines for things - after we saw the mass of humanity on Friday night, my DD was still excited about Baylor (she is looking at other schools that are even larger, so the size of the school is not an issue for her).
But she ultimately was turned off by the lack of diversity (in race and religion primarily, but also geographically - at least from our observation). Out of 2,000+ people (applicants, parents, current students, faculty), we could count on our hand the number of black people that we saw. And while my DD was attracted to Baylor primarily because it is a Christian college (we are Christians, she goes to a private religious school), it felt like - in my daughters words - a “cult” at Baylor … the Christian (Baptist) faith was emphasized by faculty and students just a bit more than we expected. And, similarly, we knew that Baylor draws the majority of its students from Texas, but it seemed like 9 out of 10 people that we interacted with were from the state. My daughter was not looking at Baylor because of its “diversity”, but it was a bit of a shocking reality check for her to see it in person. [Finally, while the campus itself is very pretty and well laid out (and easy to get around either with short walks or with shuttles/buses), the surrounding area is pretty bleak. We had heard that Waco was not the most happening town, so that was not a surprise either. But it just didn’t “feel” right for my DD.
That being said, the academics, campus, school spirit, weather, and kind people at Baylor were/all top-notch across the board and I couldn’t say enough good things about those aspects - or how efficiently and well organized the I2E event was.
