My daughter will be attending UMD in the fall and was just accepted into BioFIRE. I was wondering if anyone had any personal experience or additional information about the program. Thank you!
First off, welcome to Terp Nation! Your daughter is going to LOVE Maryland! I’m a parent and alum, but the FIRE program in general is a new program that started after my son was already a student, so I don’t know all that much about it. If you are on Facebook, you can check out their page BioFIRE Living and Learning Community UMD and maybe connect with someone there to ask specific questions.
In general, Maryland has a lot of great programs, and they do them very well. The learning communities create a small network for students which is really nice. I can only tell you that the program housing is in Easton which is a high-rise dorm with air-conditioning. It is close to the stadium (they changed the name to Maryland stadium only a few years ago, but will always be Byrd stadium to me). Easton is also home to the living learning program for engineers, if that helps to know.
Maryland is also a great university for students to get involved in research. Research is among my son’s favorite experiences at Maryland, which is something he did not expect. Based on high school’s use of the term “research” papers, my son had always associated research only with having to read a lot and write long papers, so he never imagined that research, at the college level, is where most of the hands-on learning happens.
This is the first year I’ve seen students invited to the program as part of admissions, and may be the first year that it is a living-learning program (meaning grouped housing in a designated dorm, in addition to programming). When the FIRE program first started, literally only a few years ago, students just had to apply, but it was not connected to admissions.
Thank you for the information. I think that it might be a good program for my daughter.