<p>Just finished a Midwest LAC tour with Jr. HS D. Beloit jumped to the top of the list. What D saw was genuine enthusiasm for the place from everyone we encountered. All colleges tell you how great they are, and manage to find statistics to support their claims, but the presentations become rather uniform and unrevealing. At Beloit, the head of admissions gave a one hour talk without notes or slides explaining the philosophy of the school and what attracts their applicants. He acknowledged that no one dreams of attending Beloit as a child, is enamored of the WI weather, or thinks they will impress their neighbors with a Beloit acceptance letter. He went on to describe the unique aspects of the curriculum and the student body. He is clearly in love with the school, his job, and the students. The Beloit student body has a reputation for unconventionality, but it wasn’t all about unusual choices in hair color, piercing locations, and clothing combinations (though there is plenty of that). My daughter is the pony tail/jeans/sneakers wearing, glasses slipping down the nose, future scientist, nerdy type, who loves internet cartoons, Emily Dickinson, art, Monty Python, and a DJ spinning catchy pop tunes at a dance. She feels she will fit right in because it seemed to her that the kids at Beloit are unconventional in that they are genuine, unpretentious, and truly friendly–rare commodities indeed. Maybe too much to conclude from a visit, but I’ve been on a bunch of these and am hard to impress.</p>
<p>Glad you and your daughter liked it! It definitely sounds like she’d fit in here. I’m not going to say that no one here is at all pretentious, but we’re generally a pretty laid back community. 
The friendliness of everyone is definitely one of the things I love about Beloit. People are almost always willing to strike up a conversation.</p>
<p>-a Beloit sophomore</p>
<p>I am glad that your daughter enjoyed her visit to Beloit. What I liked about Beloit when I was there was that there was a great deal of diversity (and tolerance) in the type of student who was there. I was a clean-cut kid from the midwest. But not everyone was like me, which was a very important factor in me choosing the place. I wanted a small school that attracted a wide variety of students. And Beloit fit that bill better than anywhere else I came across. And as an alumnus, I am glad to see that this variety seems not to have been lost over the years.</p>
<p>Just came back and this school also jumped to the top of the list. I hope we get some merit because the NPC gives us costs of $36,000 yr including room/board.</p>
<p>Hey CowtownSlim, you pretty much nailed Beloit in your description. My son will be a senior there this fall and felt the same way after the first visit. He, too, is a nerdy young scientist (doing a fancy paid research internship this summer!), and knew he would fit right in. Beloit is like a habitat for quirky learners. It is a place where learning matters more than grades and no one bats an eye at bubble-gum colored hair but might find high fashion a little odd. A magnet school for future PhDs. Just a delightful place. I love it as much as my own college!</p>
<p>Have to second and third the great visit comments. DS and I visited a week or so ago and were both so impressed and absolutely in love with this place. Has jumped to #1 on his list, providing the NPC is somewhat accurate.</p>
<p>We visited last week and I loved it and am ready to sign up. Sadly, I am the parent, and not the student. She liked it too, though. I loved the campus–my favorite of all schools we visited. I loved the two museums on campus, and the possibility of a Museum Studies Minor. I loved the idea that many Anthropology classes go down to the area that they study at the end of the semester. I loved the freshman program and reading about the seminars they can take (I forgot what they called this). I loved all the study abroad opportunities–yes, other colleges have these too, but I was very excited about a brochure for a semester of Conservation Biology in the Galapogas Islands. </p>
<p>The tour guide was okay. Not too personable, even though it was just us on the tour, but even so, the place seemed full of possibilities–and there weren’t even any students on campus.</p>
<p>We also had a really great lunch off campus, and there was a great cheese store nearby.</p>
<p>Wow, this is all incredible! I am a rising sophomore at Beloit and my experience has been phenomenal. I was apprehensive about enrolling because I came from a conservative-ish background, but I could not love it more. In May, as a freshman, I went to Jamaica for the ethnographic field school program with Lisa Anderson-Levy and Nancy Krusko, two anthro professors. It was an incredible opportunity, especially for a freshman (or even an undergraduate.)</p>
<p>I’m excited to see all of the new students in two weeks!! :)</p>
<p>I just read a really thorough description of the Beloit experience from a student that enrolled and started there in fall 2011. It was from a thread that wasn’t followed, but I thought it might help provide insider perspective for potential students at this time. See below:</p>
<p>September 2011 edited September 2011 in College Admissions
Hey everyone, I am currently attending Beloit College in Beloit, Wisconsin, and it is the best decision I have ever made in my life. Seriously, I couldn’t imagine going to college anywhere else in the world. The people here are friendly, and what stood out to me the most when I was a prospective student visiting was the atmosphere which seemed basically like one big family. After you apply, they invite you to a scholarship weekend in the winter, and it is a huge, campus-wide event. I think in the February scholarship weekend (which I attended) had over 150 prospective students all visiting and staying the night with host students. Sometime during the weekend I had an interview with a four person panel, which was an excellent opportunity for me to express myself and show the college who I was as an ambitious, successful, and outstanding citizen (of course that’s how virtually everyone attempts to portray themselves, so I introduced them to my own unique character as well). The presidential scholarship you receive (either $13,000, $15,000 or $17,000 per year) is based entirely off of your interview and how you conduct yourself throughout the weekend. The people here are amazingly unique, and even though there are different social groups (or “cliques” as some would say) they all fit together really well, everyone accepts everyone else. No high school immaturity here, at least in that regard.</p>
<p>Also, for you prospective science majors out there, we have a brand new, platinum certified energy efficient, state-of-the-art science building which was just erected in 2008. Four stories tall, and two walls are entirely glass, so it doesn’t seem dark and dismal all the time. I think it also won an architecture award from the state of Wisconsin or something. The academics are outstanding, as Beloit is a private college, and we have a very good anthropology department and museum. A famous figure from Beloit’s past involved with anthropology, Roy Chapman Andrews, was actually the original inspiration for the Indiana Jones character as he was a fossil collector and discovered many previously unknown information pertaining to dinosaurs, etc.</p>
<p>I will admit, the sports are less than impressive, although we do have the occasional talent in various sports. If you were an athlete in high school and don’t think you are good enough to pursue sports in college, you may want to reconsider because there are many opportunities on the sports teams here. I am on the cross country team and the tennis team. I might have been good enough to make a division two tennis team, but I am among the slowest on Beloit’s division three cross country team. However, I am thankful because it allows me to stay in shape. It feels good to run.</p>
<p>Beliot costs somewhere in the ballpark of $44,000 dollars, and the average scholarship package is over half of that. Because we are a small, private, liberal arts college of approximately 1,250 students we don’t have the big bucks, but we do have heart, a nice campus, and a decent budget. The science building is a prime example of that. AS for our “liberal” connection, I don’t know of any college that encourages thinking outside the box as much as Beloit. The curriculum here is designed to help students learn how to use their mind in the most effective, creative, and innovative ways possible. While visiting for the scholarship weekend, I sat in on a class in which the students were presenting on the topic “Should there be a daily value for breathing”. It was very interesting, and as they argues for or against establishing a daily value, the students probed all sorts of angles including differences in metabolism, lung capacity, quality of air, etc. Afterwards I talked with the professor and during our conversation, I mentioned other colleges I had applied to, among them Princeton University. He then exclaimed “Ah, my brother went there!” and told me some wonderful things about Princeton. One phrase he said stands out in my mind, even now, and is probably one of the defining moments in my decision to attend Beloit. He said, “In Princeton, they go in geniuses, they come out geniuses. Here at Beloit, they come in from all different backgrounds, and they come out geniuses.”</p>
<p>Now, obviously the college can’t add IQ points to each person’s register, but what he meant by that was that the ability to think critically and innovatively is one of the most central themes in a Beloit College education. And that, my friends, is why I chose Beloit College. I had much better scholarships to other schools, and I had been accepted to more prestigious schools, but Beloit College made the difference by simply being different, in the best way possible. </p>