The way they describe it is religion is “an invitation not an expectation”. UP does have a requirement for 3 courses that are more religious in nature. There is some choice to it but not as much as Gonzaga’s list. There are crosses or crucifixes in every classroom but they are not large. Students are not required to attend service. There is a spiritual advisor available in every dorm for those that wish to consult with one. Our tour guide said she’s not religious and has felt very comfortable there, and that religion isn’t huge if you don’t want to be.
We happened to visit on admitted students day (was open to regular visits too) so we got more info than a typical tour. UP is very supportive and family oriented. They have a support in place for parents as well as the students to help transition from home to college. They also guarantee that students will get the classes they need in order to graduate in 4 years. Study abroad is huge for them and every major can do it, though it may need to be in the summer for nursing or engineering.
UP and Gonzaga, to me, were very similar with regard to religiosity. I didn’t notice crosses or crucifixes in classrooms at Gonzaga. Or maybe I just don’t recall. What my son noticed is that Gonzaga seemed a bit more modern and UP more traditional. Also, UP’s food options aren’t great on campus but that could have been expectations we had being that it is in Portland. The food is fine. Just standard. Gonzaga was more sports and activities oriented. UP is very family focused.
Not trying to disparage UP but many colleges make these claims. Although UP has a higher 4 year grad rate than UO or Oregon State, it is still in the mid 70s (ex. UNSWR 4 year grad rate). Offering classes doesn’t always mean that students will finish in four years. Sometimes students don’t want the classes that are available with the professors who are teaching them at the time they are offered. Sometimes students choose to take fewer classes or don’t take the pre-req classes early enough to finish in four years.
Education abroad has become more and more popular through the years. I think it is offered to all majors at most, if not all, universities.
Yes! They actually talked about that on our tour! The tour guide said they had a friend who was really into Halloween and haunted stuff and that was actually one thing she liked about the school! That said, it’s a pretty campus and there was a lot to like about it.
Fellow CC’ers, I cannot believe that I need to mention this again in the Fall of 2022….sadly, one of the things we considered was how the university handled the COVID crisis, masking policies (in dorms, outside and during athletics) cancellation of classes, access to instructors, safety precautions, access to medical care, etc. It seems that current Seniors are still having to consider this….hoping it will end but know you have our support.
Perhaps I should note that my post expressed a somewhat different characterization from that in the article, describing the arts center as “unadorned classicism,” in contrast to a “(departure) from the neoclassical and neomedieval buildings” (as in the article).
If you are looking for a school with broad lawns, lots of greenery, a defined campus and a unified architectural theme, you should not look at older urban universities.
You should have visited the other Boston schools, since you were there already. You might have been surprised at how nice they were. I feel they try harder, because they can’t just rely on their reputation.
Olin might have been interesting for engineering.
Before we got there, I told my D to expect to see maybe fancy cars she had not seen in the wild before - Rolls Royces and such. I thought Cambridge would be pretty upscale in general.
I was… mistaken.
For all the wealth and prestige associated with both schools, I was surprised by the unappealing aesthetics - the result of both long term choices (layout of the campuses, building architecture, etc.) and short term choices (just north of Harvard yard was a plaza that MIGHT have been appealing as a gathering spot for lunch, etc, except that there was a large, junky tent set up there that is there more or less permanently, 3 food trucks of which one had a loud generator or engine running (makes hanging out unappealing). Also, the science building, on one side of that plaza, was ugly.
MIT, similarly, had a large tent blocking one of the few green spaces, an ugly dumpster in another location, and construction noise.
D loves greenery, the outdoors, trees, etc. Neither campus had much of those. During the info session, it was mentioned that among Harvard’s resources was a 3000 acre “research” forest or something like that. Aha - getaway to greenery on weekends? Asked (depressive) tour guide about it and she wasn’t sure what it was or where it was - had never been there. For all we knew then (and still know now), it could be hours away and effectively inaccessible to the average car-less undergrad.
Tour guide was also almost totally unfamiliar with the new engineering building/campus, which would likely be where D would spend much of her time, should she attend. Tour did not go by that building (it’s too far away!), and when we personally went by it the Saturday prior, it was locked up.
Ironically, the richest university in the world is one of the poorest in terms of architectural beauty, design and campus cohesiveness. Harvard campus is built the way the roads were built from the colonial days around Boston: no foresight and no vision; just haphazard planning as you go. Harvard is a behemoth of a university; it wants to do everything and be everything. It wants what has made Stanford from an old farm to today’s giant and an archrival. So enters the $1 billion Science and Engineering Complex in Allston, quite a distance from the central campus, practically a satellite campus. For every university expansion, farther out it’d have to be.
When we toured Harvard and MIT some years ago, it was a very disappointing experience for my sons. While walking through the Harvard Yard, I felt sorry for the students for constantly having to share their yard life with omnipresent tourists that often visit by the bus loads. I now feel sorry for those engineering and science students whose majors dictate their college lives to be pretty much bound to Allston away from the central campus.
Harvard has gone too big, too unwieldy, too grad/professional school oriented to be a happy place for undergrads. It’s not all that surprising that in a recent “Grateful Grad” ranking, Harvard fared worse than any of its peers in ranking 30th with only 18.2% in 3-year average alumni participation index.
Here’s an op piece worth reading about Harvard’s foray into Allston:
I’ve walked and run through Harvard a lot of times over the years. Each time I am newly underwhelmed by the campus. Amazing school, not so amazing grounds. I’m also always surprised that the landscaping is as boring as it is, given the $$$ they have to spend.
There are “neglectable” and “unneglectable” expenditures. Sure, Harvard has some $56B in endowment, but their operational expenditure has also bloomed over the years, likely higher than any other of its peer institutions. Harvard has 2,000+ faculty, and the average salary of their 86% top faculty is $600K+ with some even over $1M. That’s not to mention high salaried adms and staff. The facility maintenance cost alone, given its sheer size spread all over, is got to be in a nightmarish proportion. Landscaping belongs in the neglectable category in their expenditure priorities.
There is the Arnold Arboretum and it is really nice, but not in Cambridge. http://arboretum.harvard.edu/
Closer to Harvard is the Mt Auburn Cemetary, which is so beautiful, people are dying to get in there… https://mountauburn.org/?cache
But I really have to laugh about your comment about cars! All that ice and salt water air doesn’t encourage this sort of thing…
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