<p>I plan to attend the USF Admitted Student Visit on February 18th. To make up for the lack of complete inactivity and information on this subthread, I'll post a full report of my experience here. The email says participants will meet USF students, faculty, and staff, learn about academic programs, join a classroom lecture, look at study abroad opportunities, take a campus tour and possibly interact with some clubs on campus.</p>
<p>I think they have a few other dates available for later in April.</p>
<p>Anyone else planning on attending? Fell free to share your thoughts here too.</p>
<p>FYI for everyone: you do not need to RSVP if you decide to go at the last minute. They will have registration for the event at 8:00 a.m. the morning of so you would still make it in time for the 9:00 a.m. start time. Not sure how they’ll show us a class lecture on a Saturday though.</p>
<p>Lunch will be served and parking is available on campus for no cost and no permit.</p>
<p>I’ll try to put this in some sort of order and there was probably a lot more said that I can’t recall so just ask here or PM me and I’ll let you know if it was covered. The only other college event like this that I have attended was the one for Santa Clara University a couple months ago, which is also a private Jesuit LAC, so I’ll note some comparisons when I see them.</p>
<p>So the event started at 9:00 am and the student agenda (they had a separate one for parents) went like so:
Welcome
Campus tour
Student panel (choose one event from the given list)
Academic class previews (choose one from the given list)
Lunch and academic/student organizations fair</p>
<p>Welcome: For the ‘welcome’ portion there were what seemed like at least a few hundred students and families placed in a huge conference room. Typical concept, with speakers and overviews about the Jesuit tradition of education and such. The seating set up was a mix of round tables and regular chairs in rows. This allowed those who were a bit shy sit at the round tables face to face with other prospective students and kinda force them to interact or be subject to some awkwardness. Fr Privett spoke and was a tremendous speaker, as I hoped he would be as he’s the University President. He said one quote that I kind of liked: “The city (San Francisco) is an extension of the classroom. Like the school, it bodes to the curious, adventurous, and entrepreneurial”. He mentioned that the school was dedicated to diversity and threw out some figures - 57% of students are of color, but I took a scan around the room and I would have guessed that 80% of the prospective students who attended were white. Hm. He also mentioned something to the effect of ‘Jesuits were running schools before Harvard was founded.’ Then I thought to myself ‘And look where Harvard is now.’ Hm #2. The rest of the time was interesting as they read a few of the essays that were submitted in apps by admitted students for the incoming class.</p>
<p>Campus tour: Okay, so once the welcome concluded the parents and students were to split up for the rest of the time until lunch. There was one major gripe for me in this: the parent’s schedule included a presentation session on financial aid and the student’s did not. I thought that was a little biased of the school. Yes many parents pay and support their children going to college, but most students also take out loans to pay for a portion and I thought it would have been beneficial to the student if the school included some sort of counseling/info session on that sort of thing.</p>
<p>But to get to the tour - our guide was a senior CompSci major and comedy club enthusiast. So he was smart AND funny. Really a great guy though.</p>
<p>He pointed out the area currently under construction. They are building an entirely new Science wing for science classes and such. There is a solid green wall covering view of any unsightly work being done and they even decorated it in planted flowers and such. He showed us a small area called ‘The Amphitheater’. Pretty cool little half circle seating area outside complete with an arch up front the he said was from a 14th century Spanish monastery. He said they often have little plays randomly for the students to watch (they as in the theater club/group). We passed the library (but did not go in it, but we saw other tours going in) and he mentioned a place called ‘The Atrium’ connected to it. It’s a 24/7 quiet study area. (I later split off on a few minuted time between events and checked the library and atrium out for myself. HUGE. I’m sure they have all the library stuff there and I know they can order any requested work if they do not already have it. The quiet study area was huge too and had really comfortable seating and tables that seemed like they would totally work out for just getting away). Next we walked through the St Ignatius church. Wow, it was huge and ornate. Wayyy more exhilarating than the one at Santa Clara. It’s bigger and has more notion of grandeur with huge stained glass windows and marble floors and railings. Looked stunning. I’m not religious, but I like great architecture. From there we walked over to Koret Health and Rec Center (the gym). That too was huge. He said it used to be a high school and they bought it and converted it into the gym. My wife (who is a Santa Clara University alum) said that it blew SCU’s gym out of the water. Quite literally as it seems because the indoor pool is bigger than Olympic size. Santa Clara has an outdoor pool. They had a huge array of basketball courts - and none of those ones are even used by the BBall team. They practice and play on an entirely different court in another area. All this means that you are mostly guaranteed to get a court or pool lane when you want one. I didn’t see the hours posted, but I know it isn’t open 24/7. I think it opened at like 6 am and closed late in the evening. It comes complete with dance studio, cardio room, weight room, and boxing room. He also mentioned that the soccer field right next door has it’s turf made of recycled sneakers so it’s environmentally friendly/safe. Don’t worry, it’s not black. It’s still green.</p>
<p>He talked about campus safety for a minute. He mentioned there are emergency call boxes throughout the campus that go directly to 24/7 campus safety officers. I personally noticed emergency alert buttons place in the hallways of the residence halls too. He said there is a shuttle service for late at night too. If you’re in SF and you’ve been drinking or otherwise don’t feel it’s safe to walk or take public transit back to your dorm, then you can call the shuttle number associated with the school and it will come pick you up and drop you off at the dorms. Service is available until 1 am on weekdays and 3 am on weekends. He also mentioned that students are offered 12 free psychological counseling sessions per semester to talk about anything and relieve stress or dump some depression.</p>
<p>Speaking of transportation . . . it was mentioned more than once in a bad joke that there is no parking problem at USF because there is no parking at all. They said that parking is limited and is first given to faculty and staff, then disabled students, then there is a lottery for the remainder. It’s usually a very low number of them and they cost lot of $ if you do get one. However, each student is given a pass making city public transportation absolutely free.</p>
<p>Back to the tour. We passed the Fromm Center which he explained was a center where retired professors come on the weekends and give classes for free and for no credit, just to continue teaching. I thought that was pretty cool. We came to what they call the university center. It basically has the main cafeteria on the second floor and the bookstore/game consoles/study area on the first floor. They had fireplaces (fake, but still a nice touch) going in the study areas and they had t.v.s set up to play videogames on or just hang out and watch cable. The bookstore was about the same size as Santa Claras, but I found that it was more organized and looked well kept. Much easier to find books and view what they have this way. We walked through a residence hall, but I didn’t pay too much attention since I’m married and will definitely be staying off campus. The rooms all looked like ‘doubles’ but I don’t know if they had others. The occupants said that you can decorate or otherwise arrange your rooms pretty much however you want. They also said that there is a matching program when you sign up for housing to find like roommates (quote: ‘like m<em>a</em>t<em>c</em>h.com’). Upperclassmen stayed at other residence halls with other upperclassmen. Laundry facilities were downstairs. $1 to wash and another $1 to dry. Free would have been better. He said that there is a website where you can go on and see if there is a washer or dryer currently open so you don’t have to go all the way down stairs to find out. We walked into one of two of the lounges. It had a pool table and relaxing furniture. It included a little kitchenette and cooking utensils can be rented for use. The 2nd more formal lounge had a piano.</p>
<p>Academic Panel: Offered events for the next time block included residence life, study abroad overview, leadership and campus activities, and non-varsity sports opportunities. I went with the campus activities. The presenting student panel included three current students (one was the LGBTQ school student rep, another was the black student union rep, and the third was a student involved in animal advocacy and other clubs). It was pretty much just a Q&A session. Some things that were covered: at orientation, student will be split up by major and will meet with an academic adviser and all the other incoming students of that major. The university’s theater group (College Players) isn’t exclusive to just arts majors. Anyone can audition for them. Every club on campus is required to do a community service project once every semester to be eligible for school funding. Tuition includes an $82 fee for student activities which is pooled for all of the clubs to share throughout the year. School newspaper is all student ran and is easy to get involved. Internship opportunities can be viewed online, but at the UC (University Center) they have their career center which will obviously help with resumes and interviews, but they will also go out and search for a specific internship if you’re looking for one that isn’t posted on the site. For example, if I wanted to intern at a local politician’s office, but there wasn’t a specific opening posted, they would help find a contact there and call for the student to see if there are opportunities available. Greek life is VERY small at USF. They currently have 3 sororities and 1 fraternity, but the student government is working to get more on campus. The LGBTQ rep said something towards the end that I liked: “Even if everyone at USF doesn’t necessarily show school spirit and pride, they all do show spirit and pride at being a student and in such are more inclined to help their peers as students.”</p>
<p>Academic class preview: These were set up to simulate what a class would be like at USF. SCU did not have an equivalent to this during their event. Again from list of choices in the time block were a class on the immune system, music, maximizing your odds on a game show, environmental studies, urban agriculture, nursing, and quantitative business analysis. Since I might be switching to a business major, I went with the last one. The professor, Mouwafac Sidaoui, is the Program Director of the joint Master of Global Entrepreneurship and Management. Despite the ‘knock you unconscious’ title, the class was a bit entertaining. The professor was a great speaker and did a great job on making the bridges between points in his lecture. We did a few exercises which included contemplating how many ping-pong balls we could fit in the classroom, and went over an equation involving a business model on purchasing cars. Some questions were asked in the end. One was “For the business program at USF, should a student be running a Windows or Mac platform?” He said it really varied from professor to professor, but he had some good points. He said that he has a Mac, but he uses VMWare a lot for the Windows compatibility. USF will give the student VMWare and some other software for free (not including Office for Mac) and that he teaches with what the industry is using. He notices a lot of younger business people are using Mac, but that Windows is still predominate in business.</p>
<p>Lunch and organizations fair: I’ll skip the food review since I don’t think that’s the type of food that would be offered in the dining hall. It was just some pre-wrapped sandwiches and bags of chips etc. The dining hall on the second floor of the UC, however, did look awesome and the student government reps said they are always working to improve the food. I noticed there was an extensive article on the campus food in this week’s newspaper (Picked one up on the way out. Sadly, while the articles looked more in depth and relevant that The Santa Clara, it didn’t have much variety in sections ((general section and sports)) with it and didn’t really show small campus blurb/statistical stuff like recent safety issues ((thefts or what have you)) ). After eating you could walk around where they had tables set up to represent current student academic and non-academic organizations. Not all clubs were there and nothing really piqued my interest so I did some more personal side tour stuff and left to go to the SFMOMA to see some new exhibits that were featured in this upcoming week’s TIME. Took me about 10 minutes total to get to Fifth and Mission parking garage and walk the 2 blocks to third, but I’m sure it would have taken quite a bit longer on public transit. Oh, for those who don’t know, USF is located right next to Golden Gate Park, and the GG Bridge. Beautiful area.</p>
<p>Sooooo, I think this concludes it. I didn’t get to speak with anyone about financial aid unfortunately, but I’m going to call and make a personal appointment.</p>
<p>Hope this gave a little insight to those making decisions.</p>
<p>Correction on some of the newspaper stuff (San Francisco Foghorn): It DOES include more than 2 sections. News, Opinion, Scene, and Sports. The layout was a little different for me, so I failed to notice when it transitioned from one section to the next. But they, in fact, do not have a little ‘safety watch’ article/section for those types of alerts like The Santa Clara does. BUT they do have a summary of the decisions made at the most recent university Senate meetings. Huge plus. SCU does not have that.</p>
<p>And correction about one of the students on the Q&A panel: the second was the Students of Color Representative, not BSU.</p>