Taste of College 2019

Today was the last day to wrap up all of our final work. We spent the morning finishing our book and then met with our partners for the case study project. In the afternoon it was time to rehearse our presentations and have our final seminar over the book we have been reading. During the seminar we talked about the importance of financial aid in the college decision and how important it is for a college to show interest in the student. We realize how important it is to not just be another number at a school but also be able to have an impact and be wanted within that community. As we closed out our final seminar I had every person give me one sentence that best described what they have learned during this course. Personally, I feel like I am now more educated in my college search and have a better understand of how to look past just the "name brand" education. Ashwin: I learned that finding the best college for you isn't as simple as you thought when you were younger....

Today was our last college visit of the J term. We went to The University of St. Thomas where we started the day in the admissions office where they explained important details about the school and we filled out informational cards to get follow up emails. We then had a campus tour with a current student where we saw the library, rec center, chapel, etc. At the end of our visit we had lunch in the school cafeteria to have the most realistic dinning experience if we were students at the school. I really enjoyed getting to see UST because we pass by the institution so often so it was nice to learn about the school in more depth.

Hello College J-term, it’s Emily! Today is January 18th and we have 4 days left of J-term. Today was an open work day. This morning, the majority of our time was spent listening to podcasts, reading The Gatekeepers, and working on our case studies. At the end of the morning we were asked to answer questions about how the J-term is going which Mr. Awkward created. This afternoon, students will continue researching their assigned colleges. We will also be watching a movie towards the end of the day called, Mona Lisa Smile, a movie about the life of a UCLA graduate.  We are looking forward to next week and we will be returning next Tuesday for more blogs!

Blog Today we started our morning with our daily meeting where we discussed what we were going to do during the day. Since our group did not have an outing today, we were given time to do some research for our case studies, read and answer some short readings, and finish our chapters in the book The Gatekeepers.   For our case studies we were all given a college that we had to research and present. We were given a piece of paper with a few questions that we can consider or go off of for our presentations. This came in handy for those who haven't gone to their college yet because it gave us ideas on what is actually important to know about a college. We then did a reading with our group ad were given some questions that we had to answer and discuss once we were finished. After our discussion we had a break for lunch but before lunch we had to finish a sort of rough draft outline for our case studies. After lunch we had some time to read a prepare for our seminar on the boo...

We started off our day at the University of Houston (main campus) School of Art where we were introduced to Mr. Hanna who showed us around most of the building that housed the design studios. Classes at UH had begun this past Monday and everyone seemed to have settled back in to classes, the first class we got to see was an intermediate class that included undergraduates working on paintings. Students who took that class went there for 3 hours, twice a week. After we took a small walk around the classroom looking at the students work, we went to the senior painting studio where each student had their whole own room to work in with their paintings either in or outside the space they had. Senior Studio Paintings Senior Studio Painting The rest of the classes and work going on in the rest of the building had more to do with computer design. We were told that some students from the graphic designing group weren't just working on their art for the assignments they received in...

Justin Patera Mr. Awkward Taste of College January 15th, 2019 Blog Day 6 Today we had the liberty of visiting the University of Houston at Victoria. We arrived at school slightly early, then took the hour and a half bus ride to Victoria Texas. Once arrived we met our tour guide, Tiara. She then gave us a tour of the campus which consisted of three main buildings, the Center, West and Northern. We got to see inside and learn about the buildings purposes, the functions of the university and what it's like to be a student at UH-Victoria. Following our tour, we were shown one of the dorms at which students stayed. There were three separate buildings for students, one for freshmen, one for sophomores and juniors and the last for upperclassmen. Each of these buildings was a converted motel or hotel so the rooms were of good size and were cozy. Our guide explained how the dorms operated, where and how students ate and the different class locations in relation to where they slept. Ove...

Today was an open work day at the high school. During open work we were given time to work on our assignments including research for our case studies, watching videos on the topic of affirmative action in college, and reading of  The Gatekeepers  in preparation for seminar. We looked into the issue of race in the admissions process and lawsuits filed against colleges because of the assumption that there was racial preference involved in the selection of students, specifically the Fisher v. University of Texas case and Chinese Students v. Harvard case. During our discussion about the videos, we shared our personal opinions on the topic of affirmative action and quotas. We talked about how colleges pushing to create a racially and culturally diverse environment could be beneficial and problematic. Schools tend to strive for a demographically balanced student body in order to attract more applicants, but putting a number or limit on how many students of a certain race can b...

January 10, 2019        Hello readers, today was SUCH a fun day, and a very informative day too. We started our day fresh and early by visiting the Houston Hillel, which is a non-profit organization that works towards helping undergraduate college students as well as graduate college students, specifically Jewish students. Houston Hillel specifically works with students from Rice University and University of Houston. This non-profit coordinates things from student charities to hosting Shabbat every Friday. For them it's very important to make the students that work with them like they have a support system and like they can rely on Houston Hillel for whatever they want. They also organize the trip which is called birth-right, which allows people of Jewish descent to have a free 10 day trip to Israel. It was very nice to see that even when we go to college, there are people out there who want us to succeed and will help us in any way that they can. At the end of our...

January 9, 2018 Today our J-term group visited Galveston Community College. I went in to the visit with the idea that I didn’t really have to learn anything from GCC, and why would I want to come to a community college. I was completely wrong, and I can speak for the whole group when I say we were all pleasantly surprised. GCC is in the heart of Galveston, and is a great option for people who either aren’t ready for a full 4 year college experience, or are going to transfer their credits for common core classes, it is also a very affordable way for people to get an education. This community college offers great programs such as nursing classes, culinary classes and applied sciences. They have great facilities and have one of the nicest-looking pottery classes i’ve ever seen (view of the ocean). I’m really glad we got to see a different perspective of institutions, and how a typical college might not be the right investment for everyone. The people who gave us the tour emphasi...

Hello! And welcome to our 2019 J Term blog. This first blog entry was written collaboratively by the entire class to share with our parents, in order to give a broad picture of the structure and expectations of this course. In this J-Term we will be doing several things to further our knowledge about the complicated thing we call "college". This course offers things such as college visits to different types of institutions. We will be visiting colleges such as Rice University, and Southwestern University. We will be doing case studies in order to learn more about certain institutions and see what type of college fits us best. Through our college research, we will learn how to look at colleges and not just look for “flashy colleges.” As we mentioned, during the course we will all be working on a case study project. For this project are paired with another student in the course to research in-depth one of the colleges we are going to visit. In the end we will all be present...