Campus Visit

Yesterday, my wife and I took "the boy" for a campus visit to UC San Diego. He is a junior in high school, so these will become more frequent, and intentional. Over the years, we have toured many college campuses in our travels: Berkeley, Harvard, Minnesota, Azusa Pacific, Davis, Santa Cruz, UCLA, Cal Tech, San Jose State, just to name a few. But these have always been "for fun", not with the intention of discerning whether Mark would attend there.

UC San Diego is a beautiful campus. It was a gorgeous day, sunny, and a bit cool. After Monday's rain and wind, it was a welcome break. (Poor SoCals get a day of rain and they suffer immensely. I know, break out the small violins.) Our tour guide was Craig, who did a fine job showing us around the campus. UCSD is set up on the Oxford model, with now six colleges. Students take all their classes within their college, and each college has a different emphasis: public service, international relations, math and science research, etc.

As we were waiting in the student union food court for the tour to begin, we saw one of Mark's good friends, Kevin, and his family walk in. What a great surprise, so we took the tour together.

It made me think of my own choosing of colleges. I knew I should/would go to college, but never really thought of it. My mom was no help in this, as she had never been to college. So I was left on my own, and, well, I was pretty lazy about the whole thing. My cousin, Jeff, was applying to UC Davis (Go Aggies!), so I went with him for a campus visit. I liked what I saw, and applied there, as well as to Berkeley and Santa Barbara, I think. (Back in the day, you applied to the UC system, and picked three campuses as your first choices.) Anyway, I wound up at Davis, but Jeff went to Santa Barbara. Left to my own devices, I may never have gone to Davis.

As we toured UCSD, I began to wish I was 18 again, or at least that I could go back to college. Things have definitely changed. The amount of entertainment on campuses, especially UCSD, is astounding. It is almost as if the entertainment (concerts, etc) is the draw, and the scholarship is secondary. Which it probably is for many students.

We were suitably impressed, but also know that there are many other colleges to visit. Some smaller, some private, some public, some in state, some out of state. Let the college application process begin!