St. Joseph High School juniors took another step on the road to higher education recently as they set off on a three-day tour of Northern California universities, giving them the opportunity to experience college life first-hand. Students toured campuses, spoke to university officials, and learned about the various programs offered at each college. The tour was deliberately scheduled when college classes are in session so students could get a feel for the energy of campus life.
A total of 33 students, along with chaperones and guidance counselor Mike Tscheekar, boarded a chartered bus after lunch on March 1 and headed north to Concord. Starting early the next morning, they toured St. Mary’s College, U.C. Berkeley, and San Francisco State University. The group then spent Friday night in Palo Alto, getting the chance to explore the Stanford and Santa Clara campuses on Saturday.
For many of the students, the chance to explore college campuses and get a taste of collegiate life without their parents hovering nearby was productive.
“This whole experience made me excited about going away to college, so doing this tour without our parents was a little preview of what it will be like. Plus, parents didn’t clog up the discussions with questions about graduation rates and safety statistics,” Taylor Juretic joked in an interview with the Sun.
The students toured campuses that ranged in size from the relatively small St. Mary’s College in Moraga with a student population of 4,000, to the massive UC Berkeley, where 36,142 undergraduate and graduate students are currently enrolled. For the students coming from a school as small as St. Joe’s, with a graduating class of about 160, the college tour was an eye-opening experience.
“The Berkeley campus is huge, but the architecture is awesome,” Justin Kwon said. “Our tour guide said it is sometimes called ‘the Athens of the West.’ And there is tons of history to the place. Even though the campus is big, the tour guides were great and made us feel very welcome.”
The students were definitely impressed by Stanford University, and might dream about going there someday, but the yearly tuition created a bit of “sticker shock.”
“Stanford has a great reputation, and their school spirit and enthusiasm for their sports teams is really exciting, too—even though their school mascot is a tree,” Brianna Whitmore said. “But the cost for housing and books is on top of the tuition!”
With potential college majors as varied as forensics, engineering, pre-med, nursing, and architecture, the five students interviewed for this article each appreciated different aspects of the universities. But they all shared the same excitement about the taste they had of collegiate life.
This article appears in Mar 15-22, 2012.