ebennett

Love It

I love New College. It's the only school that I would ever want to graduate from. I had to take sick leave this semester for 2 weeks, and all my professors and the administration were so understanding about it. I was so worried about not completing the semester, but with their help my situation was completely manageable. It proved to me that the small college is the way to go because you can have personal relationships with the people that determine your academic future. Also, I love the campus life here, I love the parties on the weekends, and first and foremost I love the academics. I transferred to New College from Stetson University, where it was very hard to "mess around," per se; Stetson wasn't the kind of place for a freshman like myself who was completely undecided, it wasn't a good place to explore. New College, on the other hand, is the perfect place to find yourself. It's very easy to take a variety of courses here, most likely due to the contract system. The contract system in itself is the other reason why I love New College. I can take classes and enjoy them without having to stress about a GPA or wonder how my grade is in relation to anyone else. It eliminates all inter-student competition and puts the focus on you: do the best that you want to do, and as long as your satisfied with your performance, than that's all that matters. I love New College! I can't wait to be an alum and give them lots of money so one day they can be a New Ivy.

Bam Bam Bam

Some unique things: we have the Bike Shoppe, which is a student-run volunteer-based workshop where you can learn how to fix your bike. We also have the Four Winds, a student-run vegetarian/vegan cafe. I talked about the contract system in the previous question, but basically it's a system where we have no GPA or letter grades, but instead a "narrative evaluation," in which our professor writes about our performance in class. These are particularly essential to graduate school admissions and they are the reason for why nearly everyone who goes to New College also goes on to grad school. The social life here is also pretty unique. I would say that most people don't leave campus; we have outdoor parties called "walls" every Friday and Saturday, and the campus police here are awesome and super chill - their main concern is to keep us safe from "townies," but they don't interfere with our fun basically ever unless there's a noise complaint. Another unique academic aspect is ISP, or Independent Study Project, which is for the month of January. We either design our own ISP or we can choose from a list of group ISPs, and basically for a month we take only one class. It's a really chill period and a nice way to return to school after the winter break - it eases you into school instead of pushing you right in.