Did you have a good day off yesterday? Did you do anything productive? We know at least some students took advantage of not having school to spend the day making college visits... and part of the reason we know that is because we saw Kilbourne represented on campus while we were out making a campus visit of our own!
All of the district staff spent the day learning and focused on different aspects of professional development to help them improve in the work we do with and for students. The school counselors were given the opportunity to go and visit a college campus that none of us had seen in person before - the University of Cincinnati.
We picked visiting UC not only because it was a campus we hadn't seen previously, but also because it is a college that so many of our Kilbourne students end up going to and we wanted to learn more about the opportunities on the campus and what makes UC special.
It was an AWESOME day! We had beautiful weather for a campus tour (and yes, that definitely makes a difference...), and we also got to spend meaningful, quality time with the UC Director of Admissions.
In addition to spending time on their Uptown (main) campus, we also made a trip to their Blue Ash campus which is one of their two regional campuses available for students.
We are all so excited to be able to talk about our visit to UC with any and all students and families who are considering becoming a Bearcat in the future. But for now, we will leave you with 5 facts we enjoyed learning today:
- UC admits students specifically into their major. It's ok if you aren't sure what you want to do some day and you can even change your major once on campus, but they are going to work really hard to help match students to their intended majors. This is why it is important that you spend time while in high school exploring career pathways that might appeal to you.
- We were uncertain about the essay because it says it isn't required and we wanted to know more about that. It truly isn't required! They do require the paragraph essay about why you want to study a particular major (because of point number 1 above), but the big overall essay, while they will read it just to learn more about you, the reality is it doesn't have a meaningful role in deciding if you get in or not. (Same goes for rec letters which is why those are also optional!) They use a rubric to score applications and there is not a place to score or give you points your essay or your rec letters. Because they don't require the essay they also don't have to worry about trying to figure out if you really wrote your own essay or if it was written by AI.
- Your activity section is very important to them. They want kids who will be engaged on campus. We specifically asked if a student should fill all 10 activities and she said no, unless those are all really meaningful experiences. If you volunteered 1 time at a food pantry - that is not something they want to see on your activities list. What did you do that truly mattered to you - those are the activities they want to see and read about in your application! There are so many ways to get involved on the UC campus. From their football stadium which is located in the middle of campus to their nearby rec center and student union to the countless clubs and organizations available for students (we had a little laugh about the fact that they have a hot tub club which meets in the hot tub which is located in the same area as their lazy river) and a lot of great opportunities for students to get real job experiences through co-op programs.
- What classes you are taking in high school matters a great deal! You want to be sure that you are prepared for college and the work that will be required for admission and for success on campus. The 500 person lecture hall is home to several freshman standard classes such as Chemistry and Anatomy. It is also where the smaller Calculus sections will all come together for their exams. Bigger classrooms like this are more common in freshman year, but as you continue forward in your education and specialize into your particular major, you'll find much smaller classes. In fact, our tour guide shared that she is currently taking a Circuit Analysis Class for her engineering major and there are only 4 students in the class in total. From an admissions perspective, if you are applying to a high demand science related major (think Engineering/ healthcare fields), they would like to see that you have successfully completed Biology, Chemistry and Physics. If you plan on majoring in Business at any Ohio public college, they all must follow a state requirement that you will take Calculus as a part of your Business program. As a result, they want to see that you have successfully completed Pre-Calculus during high school (not stats or something else) and yes, that is even for Marketing majors or other types of Business degrees.
- Their Blue Ash campus is a beautiful regional campus location with a ton of great supports and resources for their students. The regional campuses do not have their own housing for students, BUT, students can live on the main Uptown campus and take a shuttle bus back and forth to the regional campus. The shuttle takes anywhere from 25-45 minutes depending on traffic, but being able to live with all of the other UC students in the dorms on main campus and travel out to the branch for your classes is a great option for our students who might want to start at a UC branch campus. After successfully completing at least 24 hours at the Blue Ash campus, students can transition over to the Uptown campus.
We were so thankful for the chance to visit UC and meet with the admissions staff - especially because they are super focused right now on trying to read through ALL of the applications that they have received. She guesstimated that each staff member will be reading 50 to 75 applications a day! That is a LOT of reading to do in a day! We hope that if you made a campus visit, you also had a good experience and learned a lot about the college and the opportunities available to you in the future! We can't wait to hear about it.
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