Bulletin Board
I had an amazing four years in college, which is one of the reasons I joined College Possible. Attending college really is possible, and the goal of Virtual Advising is to support you at every step of the way. I can’t wait to work with each and every one of you this year!
At Lewis & Clark, I majored in Sociology and Anthropology. I also did a minor in Chinese language, most of which was completed through two study abroad programs in China. I was a peer mentor in a program that supported underrepresented students and a member of a board that planned events on campus designed to spark dialogue among students about social justice issues. I even had the opportunity to start my own club that provided informal student and instructor-led workout classes on campus. I graduated in 2013 with my bachelor’s degree, a wonderful group of friends, and a series of unparalleled experiences from hiking up mountains as part of freshman orientation to playing guitar in front of the entire dining hall at a Chinese New Year celebration.
I applied to seven or eight schools in Minnesota, Ohio, Oregon, Washington state, and California. While most of my schools were small liberal arts colleges, I also applied to some larger public schools to keep my options open in terms of location and cost. My first choice college was Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon. LC was a reach/target school for me, meaning that my grades and test scores were pretty in line with their averages, but I wasn’t positive that I’d get in. I applied Early Action and got accepted before the applications to my other schools were even due! Having an acceptance and a scholarship offer early on both boosted my confidence and took the pressure off my other applications. I still applied to the other schools, but I think in my gut I always knew I would end up at Lewis & Clark.
I knew I wanted to be at a small school in the midwest or west, I wanted a school with affordable study abroad opportunities, I wanted to have small classes where I could get to know my professors, and I wanted to be in or very close to a large or midsize city. I also wanted to be at a liberal arts college because I wasn’t sure what I wanted to study, and liberal arts schools allow students to explore a wide variety of subjects before declaring a major. The school’s food had to be good too, of course.
My high school participated in a program called Project SUCCESS which led workshops about the college search process, brought students on local college tours, and ran a drop-in application help center after school. I spent hours poring over books with a page for every college and university in the country, did countless hours of online research (some of my favorite sites were Princeton Review’s rankings and College Prowler), and even went on an overnight college visit tour to Chicago with Project SUCCESS. All these experiences helped me narrow down what I was looking for.
Clare: My College Story
Throughout high school, I knew I wanted to attend college but had no idea of what type of school I wanted to go to. Large or small? Urban, rural or somewhere in between? Which state? The schools I was interested in ranged from big-city New York University to my hometown’s University of Minnesota to tiny Oberlin College in rural Ohio.
This is my first dorm room from freshman year!
Studying with friends makes finals way better.
Here I am at graduation with my parents and my cousin, who was a freshman at Lewis & Clark when I was a senior!
This is my first dorm room from freshman year!