As many of you reading this post are probably making the hard choice of the school you’ll attend for the next four years, I thought it may be helpful to respond to some of my main concerns and why I really shouldn’t have ever been worried about Tufts.
- It would be too big.
- Tufts was the second largest school I applied to and to be quite honest, I thought I would think it too big, and I would never be able to see familiar faces. I could not have been more wrong about this. Sure, it is larger than all the other NESCAC schools, but that in no way makes the school feel huge or unlike a close campus. Over the two semesters I have been here, I have had friends in all my classes except for one, and I consistently run into friends or even acquaintances as I walk to class or just hang out around campus. Similarly, I have had no problem connecting with professors even though the school was much larger and I thought that would detract from their free time and ability to talk with their students. The professors at Tufts truly care about their students and because of that, my largest worry shouldn’t have even been a blip on my radar.
- I would have too much work and not have time for friends or relaxing.
- As a student-athlete and an engineer, I am definitely busy. Does that mean I can never sit down and relax, or just take a nap? No, not at all! The one thing it has translated to would be the need to be more efficient with the time I am not on the water or in class. Tufts is a challenging school and while the homework and projects can be tough, I’ve never found them to be unmanageable with a little preparation and time management.
- It was too close to a big city.
- I was convinced that I wanted to attend a school away from a big city. Clearly, I was wrong. Tufts is just a couple T stops away from Boston, and I have loved it. Boston provides connections to just about anything as well as sporting events, cool museums, and what feels like a million other college students. Making use of the larger metropolitan area while still having the smaller school on-campus vibe has been incredible important to me in my first couple terms and provides the best of both worlds—a smaller tight-knit community, with all the connections to a larger, fast-paced city.
Photo Credit: Jon Miller (Flickr Creative Commons)