Three Students Share their Path to Tufts
A joy of being an admissions officer is sharing so much of Tufts with so many different students. We never know which part of our community will resonate…
A joy of being an admissions officer is sharing so much of Tufts with so many different students. I never know which part of our community will resonate with the students I talk with – it could be the electric racing team or the fact that we have Sundae Sundays in our dining hall (yes…we do have a FULL ice cream buffet on Sundays) or the eight identity-based resource centers on campus or Tuftonia’s Day or…well…any other number of things!
The Tufts community is an incredibly diverse one, but there are some common threads that pull us together: our kindness, collaboration, commitment to civic engagement, and our intellectual playfulness.
To give you an idea of the many reasons why students gravitate toward Tufts, I asked 3 students from 3 states how they found their way here.
Blake’s Journey to Finding Tufts
QuestBridge exposed me to Tufts. Being a QuestBridge applicant to Tufts, financial aid was THE determining factor in my college search, and Tufts checked that box off with ease and transparency. Now, this might be a hot take, but I wasn't picky as some of my peers. When ranking my QuestBridge schools, I remember seeing a photo of Carm (which would become my first-year residence hall!) and thinking, "I guess I'll rank this school, that hall looks pretty." Although I advise doing more research than I did, I am SO glad I followed this gut feeling I had. Once I looked more into it (majors, research opportunities, location), I knew I could love my life at Tufts - and I do!
When you write your application essays for Tufts(!), the last question you will have to answer will be a simple one.
In roughly 250 words: "Why Tufts?"
My "Why Tufts?" ended up being a romanticized version of the life I would live at Tufts. Running into friends at our student-run coffee shop, The Sink; laughing with classmates as we attempt to decipher 19th century Spanish poetry; spending nights in the nearby metropolis of Boston... candidly, my "Why Tufts?" ended up being the life I live now. I love what I learn, and I love where I live. I wouldn't trade my journey to Tufts for anything.
Susannah’s College Search Process
When I first started looking at schools, I had no idea what I was looking for. The counselor at my high school had us take quizzes and surveys and asked us to rank the aspects of schools we felt were most important to us – our must-haves and our deal-breakers. But I didn't know what I wanted to study, where I wanted to live, what student organizations I was looking for, any of it. I was simultaneously intimidated by both schools that felt overly pre-professional and ones that had no core requirements whatsoever. I couldn't imagine living in a city or being trapped in the middle of nowhere. Did I need the anonymity and opportunity of a big university or the intimacy and community of a small college?
Looking back, these questions all seem to so obviously be pointing me in the direction of a school like Tufts, one that lets you try a bunch of classes and figure it all out before having to declare, one that has a contained, green campus but is a 15 minute train ride from the city, and one that falls right in the sweet spot between big and small schools. It took me a long time to look past the overwhelming nature of my indecision and start looking at schools that had a best of both worlds standing (cue Hannah Montana), but once I did, I was able to craft a list of schools I felt were perfectly in the middle.
In the end, deciding where to go didn't depend a whole lot on the physical or logistical attributes of the school. It became a question of social compatibility–where I thought I could find my sort of people. At the end of the day, I felt Tufts had a lot of brilliant people who didn't take themselves too seriously but cared a lot about their impact on the world. So far, I think I got it right!
Josh’s Decision-Making Process
Hailing from a small independent high school, I knew that I was looking for a collaborative undergraduate environment where I could build relationships with professors and where my peers looked out for each other and felt mutually invested in each other’s success. I started my college search process by scouring the websites and admissions publications of schools I was initially interested in. Current students’ emails will often be listed on admissions websites for prospective students to contact— taking advantage of this resource was so valuable in getting a real feel of what a school was like!
