The Magic of Engineering for the Customer
Creating a schedule for the first time can be a daunting task, especially for a first year engineering student. There are so many aspects to consider…
A few weeks ago, we were all tasked to write blog posts about why we chose Tufts that would be posted throughout the month of April for prospective students. As soon as I got the email about this blog post, I started writing. One paragraph in, I scrapped it. I wasn’t writing in my own voice. I had just finished making my A Day in the Life of a Chemical Engineer video, and I had my hands in a lot of different admissions pots at the time. So I figured I would wait a week and see if anything came to me. I added “Why Tufts Blog” to my to-do-list. Another week went by and I sat down to write again. Still, nothing. So another week passed, and then another. Each time I tried to put my story in words, it came out awkward and incomplete. Now I’m here one last time to tell you why I chose Tufts. I decided to stray away from the condensed version that I give on my tours since I have the time to take you through my journey to Tufts.
Finding and choosing Tufts was in the making long before I even knew it. Every day when I walked into my high school, I saw at least two Tufts posters on my way to my locker. They both depicted the picturesque Academic Quad in the fall with beautiful red and orange leaves clinging to the trees. At the time, I appreciated these posters at a mere aesthetic level, and I actually had no idea what school they were advertising. From the start of high school, I knew that I wanted to go into a STEM field. See my post about why I chose chemical engineering. That being said, I didn’t want to lose the part of myself that also loved the humanities, so my field narrowed to the many liberal arts colleges that also have STEM programs, or the technical schools that have humanities programs.
At that point, I started visiting colleges all over the country. At each one, I took at least a page of notes, if you consider bullet points of random facts notes. I wrote the occasional question that was left unanswered by an information session or a tour. After the visit, I wrote some short summaries about the schools and what I liked and didn’t like while the memories were fresh. I found that I was able to express the nebulous concepts of what I wanted in a college that had been floating around in my head for months. I very quickly determined that I wanted a school where engineering wasn’t separated from other majors. I wanted a place that had strong STEM programs and equally strong humanities programs. I wanted a place that was interdisciplinary and undergraduate focused. In short, I wanted Tufts. I just didn’t know it yet, predominantly because Tufts was the last school I visited.
During my junior year, my guidance counsellor suggested some schools that I could go visit before my senior year, given the things that I liked and didn’t like from my earlier visits. Many of the schools he listed were small in size, located near cities, were strong in both the sciences and the humanities, and had diverse engineering programs that offered multiple majors. So the summer after my junior year, my family planned a trip from New Jersey to Massachusetts, ending with Tufts, which was a last minute addition to the trip since it made more sense to fly from Boston rather than Albany.
I arrived at Tufts, knowing that it would be the last college visit I would have to sit through, and my attitude was anything but positive. It took me a while to warm up the first information session we attended, which was specifically for engineering. By the second, I was laughing at jokes. I felt as though I really connected with the admissions officer who gave the general information session. She too visited a lot of schools, and spoke about her mother taking meticulous notes, especially when it came to the optional (elsewhere, secretly required) alumni interviews that schools offer. In a lot of ways, this reflected some of the things I had written at other schools. After the session we went on the campus tour, led by one of the most enthusiastic tour guides I’ve ever met. She was incredibly honest, genuine, and humble. Through her stories, I was able to gain a deep sense of the strong community at Tufts. It was ultimately this picture of Tufts that led me to apply early decision, and it is still the picture I see every day in the interactions I have with the amazing people here. They are some of the reasons, among many others, why I still choose Tufts today.
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