College visit report card time!

This week I've visited UGA, OSU, and UTK.  All three of them are on my finalized list of schools I'm applying to (along with Northwestern, UK, USC, and Indiana), and I was interested to see how Ohio and Georgia stacked up against UT.

Here are the results:

University of Georgia, Bulldogs: B-
UGA is hard to describe.  It's simultaneously better and worse than I thought it would be.  The campus and atmosphere are pretty nice, but the school is obviously controlled by football.  Their speakers were surprisingly rude and condescending, as well.  On the other hand, their honors program is very nice – if I can even get into it, which is no guarantee.   I found out almost nothing about their linguistics department, except that only 12 people graduated with a degree in linguistics last year…which is more than some schools, but still a pretty low number.

The Ohio State University, Buckeyes: A
I must say, I was extremely impressed with OSU.  I was apprehensive going in, but immediately I liked Columbus, liked the campus (it's already in the throes of autumn), and liked the general atmosphere.  Opposed to Georgia, which gives no personalized attention to anyone, Ohio gave me an individual tour of the honors dorms, an individual meeting with an admissions rep, an individual course scheduling meeting, and – very amazingly – lunch with the head of the linguistics department, who also gave me an extensive tour of her department, which is one of the top in the country.  It was scary to have to be really alert and asking intelligent questions all day, but I could tell that Ohio really cares about its applicants.  This is even more impressive considering it passed Texas and Michigan as the biggest university in the nation, with some hundred billion students.  That's what it seemed like; a more accurate number is probably 39,000.

University of Tennseesse Knoxville, Volunteers: B-
What is there to say about UT?  It's UT.  There's nothing wrong with it as a school, and it has a decent honors program, a good English department, and an okay interdisciplinary degree in linguistics.  But nothing about it stands out to me, and it doesn't feel like it could be home.  But if I have to stay instate, for some reason, it will be a good option.


Next weekend I visit Kentucky, and one day this month I'm missing school to visit South Carolina.  I haven't scheduled a visit to Indiana yet.  I don't really know much about the school except it has a really top linguistics program.


Aaaand other than all that I have been hanging out with some pretty cool people this week (Jesse, Carlton, Lindsay) and doing random things.  We've been getting really creative in our attempts to try new ways of having fun.  Hopefully we don't get in trouble for our most recent project….ahhh hmm.  But tonight is Sophie/Rachel/Heather's 53^rd birthday party and I'm looking forward to some hardcore fun, ha.  And tomorrow I get to do all the homework I've put off for seven days in the span of about three hours. 


I love you.

Christina