Monday, January 19, 2009

Visit to The Master's College

After attending Whittier High School for more than 3 years now, this whole Christian college thing has been quite refreshing. How is it that I get a personal email from someone in the admissions team from a college that only has my basic information because of an online college search site? Oh yeah -- that's because they don't have 55,000 freshman applicants each year like UCLA. How is it that I get an email from another Christian college who just wanted to ask me how I'm doing and say, "I just wanted you to know that we were thinking about you today"?

At the Christian college fair at Whittier Christian High School, I was treated to a very pleasant and personal conversation with an admissions representative from The Master's College who had remembered my name from an email I sent to one of his coworkers. (And that when Biola's desk was swarming with prospective students.) This same person telephoned me every time he received something from me in the admissions process, such as a transcript or application (and sent letters in the mail anyway), and told me when my acceptance letter had been mailed. He even recognized me when I arrived on campus this Monday for "Mondays @ Master's".

Really the only thing I didn't like about the visit was the beginning. After signing in, collecting name tags, a campus map, other papers, and 2 books written by the TMC staff, we headed for chapel, which was in the gym. (What? Chapel in the gym? At Whittier Christian School we had the church auditorium to use, and at Whittier High, we use the lavish 2400-seat Vic Lopez Auditorium quite flippantly!) Okay, I guess the gym is an okay place for chapel. But I don't easily excuse music in a chapel service that is so loud that my ears demand the earplugs that are in my pocket.

Next was the class visitation, so I sat in on Introduction to Hebrew 2. We had a campus tour to look at buildings and learn what goes on inside of them. By this point, I had noticed that there were many bikes all around campus, mostly on bike racks. One staff member told me that there was a main place everyone keeps their bikes, but those with the more expensive bikes keep theirs in the dorms. The lunch I enjoyed is catered by Bon Appétit in the cafeteria. After lunch, Mom and I listened to TMC students talk about why TMC is far superior to the other schools they've attended (one girl said this is her third year of college and her third college). That brief sentence didn't properly describe it, but by this point, there was no question in my mind that I wanted to attend The Master's College beginning Fall 2009. (And I'm not talking about the bike sentence.)

I observed unmatched kindness to us visitors by individual students, who saw to it that we knew where we were going and weren't lost. There were others who, upon seeing our name tags, asked us where we were from, and other such questions that you know I am hardly wont to ask others. I did not observe super-people; I observed people filled with the Spirit (Eph. 5:18).

That is what I meant by my comment about TMC's score being not perfect, but exceedingly high.

Next, I need to graduate, and maybe apply for 3rd-party scholarships that demand essays. Of course I don't know how to write anything between 3 sentences and 5 pages in length, so that might be a challenge.

No comments:

Post a Comment