Guest Post: Kriselle from Born and Raised In Cali

It's hump day already! I am still out west with my family, but one of the things I love about Her Campus is all of the bloggers I've met, and who I can ask to guest blog for me! 

Today Kriselle from Born and Raised in Cali is going to talk to you about small, private colleges! 

Enjoy!

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Hey there, everyone! My name is Kriselle and I blog over at bornandraisedincali.blogspot.com feel free to stop by my blog any time [: I am also going to be a sophomore in college at a small, private, Christian school in Southern California called Vanguard University.

Speaking of private schools, that’s what I’m here to talk to you about today! Yay, haha.

I don’t know about you, but where I’m from, many people don’t really consider private universities for college because they’ve either never heard of the school before, or they see the sticker price and automatically think it’s too expensive to even try applying there. So most don’t and end up at state-run schools. (And due to popular belief, not all small universities are religiously affiliated).

Now I’m not saying state schools are bad, but if you live in California like I do, state schools don’t always mean getting out in four years. It also means less financial aid due to the economic situation California is in.

At my university, it costs almost 40,000 dollars per year to go to school. Most people I know (as well as myself) get enough financial aid to cover more than half of the fees, if not all. I’m one of the lucky ones who gets 99 percent of my tuition and fees covered with financial aid. My school gives hefty academic scholarships, ranging from 10,000 to 16,000 dollar scholarships! If you get the highest academic scholarship (it is 19,000 I believe for the incoming freshman class), you have enough to cover tuition and then some! You can put that towards something like housing.

Money aside, there are so many other pluses in going to small private schools! Here are some others:

·         Smaller Class Sizes: At my school, the biggest class you can possibly have is less than 100 students, and that is pushing it. My biggest class so far has been roughly 50 people, and it was a general ed class, so major-specific classes don’t have more than 30 people per class most of the time.

·         Networking Opportunities: If you develop close relationships with professors or staff members over time, they can do things like write recommendations for internships or refer you for jobs! You can actually do this at any school, but because class sizes are smaller, it is usually less intimidating to approach professors this way.

·         Personalized Help: Professors want to know you! All the professors I’ve had so far like to ask and know how their students are doing in classes or in their personal lives. They want to help you in any way possible. My professors will pray for you if you just ask them to! Sometimes they’ll even invite you over to their house for some coffee!

·         Graduating in Four Years or Less: Private schools encourage their students to graduate in four years or less! My school makes it really easy to graduate a semester early if you really want to. I even have friends graduating in three years or less because my school takes full advantage of AP/community college credit. The only time students take longer than four years to graduate is if they spent extra time at the community college level, if they are double majoring, or if they are taking the minimum amount of units every semester/quarter.

Those are the top four perks of smaller, private schools. I could talk about other pluses forever, like the school paying for you to go to conferences where you need to fly there or the music department paying for your dinner at the famous Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffles after winning a weeklong competition (true stories). Private universities aren’t for everyone, but give them a shot! You might just run into many open doors [:

If you have any questions, feel free to stop by bornandraisedincali.blogspot.com, my blog and leave a comment or look for me on any of my social networks (displayed on my blog)! I’d be more than happy to help you in your college journey [: 

Hope y'all enjoyed this as much as I did! 

How is your July coming along? Can you please help me slow summer down? 

xoxo

AV