Sadly, today is the last day of our Intensive Learning. We concluded our thoughts about the schools we went to and did a small recap/reflection of our IL experience.
1 – Ranking Colleges
We started by ranking the colleges/universities we had visited this past week based on our own criteria, such as campus appearance, academic curriculum, location, etc. We began filling out scores based on the weight (importance) of each factor and created our own rankings. We quickly realized that many of us had different values and rankings of the colleges.
After sharing our rankings, we realized that there were some popular ones among the group. This is because 1/2 of the students had ranked UPenn as their first choice, and the other half had ranked Haverford as their top choice. Mr. LaTempa compelled us to rethink our lists after sharing his own experiences. In the end, we all had a better idea of what colleges we wanted to go to in a general sense. As we’re only freshmen, this may prove to be vital in the future.
2 – Discussion and Feedback
After ranking, we began discussing how Thriving Now and Beyond has helped us and what the program should be in the future. We brought up that the most compelling part of this program was the college visits and how we preferred having a “full” official college visit (info session + tour experience). In addition, a suggestion for next year was changing up the description for the IL experience and making it seem more interesting, as it wasn’t just all about knowing yourself and thinking about the bigger picture; it was also about having fun and exploring new environments where you could potentially thrive!
– Zahra Mammadova and Matthew Diaz