Tuesday, March 22, 2011

STETSON UNIVERSITY JUNIOR OPEN HOUSE






Saturday we traveled to Deland (Deland is a very, very small town in Central Florida about 40 minutes east of Orlando) for the Stetson University Junior Open House. Stetson University is Katie's first choice for college. It is a small private University with a very good reputation.

The Open House was very impressive. The schedule was as follows:

9:30-10:00 Registration and Continental Breakfast
10:00-10:30 Welcome to the University/both the Provost and the Dean of Admissions spoke, while the Gym was dark and pictures of happy college students flashed. As you may have guessed, the biggest dork Mom in history cried all the way through.

The students then went to workshops while the parents were given tons of information about Financial Aid. (Please pray to God for our deserving child)

When that was over we met up with the kids for what was called the "Explore Stetson" fair all facets of the college had booths lined up to give you amazing amounts of information.
First Stop: Pet Dorm Guy, this is where I practically got down on my knees and begged the guy to let Bennyfoo into college too. Katie has followed up with a letter and a picture of Benny in his Stetson collar.

I also had an interesting conversation with the head of the Theology Department who turned out to be the sponsor for both Invisible Children (Katie is running for president of this organization next year) and Habitat for Humanity. Stetson is heavily based on community service.

One of the organizations that appealed to Katie was the club that takes animals to nursing homes and other places, and trains service animals through the New Horizons Service Dogs .

I spoke to a student about the Honors Program , the Professor who runs the program was not there, but when I told the student a little bit about Katie she said that Kate seemed like a prime candidate and gave me his card. Katie has already written to him.

The last person I spoke to during this session was the Director of First Year and Transitional Programs. I wanted to know what the university could do to help shy students like Katie fit in to campus life, she was very nice and we had a long conversation , mainly about upperclassmen who "buddy up" with freshmen.

We then went to two more academic sessions, we split up so that we could see the most possible. I went with Anna who was very impressed with Stetson and is now declaring it her number two choice.

The day went well and the University was extremely impressive.
I'm just sorry we didn't take more pictures.

Please check facebook for some awesome Anna news....

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