First Choice
1/19/2007'One-third of freshmen surveyed did not attend their first-choice institution, the highest level in almost two decades.' So states a story in today's online Chronicle of Higher Education. It's also been widely reported on National Public Radio and lots of other media outlets. The reasons, it seems, are often financial.
We're counter-cultural. Here at Dominican, 75% of this year's freshmen said we were their first choice and 21% said we were their second. That's our highest number since 1993. Some would say it's about 'fit' but frankly I'm not a fan of that term.
'Fit' suggests two static realities, neither of which is changing dramatically any time soon. Fit suggests we are what we are and you need to conform.
I firmly believe otherwise about my school.
Students come here not to fit passively into a mold. They come here because we challenge them to join a sustained and penetrating dialogue and exploration, where they get to discover what fascinates them and then pursue it with gusto in the company of others. They don't just get a seat at the table—they get to rearrange the furniture. They don't come to get their ticket punched. They come for something real and life-changing. Our financial and scholarship programs help make that dream a reality.
In that same national survey (which has been conducted by the Higher Education Research Institute Los Angeles since 1966, and provides annual responses from more than 270,000 freshmen at the beginning of the fall semester at nearly 400 colleges), the top reason Dominican's new freshmen chose to attend college is 'to learn more about things that interest me'—and at a significantly higher rate than the national averages.
This one item, for Dominican students, stood out ahead of the rest. I love that. I don't read it as narrowly pursuing only what interests me at the moment, closed to all other possibilities. I read it instead as desiring to know more based on a love of a topic, of wanting to pursue in depth those questions that lure us. My faculty colleagues and I hope to whet students' interest in an array of topics and fields so that they can engage in this dynamic process again and again.
The next items also deemed 'very important' by over 2/3 of the students, were:
- To get training for a specific career
- To be able to get a better job
- To be able to make more money
- To gain a general education and appreciation of ideas
- To prepare myself for graduate or professional school