By: The Editorial Board
Editor’s Note: The Editorial Board of the Cento is composed of members of the staff and does not reflect the opinions of any one individual on the staff. The Editorial Board represents the voice of the Cento.
You’ve probably seen in the news recently that a 17-year-old New York student named Kwasi Enin was accepted into all eight Ivy League Universities. The odds of this are, of course, astronomical, and we would like to congratulate Kwasi Enin on this feat.
However, one can’t help but wonder why someone would apply to all eight Ivy League schools.
Though we certainly can’t say for sure, it’s difficult to believe that one would visit all of these schools and feel so at home at all of them that they then felt comfortable applying.
Furthermore, Enin has declared that he wants to go into medicine, but a quick glance at U.S News’ list of top graduate Medical Schools for Primary Care in 2015 reveals that not a single Ivy League is in the top ten.
In fact, only Penn and Dartmouth made the top twenty. Most Ivy’s excel in research, but so do much more cost-efficient universities like Stanford and Wisconsin.
What’s our point? Simple: there’s more to a college than a big name.
Centre College may not be an Ivy League, but it certainly punches above its weight, as evidenced by being the only school of its size to host two Vice Presidential debates.
And, despite being a small school hosting a huge event, we had a passionate student body that volunteered in droves to help at the debates in any way that it could, helping the process run as smoothly as possible.
There were Centre students helping CBS, CNN, Fox, and other broadcasters. There were Centre students helping to park cars, run shuttles, and collect trash and recycling. There were students inside the debate working as ushers, and a select few were even chosen to participate in the mock debate in the days leading up to the real thing.
A big reason for Centre’s success is the quality and dedication of the students, something you may not find amongst all 7,200 Harvard students.
One of Centre’s greatest advantages comes from the professors, which are constantly nominated as some of the best in country and are exactly the people that promote this kind of dedication and involvement.
Centre professors have been mentioned in Princeton’s Top 300 Professors of the Year and have won numerous CASE Kentucky Professor of the Year awards.
These awards come because the professors are all highly educated individuals who make it their duty not only to educate but also to learn and care about students.
Office hours are open and accessible, something you don’t always find at larger institutions. Classes are smaller, with a professor/student ratio of 11:1, giving professors the opportunity to learn students’ names, interests, and learning styles. Seminars are small and intimate, often ending with an invitation to the professor’s house for dinner, and some even feature trips across the country.
At Centre, you’re guaranteed to have a full professor teaching your class, not a TA or grad student. Centre professors build cabins, fly drones, work for NASA, lead inspiring human rights trips, write books of poetry, involve themselves in the community, and set a shining example of what it means to be a lifelong learner.
Professors also lead numerous study abroad trips, another thing Centre does so well. Take a look at the flags in Cowan sometime. It’s a lot more than you’d think for a school of its size.
Every semester, groups of Centre students are sent all across the globe to various locations to learn by seeing and doing.
Not many colleges across the county, especially of this size, have study abroad programs as robust and affordable as Centre’s.
Other more affluent schools such as Yale have miniscule programs in comparison to Centre’s.
The fact that Centre understands that there’s more to a college education, something that lies beyond campus libraries and science labs, stands as a testament to its dedication to the student. And this shows in the statistics. Centre’s freshman retention rate is 91%, and it’s well known that we have some of the most dedicated and generous alumni in the nation.
Getting accepted into all eight Ivy League schools is a wonderful achievement from which nothing can be taken away.
We at the Editorial Board wish Kwasi Enin all the best at whatever school he chooses. But we’re proud of our college choice.
We are proud that we chose a small school in Kentucky, one that gives the time and opportunity to learn and grow amongst great mentors and peers, and one that gives us a ticket to see new horizons.
Centre may not be an Ivy in name, but Woodrow Wilson said it best: “There is a little college down in Kentucky which in 60 years has graduated more men who have acquired prominence and fame than Princeton has in her 150 years.”