Why Did I Choose Loyola University Chicago?
Blog 3—Why did I choose Loyola?
During my senior year of high school, my dad and I drove hundreds of miles to visit eight potential college choices. We started in the East Coast, circled south towards Tennessee, and then toured Illinois colleges on our way home to Chicago. We toured all kinds of schools: schools with Gothic architecture and vines, schools surrounded by cornfields, schools with entire weekends devoted to basketball. Although these initial tours impressed me, I was yet to feel at home on a campus. I own the fact that I am picky and stubborn in everything I do, but I did not want to choose the wrong school for my undergraduate degree.
Our final tour was here at Loyola, on my 17th birthday. My family and I walked by the lake, attended Mass at Madonna della Strada, and picnicked on the quad. After my tour, I remember sitting in Sullivan Center and no longer feeling the need to visit any other school.
Loyola offered everything I wanted academically, from undergraduate research to an Interdisciplinary Honors Program. In a word, I wanted a challenge, and that is exactly what I got through fellowship and freshman seminar. I wanted variety in my class schedule, and I found exactly that through my service learning classes and Study Abroad in Rome this summer. Most importantly, I wanted to study my passions, genetics and anatomy, and through my molecular biology major I am surrounded by professors and peers who are just as intrigued as I am by the medical field.
Through Loyola’s music ministry and community service programs, I am also able to explore and share my Catholic faith. This in particular made me feel at home, for I have attended Catholic schools since Kindergarten and played violin for Mass since middle school. Loyola gives me the means to continue my service work through music ministry and tutoring, ultimately teaching me to serve and to live for others.
And where is there a better city to experience, serve, and learn than Chicago? I am so lucky to be a student in Chicago, a city filled with volunteer and job opportunities, not to mention the culture, entertainment, and beauty. The city has introduced me to so much and has taught me how to be independent and self-sufficient.
I admit that my dad and I made a complete circle around the Midwest and the South only to find my top choice an hour away from home. I apologized to him for the exhaustive college search, but he and my mom agreed that if they were applying now too, they would choose Loyola in a heartbeat. In fact, my brother is now a senior in high school discerning his way through the college selection process. Although I do not want to skew his college choice, I have full confidence that he would love Loyola too. Why wouldn’t anyone choose Loyola?