College Perspectives

[Music] how do I choose the right College some Young Americans take that question too lightly some of them are scared by it scared by the glitter and the Rah by the high standards of study by the immensity of the whole experience ahead in a search for perspective we are going to visit the University of Illinois large Midwestern ammer College small east coast and on the other side of the continent San Francisco State College mediumsized in a city we'll talk to students to young people who have met the task of choosing and are now living with their choice they remember their own worries before taking this big step they if anyone ought to be able to give us some perspective suggest how many different types of students there are and we pick the places to visit the same way not with the hope of summing up the system but just to give a hand how broad and diverse it is ammer college is in a small town in Massachusetts the enrollment is slightly over a thousand all men students have to start with a rigorous liberal arts program of required courses to get a good foundation in the humanities and science before they can specialize about 70% of them come from the East Coast the rest from further of field where do you come from come from De Mo Iowa it's a long way away how' you pick ammers well I made a trip out here I stayed with a a group of the boys I really lik their attitude they were intelligent group of guys who had a time too yeah do do you think that's a good notion to go and visit I mean you think that's important I think it's very important uhhuh did you have any notion then what you wanted to be yeah I was interested in medicine from well Junior High School on up and uh I was definitely a preed when I came here and it remained so so you knew pretty well what you wanted in the line of uh training and stuff yes well why do you pick a small liberal arts place if you want to be a doctor well amist has an excellent reputation for premedical background and uh I always had the feeling I was going to wind up in a big university complex anyway when I went to medical school and therefore a small college would be a another atmosphere and and a good environment for me to spend four years a good environment to spend 4 years in sounds fine trouble is environment is pretty hard to judge it's very much a matter of individual taste the courses the professors these things are easy to find out but they're not the whole picture for every place has got an atmosphere and the things you do when you're not hitting the books are just as vital when you're playing a game or chasing a hobby or rehearsing a part in a play oh that this too too solid flesh would melt Tha and resolve itself into a do drop in on any bunch of students who are living out some part of the college experience and you'll get a dozen different versions of What the whole life means you'll find people who have their whole career mapped out and people who are still groping around you'll get just about complete agreement on one thing the college is tough in many ways you'll get the same agreement that it does things to you how'd you come to this place hammer it was the one place in the East where that had a drama Department I knew of so it had a special draw for you I came here with with a definite purpose in mind uhhuh how long have you had this purpose in mind well really since I was about five I wanted to go on the stage uhhuh and uh first I was going to be a magician then puppets and then when I got in prep school I became interested in acting so I picked dammer can you remember back to when you first got here how the place struck you oh yes it was we had this orientation week I think all the colleges have that and uh it's kind of candy and sweets all the way everything's going to be wonderful straight on through and all the time it was in the back of my mind this isn't going to last this isn't going to last the end of orientation week it didn't last what happened then well then the work started I think the great many freshman up here for the purpose that it offers a great Challenge and that freshman The Freshman cced maners is is identified whether rumor be this or not that has the toughest curriculum in in the United States for the freshman year yeah and this is good I think if one can overcome this and meet the challenge then he is well on his way there are other reasons also for choosing a place besides the challenge of choosing a place where they do put a large number a great Demand on you reasons such as the other students in the college will be you have a wide cultural interest uh will be very bright and very stimulating to talk with outside of your class and your time spent outside of your classes is probably as important as within I think the thing that H helped me the most in deciding where I wanted to go was the Assumption I made at the beginning was that um any of the colleges which I um was looking at and all of them were pretty good colleges could give me good education and I could get pretty much what I wanted out of any college so then it was just a matter of deciding uh which college I would rather be at for four years how'd you find that out well I stayed at um a few big universities for a weekend went to classes I did the same thing at ammer and one or two other small universities I decided I definitely liked a small University a small College better and uh I chose ammer you think that business of visiting is important if possible definitely that's the the only way I could decide uh what I wanted was by visiting and talking to the people visiting itself isn't enough you've got to really talk to the students what do you ask them well I ask them what uh what they think of the college what effect it's having on them I try to find out of course the particulars of Life what the way the college treats them uh how they feel towards the other people and uh I found however that generally they know to tell what to tell you better than you know what to ask them because they've been through it and just being here I I find out um what I need to know how long did it take you to figure this place out I still haven't quite figured it out what do you mean by that I only been here two years so uh I still haven't definitely decided what I'm going to major in I haven't really had a clear conception of the purpose of Amis education I have made tentative answers so I as I've been going through but these have continually changed do you feel healthy yeah you think it's a good way to be I think it's a very good way to be to approach to approach it with an open mind and I think this is the only way you can get the full benefit of a liberal education before I came to Al I hadn't had any history at all and uh I'd had one course in summer school just to complete the oneyear requirement at my own high school and in amorist I was forced to learn that history is a good subject and I was forced to learn something about other countries and about my own country I I was more interested in math and Technical studies I didn't think that history was a subject as such yeah and you think this is this kind of broadening uh making you broaden making you learn about a number of things good idea huh I think it helped me whether whether I wanted it to or not what do you think a education is for I think the purpose of a liberal education is to give U student a chance to stand away from society and from the problems of society for a while for four years to examine some of his values uh some of his Notions about his political social philosophical moral values and then after these four years to come back and and to apply these to problems and society and because he's been able to withdraw when he comes back he can look at it on it with new light keep your eyes wide open don't make up your mind too soon that's what they'll tell you when you're studying at college and the same advice can be applied to the job of choosing a college in the first place because no one ought to run at this with blinkers on as if everything were settled without examination as if there were only one place to go there's always the chance of surprise and surprise can be valuable well one of the things I found was after I came here in my freshman year that uh I wasn't I hadn't really been able to choose a college till after I was in college for about two or three months and and I I started realizing much more what college was about because in high school I didn't uh I realized afterwards I didn't really have much of an idea what college was about you mean you chose Amorous in in a sense after you'd already chosen it uh yes but well I I had chosen it sooner but I was much more aware of what the reasons were for for my choice and what good reasons would have been yeah after I was in college do you think you could have gone about it in a better way uh well no I think the only way I could have gone about it in a better way would would have been uh had I known much more about myself what do you think about the attitude that some people take that there there's a place for them and they got to find out what it is there's only one or I I think that's absolutely wrong that one of the one of the things um which I learned in college uh which is very valuable I think is that um College the what person gets out of college is is so much up to himself and uh so much more so up to himself than than the institution he is at and uh well so it of course it does matter where you go and it is nicer for some people to go to one place than another but there's nothing crucial about it at all well there's a sort of a Paradox contained in this isn't there that is you ought to really try to find out as much as you can uh before you make your choice and you ought to act as if you're looking for that one place for you but once you've chosen then it often turns out that you're you you meet a lot of surprises and discover that uh uh a lot of places might do that's very true I know lots of people have gotten into the first choice schools and have been unhappy whereas other friends of mine have gotten into the second or third CH school and they turn out to be very happy at the place they are at what do you think college is for well I I like to to think of it as as being uh as preparing me for my non-occupational side of life and only indirectly as aiding me for my occupational side and that I'll be a better man I'll know more what I want to do but I like to look at it as exposing me uh to enough things and giving me enough interest I'll be able to pursue these and derive some pleasure from these uh throughout my life do you think it helps you to find a who you are certainly there are many smaller sized liberal arts places like ammer college that make a specialty of broadening and extending the interests of the student but a great number of students want something different something bigger with more scope more people more going on something like a State University the University of Illinois is enormous busy almost frightening in its drive and intensity with lots that is old and lots that is new and everywhere a sense of expanding it has over 20,000 students and always you feel this great weight of people on the Move did you feel shy when you came here yes why is that well I come from a small town what most people consider a small town and it's so huge here and it takes so much I mean there's so many many more people from what I'm used to seeing it kind of baffled you at the beginning huh yeah but I'm learning did you consider other places um yes I sent to three different schools for information and there's one school close to home that everybody goes to and every Everybody Knows everybody and it isn't really different I mean you don't get out and meet new people because it's just 20 mi from home and everybody drives back and forth on weekends and it just seems so small to me it just wasn't what I wanted you felt you wanted to go a distance how did your people feel about it did you have to sell that idea to them no they wanted me to do they left the choice up to me to do anything I wanted to do my parents never had a chance for an education and uh I'm the older of the two in our family and they told me to do what I wanted to do well seems to me the toughest thing is that getting down to studying bugs a lot of freshman pretty bad yeah a lot of people get the idea that school's a you know big ball and all but uh they got the wrong idea they won't last long if that's if that's what they got in mind pretty tough huh um you got to come down to down to school with the idea that it is going to be tough and only if you you know get that idea through your head can you hope to come through well some some people don't even come through when when they when they work like dogs all the time but uh then again College isn't all uh blood and sweat yeah but uh I think the uh toughest thing for most kids is just uh getting down to work study before I came down here I had the idea that holy cow there's going to be 20,000 other valid torians down here and salutatorians I'm going to be bucking all the time so the only way I can catch up with these kind of guys is to steady my head off they might be smarter than me but I'm going to study longer and better I'm going to come out just as well I've done pretty fairly down here how are your grades they're Fair they could be a lot lot better and they will be the semester you're determined about that right do you think that it's quite a shock to come to a college come to a university I mean you know when you when you hit the work and all the social life and all the people it's quite a blow well it takes quite a bit of adjustment especially to put that social life into perspective with those studies that's a problem it is yeah did you make a few mistakes when you got here oh I'm sure I did and I'll probably make quite a few more before it's all over the problem of how to make your way in a big university of finding friends balancing work and play is one that people solve in different ways some join fraternities or sororities even before starting their freshman year when you were getting ready to come to the university were you worried about fitting in about finding your place yeah yes I was I think everyone worries at the size of the University of Illinois for the fact that they would be a number and be an outcast and just be a part of the group how did it work out for you it worked out fine I think coming into a sorority house was U the biggest Advantage because I knew about 75 before I came here and um you get to know them and they all want you and they all are looking out for you then you begin to meet the students in your class and you remember them and meet them on the street many students prefer to find their own way through the university without adding the Greek letters of a fraternity or sorority to their name becoming a Greek as the phrase goes what does it mean to be an independent well it means a lot of different things to a lot of different people uh to me it means that you're more or less self-reliant you're not a member of an extremely organized group which Aid you in studying Etc sets up study rules for you you're more on your own you think that's a good idea yes very good idea I really don't Place much importance on whether a person is is a Greek or an independent because I feel that there are different types of housing that fit the needs of different types of people and for myself I was completely happy I live in a house of 44 girls so we have the organization uh have the closeness but we lack Greek letters which doesn't particularly bother me a bit the range of studies at a large University is as far-reaching as a person's interests can go Illinois is particularly strong on science but by definition a university is universal there's room for a student to find himself in any subject many discover that meeting new possibilities changes them gives them a new slant on themselves or their career well I started out with a different idea than I have now and what was your first idea my first idea was English education yeah and I changed my mind decided on music school and now I'm in pre- nursing you're in pre- nursing do you think it's um uh a good thing to to change about that way I don't feel that it's done me any harm I'm wondering whether it might not be in fact a good thing to try a number of things well I think if you have a very definite problem deciding and you change your mind it's better to switch than to just stay and stick with the original choice because there it's just no good if you know you don't want that has money been a problem with you um only in that I would like to be making my own money and putting myself through college because I I do have a job but it doesn't pay enough helps though it yes it gives spending money I'm a microfilm reviewer at the administration building it's hard work isn't it well it sounds difficult but it's it's fun it's interesting oh you like it mhm so you don't feel sort of exhausted when you finish your job and uh well it makes me feel good it's it's a different type of uh thing from studying and it just sort of a break like it makes me feel good why do you feel you'd like to to entirely pay your own way I think it might have something to do with the desire of a lot of people my age to be independ it from their parents do you think that there's some advantage in earning way it makes you feel yes definitely what does it do for you well it makes College seem to be more alive uh you uh are actually earning your way through school and it means more to you to be doing this uh when you know that it does cost a lot of money it does really help it's it's a real good feeling a big university offers the widest range of possibilities that can be packed into a single institution being big it seems a big thing to tackle and yet the students don't seem to find the reality frightening at all what about the university itself did it sort of scare you when you were uh uh figuring to come here not really there have been quite a few students from our my hometown high school that have gone down here yeah and they said that it isn't as big or it doesn't seem as big as they say 24,000 people down here my gosh but they came back and said the classes were average and and I found out that to be true do you think it's helpful to be able to have people uh you know like friends in high school and so on who've gone through this experience to be able to talk to them to find out and yes I think that's very helpful that they you get the inside information then yeah it's not just from pamphlets or books from the college but you get it really goes on yeah it's information of are really more practical more human sort that's right yeah I went to my high school counselor and this is a senior girls counsel and she um just gave me all the possibilities and I took all exams for oh the state I took College boards because I wasn't sure whether I'd be going to school um in Illinois or out of state and um oh I looked into Panic scholarships teacher scholarships and just just anything that um I I could try sound as if you did everything possible to find out yeah and are you happy with your choice I am very much so do you think that this business of of really uh trying to exhaust all the possibilities uh has a good psychological effect when you finally make your choice in other words you feel you didn't dope off in the job of looking around you actually did everything you could I think that's that's very true that U at least I I feel that I've tried everything and I'm very happy with my decision and I don't regret it try everything you can said the girl at Illinois San Francisco State College presents another sort of choice it's in a city and while some students live on campus most of them live elsewhere in the San Francisco Bay area and commute to class by automobile or trolley car there are something like 13,000 of [Music] them students at San Francisco State feel involved in the Affairs and issues of the community and the nation they like a good argument the speaker platform in the middle of the campus is the Hub of the place speakers like the Attorney General of the State of California come to have their say and meet the Rough and Tumble of question and debate the average age of the student body is slightly higher than the ordinary many have transferred here from other institutions and they're quick to say that choosing a college is not the All or Nothing commitment young people often take it to be they place a great emphasis on freedom freedom to speak to choose to change your mind and everywhere you go you strike this clatter of talk of students holding forth on the value of their ideas or even on the value of Talk itself the students here have a great uh potential a great opportunity and they should take advantage of it and to take advantage of it they must uh get together must have free and open exchanges of opinion voice all sides of issues and if they do and if they will take interest and if they will act then they can actually influence opinion in San Francisco in Municipal politics in local politics in state politics and eventually through the state of California in National and World politics do you think this sort of argument is uh an important part of uh of Education I think it's probably the most important part because by arguing and discussing things you clarify and change your ideas have you changed in your ideas oh certainly absolutely I change all the time in what way well well when I came here I was um I probably could be classified as a liberal and uh due to the influence of uh the gesto of college life I have been driven to radical anarchism as a solution for Contemporary American problems I think that the aim of education is to prepare one for life's goal and uh if this is so then uh certainly college life shouldn't be isolated from reality or from the life that you will meet after your college life is uh completed there's something every place like this has got a personality of its own a character of its own oh I would definitely describe this as non-conformist non-conformist uh to the norm as I would say from what I've seen of other colleges we do have uh a good deal of freedom of speech and freedom of education and the professors are not t tied down as to what they can they can talk on is your non-conformism all of a political nature no it extends all the way through it's it's almost like a subculture here as far as dress uh talk they form their own subculture stick togetherness as much as they accuse the other side the the quotequote rahas they have also another it's another subculture here yeah is there room for real eccentricity but definitely definitely everyone is is it's wide open here as far as expressing your ideas we do have freedom of speech as far as the speaker platform goes anyone and everything can be discussed up there this is one of the the reasons that we have it uhhuh what sort of if somebody uh came from a long way away had never seen the place and asked you to describe it how would you describe it San Francisco say how would I describe the school itself yeah mhm oh I describe it as interesting and as having a little bit of everything yeah little bit of everything yes you think it's a a fairly broad place then huh yes I take it that you uh that sweater means something what does it mean well I'm a pom pom girl what is a pom pom girl well it's like a song girl uh there's we have a football team here at school and uh most schools have cheerleaders and song girls who lead yells and do routines dance routines during halftime during timeouts during the football games and the basketball games yeah so we just add song and color so you're you're you're you're you're a bit on the what they call the Rah side right uh-huh you like that yes uh-huh there's room for that here as well as the uh the more intellectual Pursuits oh yes are you happy yes quite what's the uh Root of Happiness for you being able to be myself and having others accept me as as myself I don't have to put on ears toward anyone do you find it easy to be yourself here yes quite a bit uhhuh do you think you'd have uh you have better luck in that line here than you might somewhere else well I was born and raised in one town and when you go through school and you establish yourself in a certain set of roles whatever they might be it's hard to break those yeah but up here it's the area I enjoy and that has quite a bit to do with it being yourself finding out who you are finding out how to get where you want to go these are the things that college is for and these are also the things involved in choosing a college it's not an easy task but it's worth a lot of [Music] effort what do you think is the most important factor in choosing a college I think you first have to Define what you want in a college and what you want in an education whether you want simply vocational training whether you want a basis for thinking whether you want tools to create and then choose the college that best fits in with that definition that sounds like a pretty tall arter supposing you don't know the answers to some of those questions and I think you should pick a liberal arts college that has a wide diversity to offer wide diversity of classes subjects and particularly a wide diversity of people so that you might make up your mind as to what area you want to go into give yourself a chance right if you don't know exactly what you want from college find a place where the possibilities will be open up for you if you know what you want find the place that has it don't be scared by the need of making a Choice the American system of higher education is the richest broadest most creative that the world has ever seen all it says is give yourself a [Music] chance [Music] this film has been a presentation of the college entrance examination [Music] board