Loyola offers students a tremendous amount of personal attention. It’s here every step of the way–in the admission process in the form of interviews, tours, events, and our staff’s intentional availability. Of course, it’s in the classroom–faculty take the time to work with each student, provide expert counsel, advising, and mentoring. It’s in the residence halls and at every point of our highly engaged student life programs. It’s in the dining hall in the way staff greet you and students sit and laugh with each other. We watch seniors counsel first-years and so on. Personal attention–the edification of the individual–happens here prodigiously, and organically. It is who we are. It’s ubiquitous–in graduate programs, in undergraduate settings, everywhere.
And, we are not so vain to think that some other colleges aren’t pretty good at the personal attention thing, too. My last place of employment was very good at it. So are a good number of colleges around the country that might offer different programs and opportunities than Loyola, in very different settings, for very different kinds of students. Hey, we are not dim to the realities that even our competitors do some good things!
Here’s my point: Many of us get to brag about our personal attention and one-on-one relationships. It’s those schools that do not tell you about how personal interaction matters on their campus that I am worried about. If, upon researching them, you do not find programs like our Ignacio volunteer program, the likes of LUCAP, opportunities in Student Government, a generous offering of faculty office hours, a bias among faculty for teaching and student development, consider how much personal attention, and connectedness to campus and career, matter to you.
If instead you find evidence–when you visit in person or on the web–of massive classes (100+ students at a time), a decided lack of overt friendliness (yes, I am told such places do exist), and a nonchalance from the faculty regarding your experiences and development, think about how much personal attention matters to you because you may not find it there.
Is it possible to find that your individual contribution matters mightily at an institution of, say, 30,000 total students with 25,000 undergraduates? Yes. Is it probable? No.
The Jesuit nature of Loyola, combined with the aggregate of features that no other Jesuit university can claim–a location the Southern United States, being in New Orleans, accessing this amazing culture, food, music, the height of personal attention paired with astonishing creativity and true academic rigor, entry to a vast alumni network, faculty who expertly balance teaching and scholarship, and the presence of tremendous scholarships and grants to the meritorious and those with financial need–make this, in my view, a premier destination in the pantheon of American higher education.
Good news: Loyola offers the kind of personal attention that let’s you find out if you agree with me. Come visit.
