As a senior in high school, I was extremely conflicted in where I wanted to pursue a higher education. Even on the deposit deadline, I still had absolutely no idea where I wanted to go. I committed to UMass simply because it was the cheapest option, and my logic was that if I wasn’t 100% sold on any of my other options, I might as well go to the one that I could afford. Now, as a college senior, I look back and am so grateful that I chose this school. In this blog post, I am going to cover the top 5 reasons (in no particular order) that I feel why a large school like Umass provides the absolute best education.
- Clubs + extracurriculars
Umass has over 200 registered student organizations. I am a part of the UMass Outing Club (UMOC), the Pre-Dental club, and the UMass climbing team. These programs completed my college experience and allowed me to explore the surrounding areas while meeting new people that I would not have met solely through my classes. UMOC is a club with the motto, “we take people outside and do things with them”. We do everything that can be done in nature: front and back country hiking, rock climbing, camping, snow shoeing, downhill and cross country skiing, canoeing, whitewater kayaking, and caving. The club also owns a cabin in New Hampshire and takes weekend trips out there. With this club, I got to find hidden gems of Western MA and explored different areas with hundreds of members. The Pre-Dental Club is more of a niche club where pre-dental students meet to discuss volunteering opportunities, the application process for dental school, and other activities to boost our resumes. The UMass climbing team climbs at Central Rock Gym in Hadley and competes with USA Climbing.
2. Extra Help
Many students, including myself, go through a huge transition period when adjusting to the academic expectations in college. I think that my success at UMass is tied strongly to the resources and extra help that a large school offers. While this is not as applicable to smaller majors like Spanish and Portuguese, I have found that the classes I take as a biology major have multiple safety nets for students to rely on. For example, in a typical STEM class there is the professor who leads the lectures, the grad student TA who grades exams, undergraduate TAs who grade and lead exam review sessions, an SI leader who leads 2 sessions each week re-explaining the lecture material and providing practice problems, and an ExSEL leader who provides group tutoring. On top of all that, there are an abundance of tutors at the LRC in the library for each subject to provide 1 on 1 help. These resources simply do not exist at smaller schools, and unfortunately I think most students do not realize how beneficial the large school atmosphere is for academics until they are already in college and begin to struggle with the course load.
3. Research
Umass is one of the nation’s top universities for research. Our campus spends more than $200 million on research each year and works with different academic, government, and private partners. In almost every department, students can easily find professors who are conducting research about something that they are passionate about. For example, I found a research opportunity with my biology professor. I have now been working in his research lab for a year and have plans to work in the lab for the year after graduation. Many students think that research is unattainable, but there are an abundance of opportunities for anyone to get involved at every level of research.
4. Class selection
One of the areas that UMass excels is the class selection. At a large school not only are there more classes to chose from, but the classes are extremely specialized at the higher levels. For example, in the Spanish and Portuguese department, there are two classes that focus specifically on medical Spanish and its applications. The ability for students to find courses that apply to their interests is something that can only be found at big schools. In small schools, the size of the department has a huge limitation on which courses can be offered, because the faculty need to be allocated to providing more general education courses.
5. Diversity
At a large school like UMass, you’re more likely to have your views and values challenged and perhaps changed in ways you never anticipated because you’re surrounded by people from diverse backgrounds with different life experiences. Coming from a very small town, this is something that I did not know how badly I needed until I was already here. Having conversations and interactions with people from all different experiences has provided me with the ability to be a better student and a better human.
Lastly, I will share a saying that I heard all three times that I toured UMass… “it’s easier to make a big school feel smaller than to make a small school bigger”