Students discover better fit away from name-brand schools

Class of 2015 alumna Helen Wong walked through the campus of Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass., one chilly day last fall, carrying a paper bag full of bubble-wrapped, museum-grade artifacts for her lab research.

She held the bag with immense care, moving briskly in the direction of her dorm room alongside her friends. When one of her friends tripped and almost kicked the precious bag, her heart nearly jumped out of her chest.

“I  [was doing] a project on a couple of Roman [pottery] bowls,” Wong said. “There was suspicion that one of them was fake, but they were very close in appearance, so my project was determining their authenticity through pXRF analysis and background research.”

This is just one of the many unique experiences Wong has encountered at Brandeis. In high school, Wong was a member of the Falcon staff and worked as an opinion section editor during her senior year. She was also the president of the Model United Nations (MUN) club for two years.

After graduating, she found her place at Brandeis, where she is on a pre-law track, double majoring in history and health science and policy. Although Brandeis is not a well known university among Saratoga students, it ranks as No. 34 school in the 2016 edition of Best Colleges from U.S. News and benefits from its smaller size of around 3,729 undergraduate students.

“I knew what kind of college experience I wanted,” Wong said. “I wanted to go to a smaller school, where I could network with professors, be able to do independent research and get to know the people in my chosen course of study.”

Since the school is one of the best places that allows undergraduates to complete independent research, Wong was able to conduct several projects this past semester and is hoping to gain funding from the university to continue expanding her research on chemical compounds in ancient Mediterranean perfumes this semester.

“I’m very grateful to have found these kinds of opportunities,” Wong said. “I’m constantly growing [because] I have the chance to seek out things I want to explore.”

Another Class of 2015 alumnus pursuing an unusual college path is Berlin Chen, who is attending Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. At the school, he participates in Swarthmore’s Peaslee Debate Society and the ICPC team, which competes in programming contests. He also writes for the Swarthmore Phoenix, the school’s newspaper, and is a chaser for the Swarthmore Quidditch team.

Chen said that he was actually deciding between attending University of California, Berkeley and Swarthmore College, calling the two schools “polar opposites.” Although Berkeley would seem like the natural choice, especially since Chen was interested in Computer Science and Berkeley is known for its Computer Science program, he eventually decided to go to Swarthmore.

While Swarthmore is a small school, it has a large endowment, so the quality of education is high.

“The professors know students by their names and make themselves very much available,” Chen said. “Many of them strive to treat a class more as a conversation and less as a lecture.”

Chen said that his political science class, which only has five students, is “a series of conversations.” Every class, the professor actually drives the students to her house, where they discuss the books they were assigned. There are no other assignments or tests, just reading and discussions.

Even though this class is a very rare case, Chen said that it proves the point that Swarthmore provides opportunities that many large universities do not.

A SHS student who is on her way taking a similar path as Wong and Chen is senior Nina Harris, who plans to attend Oberlin College, a small liberal arts college in Ohio, next year. As of now, Harris is leaning toward majoring in either Latin American studies, Women’s Studies or English.

At Saratoga, Harris serves as a class representative for the class of 2016. She is an avid competitive dancer and has been one of the main choreographers for her class’s Homecoming Quad Day dances.

In addition, she has worked closely with a health promoter program in Guatemala created by Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies for two years and still continues her work with the program.

For Harris, Oberlin’s emphasis on experimental learning, which works with more nontraditional courses, is something that she says seemed to be missing at Saratoga.

At Oberlin, a department called Experimental College offers uncommon courses taught by Oberlin students, administrators, faculty and even townspeople, such as Taiko drumming and swing dance.

“I really wanted something more out of the box, with more opportunities that still had a dedication to learning,” Harris said.

In addition, the school offers a great study abroad program and also has a dance program, where students can learn various styles and participate in performances, that Harris would like to join.

Although Oberlin, Brandeis and Swarthmore are not the most well-known colleges on the West Coast, they still provide the same enjoyable, exciting environment that an Ivy League or University of California school would have, these students said.

“I may not go to an Ivy, but I still go to a well-ranked school and I make the most of my time here so that my education is really worth it,” Wong said.