Virtual College Tours: Elon University

Webinar Transcription

2021-05-12 Virtual College Tours Elon University

[00:00:00] Hi, everyone. Welcome to the CollegeAdvisor’s Virtual College Tours Elon University. To orient everyone with the webinar timing, we’ll start off with a presentation. Then answer your questions in a live Q and a on the sidebar. You can download our slides and you can start submitting your questions in the Q and a tab.

Now let’s meet our panelists, hello everybody. My name is Jordan Williams. I graduated from Elon university in 2020, which was a weird time to graduate, but it was still exciting. None. The less I majored in English with concentrations in literature and creative writing. And I also had minors in business administration and women’s and gender studies.

In addition, I worked about five to six jobs on campus. I had a lot of side activities. If you have any questions. What campus life at Yale on his life or what working at Elan might look like. I’m more than happy to answer those at the end of our presentation.[00:01:00]

To get started a little bit about Elan. Elan is located in North Carolina, in the town of Elan. For those who are from North Carolina, it’s next to Burlington for those who are not it’s close to the center of North Carolina. It is a private school about mid-size 7,000 students or so mostly undergraduates with 6,291 undergrads.

We also have 10 graduate programs as well. So undergrad and graduate, but very undergrad. It’s suburban. So there is the, city’s probably a seven to 10 minute drive. Away from the university at the university itself has some really cute shops and fun things to go do and places to go. It is 656 acres.

And one of my favorite parts about Ilan is it student to faculty ratio, which is 12 to one. So you really do get to know those professors and like really have that personal connection with. Personally my application process I started a lot later than most. I didn’t start applying to schools in or until [00:02:00] September or so.

And I only applied to three. I applied to two in North Carolina and one further away. I had a reach school, a match school and a safety school. So I didn’t apply to a bunch of colleges. I really kept it small and I kept most of it in the area where I currently. I didn’t start taking college tours until way later.

So don’t be like me. Take your tours early. Start your application early. Do not pull a Jordan. It does not always work out. But I know that the minute I walked into Elan’s campus, that was the moment I knew. Like I fell in love. I wanted to take the bio bus everywhere, which is a bus that takes people around campus because I can’t drive.

And I was super excited to get on the bio bus and I was excited to walk around campus and get in boss’s campus. So I went home and shortly after filled out the common application for all the schools that I was applying for, except for Elan, which at the time was not on the common app. It is now. So no sweat, if you wanna apply to Ireland, Elan, it is on the common application, but it wasn’t when I applied in 2016 or so I applied early action for [00:03:00] Elan, so I could find out earlier as opposed to later, because I really loved the school, but I also applied regular decision for the other two.

If you are super excited about a school and want to know sooner, as opposed to later, it’s really great to apply early action. That way you’re not completely locked into a choice, but you still get to find out sooner as opposed to later, but regular decision is also a awesome way to go. So after I applied, I got a full scholarship to the university of North Carolina chapel hill.

I got a partial scholarship to Elon university and I was wait-listed at my third year. So I’ve tried to decide, do I go where the money is? Do I go where I’m happiest? I took another tour of Elan and I really decided that was the place for me. And that was what that process looked like. So if you, any questions about the application process, just let me know.

I will be more than happy to answer those at the end as well. So the factors that mattered most to me in terms of creating a college list, what mattered a lot to me was the size of the school. I like to think that I personally am really social. I like to get to know the people. [00:04:00] In my area really like building those connections and also a little bit like bad at direction.

So I knew that at a bigger school, I’d be really overwhelmed. I’d be really stressed if I could or couldn’t make it to class sooner. So I really liked the smaller school feel. I also, as previously mentioned, love the student faculty ratio and the relationships that you get to build with your professors.

I remember that I was, I took actually shadowed a class during one of my tours. And the professor was, she was teaching, she was doing her thing. And then she was like, okay, y’all have a test on Monday. And it was Friday. And the class was like, Hey, wildly enough, this is a really inconvenient week for everybody.

And they were just talking about it. It was a pretty small class. And she goes, if we do the test on Monday, will it be bad for your mental health and or will you not do on the exam? And the whole room was like, yeah, this isn’t really a good week. And she was like, okay, fine. We’ll do it on Wednesday. And that was the day I was like, she cares not only about their success in the classroom, but their success out of the classroom.

Now this doesn’t always work for people, but that love for students [00:05:00] is always there and all the relationships that I had on campus. And it really, it was a huge deal, make or break for my decision on which college to attend. That’s a love that Elon have lots of opportunities. Everything I wanted to do Elan from studying abroad, to having a lot of jobs, to getting internships, everything I wanted to do, I was able to do.

And I was surrounded by people who also wanted me to achieve. So again, that student professor relationship is something Elan’s like incredibly great at. And it’s something that I am genuinely proud of.

So I personally chose Elon because it was everything I wanted and more everything that I knew I wanted to do, I was able to do everything I didn’t know existed and found out later about, I was able to do that as well. And I was able to make a lot of those really close relationships. So as an English major and more specifically as a creative writing major, there were only four professors at Elon for that person.

And I still talk to two of them on a very consistent, [00:06:00] very regular basis as I start to go to grad school in the fall for poetry. They were there for me from the beginning to the end of my experience. So I really love and appreciate that as well. They’re also have these things called experiential learning requirements, also known as ELRs.

I know that’s a mouthful and basically what it means is that you have to do some stuff outside of the classroom. You have to get that here as an excuse. There are five options to choose from. You have to graduate with at least two done. But ULA made it super easy to get all five of them done. So one of them was studying abroad and I was able to study abroad.

One of them is internship. I had a couple of internships, some of it’s just like leadership experience. Like they really make sure that you’re taking what you learned in the classroom and applying it outside of the classroom and in the real world. But what really made my experience was just how genuinely kind people were and how much people really cared about your success.

Again, both in and out of the classroom. So I have a quick poll for you. Is anybody applying to Elon? You can click. Yes. You can click. No, you can click. Not sure. We’ll wait a few seconds [00:07:00] for everybody to tap in. Yep.

Okay. Is everybody seeing the poll? Okay, cool.[00:08:00]

Excellent. All right. Okay. So lots of people are deciding to apply to Ilan a good amounts, not sure yet some aren’t and that’s great. It’s actually wonderful to know a little bit about your college experience at whatever stage you are in the application process. So that’s super cool to me.

All right. So a little bit about places that I live on campus. I personally am a huge fan of the library. The library has a bunch of different resources for students. You can go and get your essay edited in the writing center. That is a group of students who actually take a four credit hour writing course, and they can help you with anything from like the brainstorming process up to like just grammar and punctuation.

Like wherever you are in that process, the [00:09:00] writing center is a great place to go. It’s free for students and fun facts. If you go and tell them, they’ll email your professor and your professors will know if you go to the writing center or not. And sometimes if you get like a 94.45, they might round that up to a 91.

It might be good to visit the writing center every once in awhile. They also offer tutoring services as well. So if you need any help in any subject that’s done by a student who has already taken that course with at least in a minus, and they can help you out just, studying for tests, understanding concepts, you don’t understand.

And they do walk in and appointment. One thing that I really loved is that every student has a personal librarian. So what that means is if you’re doing a project on. Greek history. And you don’t know where to find any books on Greek history. You have a librarian who can answer those questions for you and guide you in the right direction for those resources.

So they’re super, super helpful. I remember I did a project my senior year. Like a poet and a cultural arts move it. And I was like, where would I find all these different resources? My personal librarian was like, [00:10:00] oh, here’s where you find them. Here’s some books I recommend. Here’s how I suggest doing this, that, and third.

And it, she was super wonderful. And it’s also open 24 hours a day, five days a week. So Sunday through Thursday

gonna play a video real quick.

This is also just a shot of one of my favorite places on campus. This is aliments. If you go to Elan or take a tour, you’ll definitely recognize it, but it’s really like a main center on campus and it’s where the English department is. So it’s one of the places that I like to visit. Literally all of them.

We also have dining halls, so the dining halls have tons of options. They have vegan, vegetarian options. They have made without gluten options. They sometimes do keto stuff. So you have a lot of options in terms of what you want to eat, where you want to go. There are three big dining [00:11:00] halls on campus and they all have their special, flavor to them. So if you’re really into pasta, I was a huge pasta fan. There’s one dining hall that literally always has pasta. So you could always go there. There’s another dining hall that does a lot of Mediterranean food in the afternoon for lunch and dinner. So that’s an option too. And one does a lot of really great international food.

So you’ve got options in terms of what you want to eat and where you want to go. Meal plans are pretty, pretty diverse. All th all of our meal plans come with like unlimited access to any of the three dining calls, but some have options for optional meals, spices meal, swipes at different retail locations.

So wants one of the only schools in the country to have a Biscuitville on campus. So if you just really want a biscuit, it’s good to have, like one of those meal plans that have some of those resources as well. And we do fun events for them periodically throughout the year. I remember one year we celebrated Mardi Gras.

One year we had a Harry Potter room dinner. And so what that meant was that there was like a bunch of candy and it was all [00:12:00] decorated, like the great hall. And there was Harry Potter music in the background and it was super fun. So sometimes we just do like random, fun stuff as well. Hi, to play this video.

Here we go here’s the dining hall. We’ll play a video of the dining hall for you. So this is one of those dining halls. This is the dining hall that has the pasta. This is also our most recently renovated dining hall. So they have a whole new extension. That’s like super pretty. They have a village juice if you like smoothies.

And they also have a PayWay if you like Chinese.

So that’s the dining hall. In terms of residence halls, you can, you have to live on campus your first year and your second year, you can choose to live on campus your third year and your fourth year, about 70% of students stay on campus all four years at Elon. Your first year. Almost exclusively live with first year students.

We have to, we call them neighborhoods, but sections on campus that [00:13:00] have housing where it is exclusively first year. And so you get the opportunity to really get to know your classmates and your peers and the people in your graduating class. And sometimes we have classes that are connected to the residence halls.

So you might end up in a class like an English 1 0 1. With six people from your hall and what I’ve learned. Cause I used to work in residence life. What I’ve learned is that’s a really great opportunity for people to make new friends, to build those relationships. Just say Hey, I was sick this morning and I didn’t go to class like person on my hall that I see all the time.

Can you help me with this? So it’s a really cool way to build community, especially in that first year. Some of our residence halls are suite styles. That means you and your roommate share the bathroom with the person next door to you. And then some are hostile, which is like the whole hall uses that bathroom.

So there’s some options. I personally lived in a hostile bathroom, all four years of my Elon experience. And I can tell you firsthand, it sounds much worse than it actually is. It’s super clean. People come and clean literally like every day in a [00:14:00] hostile bathroom, but in a suite side, you have to clean it yourself.

So I had to share. But I never had to clean. You win some, you lose some and again, there are lots and lots of events happening. Your RA is supposed to have at least one a month. All the other RAs were supposed to have one at least month, once a month. So you’ll have the chance to see lots and lots of people doing lots and lots of stuff.

So yeah, I would know I was there. I was an RA.

Here is a residence hall. This was actually my residence hall. This is actually my room my junior and senior year. So it is a single cause I worked in residence life. I lived alone, but they are all super nice looking, very modern. You can decorate how you want to, as long as you don’t mess up the wall.

So I suggest command strips, not pushpins, things like that. But it’s bigger and two beds, but you can get that.

Next we have my personal favorite place off campus. [00:15:00] We have a little shopping center, probably about seven minutes from campus. It has a target. It has an Ulta from my makeup lovers. It has a best buy from my computer friends, anybody who likes to shop there’s a Ross. Very cool. Some great restaurants nearby as well.

Anything you might need, the bio bus can take you to. And it will literally pick you up and drop you off. It does an on-campus loop every 15 minutes or so. So if you need to go from the science building down to where you live, if you can take the bus, if you need to. But it also does one that’s all the way off campus to those different shops, every 45 minutes or so.

I also really loved the Oak house, which was like an off-campus coffee shop. It’s super close to campus. You can literally see it from that dining hall I showed you earlier. It’s like straight across. But anything that Ilan doesn’t own is considered off campus. So it’s like an off campus on campus coffee shop.

And it’s a great place to do homework or have coffee or apple cider. I personally love apple ciders. That’s what I get. I think [00:16:00] personally that the most beautiful place on campus is actually I’ll show you the video. I think that the most beautiful place on campus is actually outside of our students.

And so outside of our student center is here we go, this incredible flower bed. And you can see all the way across the street again, to that element of building. There’s a really pretty fountain. At the beginning of the year, the flowers actually make the Elan E so that’s really cool. And it’s a great place to get those, like I visited campus today kind of pictures, so super beautiful.

I love it a lot. People like to hang out there and they’ll play Frisbee. They will walk on those like slack lines. So it’s like tight rope whopping, but closer to earth. So you don’t get hurt. They’ll do homework out there. They’re just lay in the sun. Super beautiful. We do a lot of events there. The organization fair takes place there at the beginning of every semester, Ilan has over 275 organizations you can go to.

So you were free to go [00:17:00] and look at Oliver orange, decide what you want to join. What you not want to join. It’s super. You can also just sit out there and, hang out.

I personally think that most iconic place on campus is a place called under the Oaks. This is actually in our first year neighborhood, it’s called historic neighborhood. And that is where here we go. That is where we have first-year convocation. So yeah. I’m a big fan. This is also one of our fountains as well.

So all in all a great place, very pretty. But yes, this is also where two freshmen complication takes place. Where your first year you get an acorn directly beginning of your college experience. When you graduate four years later, you receive an Oak sapling because it takes four years for an acorn to go from acorn to Oak.

Like it takes you four years to go from first-year student to grad. So really excited when the class of 2020 gets to walk in September. Can we get to cross the stage, we’re all going to get our Oak saplings. Then I’m very excited for my little tree.[00:18:00] Personally I think my best memory is outside of the really big fountain that we saw a little bit earlier outside of the elements building.

That’s where graduation is. That’s where the winter festival is. It’s called the festival of lights. All the trees are lined up with lights for two miles and they’re all off. But Dr. Book I’m, the current president of Eland will give a fun speech. And at the end of her speech, she snapped her fingers and all those trees light up and they stay illuminated all the way through finals weeks had something to look forward to when you go outside after all that studying.

All right. So here’s another quick poll. Where are you in the college application process?

There we’ll just wait a few seconds, get some results in. Very cool.[00:19:00]

Awesome. So a good amount of people are crafting that school list. That’s very awesome to know. You love to see it. Some of us haven’t started that’s okay, too. You’re early. You’re young. You’ve got time.

Excellent. Excellent.

All right. Very cool. Love to see how y’all are doing in your college application process. Glad you were all starting earlier than I did. Great to see. Great to see.

All right. So going on my personal favorite thing about Ilan is the amount of opportunities that we have. There are so many different things that you can do, different opportunities. You can have, there’s so many jobs you can do or clubs you can join or sports you can play [00:20:00] or lots of things.

Yeah. Your college experience anywhere is really what you make of it. It is what you choose, whatever you decide to put into it is whatever you get out of it. I put a lot of energy into it, so I got a lot of stuff out of it. But I also really love as previously mentioned the professors and the faculty.

They are truly some of the most compassionate people that I know. Some of them remember my birthday, still some just check in periodically. I got a lot of congrats on grad schools. They made sure that I was able to study abroad. They made sure that my big final project at the end of senior year was done off to the best of my abilities.

Like they genuinely care about you both inside and outside of the classroom. So they’re incredible huge fan of the professors still talk to lots of them. 10 out of 10. That’s the end of me hyping up the professors.

My least favorite thing about Elon personally. I think that while there’s lots and lots of wonderful things about Elan, [00:21:00] we need to work on our diversity, especially in terms of our racial ethnicity, diversity. It is a Southern private school, so it is very, just predominantly white. And I’d like to see a little more diversity on campus, but I recognize that’ll take time and.

We’re tiny, but we’re mighty. So if you are a person of color looking to go to Elan, the community is there. It’s just, we’ll go smaller and that’s okay. I also think that we need more resources for our professors. We have a lot of professors who have young kids, for example, and we do a lot of evening events, but we don’t have a daycare center or anything.

So I just think that’d be really helpful to have, especially because we have a really strong teaching program and I’m like, the teachers could get some hours that way the professors can go to evening events and have a built-in babysitter for their kids. So I think that’s something Elan could bring in the future personally.

But one thing I want to know, I want to tell people about Ilan. It’s not for everybody while going to school [00:22:00] in Southern United States in a place that isn’t far from town, but looks like it’s far from town. It might not be for everybody, but getting to know people, there is such a beautiful, wonderful opportunity.

Because literally everybody from the time you walk in to the time you walk out they’re going to care about you and your success. So that’s a great thing to take advantage of. And you get the chance to. Do lots of fun things. You can take, we have a thing called a J term, which is a January semester.

So for the month of January, you take one class every day, five days a week, Monday through Friday for about four hours. And it’s the equivalent of a semester course, but squished down into one month you can use it to study abroad. You can use it to take a class on campus. I use mine. I think I have a L G I have a minor in women’s and gender studies, and I was able to really build that minor by taking those short term classes.

I’m also studied abroad to [00:23:00] India during one of those J term classes. So if you’re interested in just studying abroad for a month or taking a really fun class literature for muggles, where you learn about Harry Potter and things, that’s an wonderful opportunity to.

All right. All right. That is the end of the presentation part of the webinar. I hope you found this information helpful and remember that you can download the slides from the link in the public chat or not familiar with the public chat from the link in the handouts tab, moving on to the live Q and a I’ll read through questions you submitted in the Q and a tab, paste them in the public chat so you can see and then read them out loud before our panelists.

Gives you an answer as a heads up, if your Q and a tab, isn’t letting you submit questions, double check that you joined the webinar through the custom link in your email and not from the webinar landing page. So our first question is, does Elon university offer sports [00:24:00] scholarships to internationals? So it’s your question.

And we do have scholarships and many are accessible to international students. So yes, but it depends on your sport to be sure. So that’s a great question to ask any of our athletic advisors. It’s super easy to reach out to them. Just shoot them an email and they’ll send you a. The next question is, would you recommend Elon for students that want to be engineers, but don’t really know which kind of engineering path they want to take?

Absolutely. Going well, we already had a pretty strong, but young engineering program at Elan. We had, I think, four concentrations before I graduated. They’re currently building a new, like extension to the science center. All sorts of different concentrations you can have in engineering where you won’t be locked into one type too early.

So I say absolutely, especially as they continue to expand into the future.

[00:25:00] Our next question is, do you have a choice to live by yourself or with a roommate? It’s up to you. Most people live with a roommate. Having a single is actually more expensive. And it’s a limited amount. So the sooner you apply the sooner, you can try to live by yourself, but most people tend to have a roommate.

Just how the numbers break down.

The next question is what is the required GPA to apply? So there’s no like hard and fast GPA, but the average is like a 3.2 to a 3.5 or so. So somewhere in that mid range,

Our next question is what are the recommended majors? Yeah. So what are the most popular majors? Our majors are business majors. Our business school is definitely hands down the largest school on campus. Besides like the arts and sciences, but they make up lots and lots of things. Lots of students take business classes, [00:26:00] the one right behind that.

I think the high, the biggest major is finance. And then. Marketing and then strategic communications. So we’re one of 18 accredited private universities that have a communications program. And our communication school is super, super strong. So it was our business school, but I spent a lot of time in the communication school, had a lot of calm friends and they it’s an incredible school.

If you want to get involved in. Film in any way, if you want to get into making your own productions or learning how to run sound or learning, how to edit want to work in journalism? We have our own newspaper. There are so many opportunities in the communication school. So business is probably our largest school.

I like communications is my favorite. That’s cool.

Next question. Is it expensive to attend Ilan? Yes. And also no. So tuition as it stands, I think it’s right around that 48,000, 50,000 a year which it [00:27:00] feels heavy, but you get a lot out of it. You get a lot out of it, but additionally, there are lots of scholarship opportunities. So when I remember when I first applied for my first year at Elon, I think it was 18,000, I believe is what I paid like after scholarship and things.

By senior year I paid. I think it was $888 for spring. So if you’re looking for scholarships, it can be done. It’s it takes hard work. I’m not going to hold you, but it can, it’s definitely doable and you get a lot out of it. So it’s a worthwhile investment.

Our next question is the sat used as a medium of admission. And if so, what is the average sat score that can get you admitted into ILA? I am not a hundred percent sure what the average sat score is. I know it’s somewhere right around that mid range. And if you send us our scores, we look at your scores, but it’s not like the make or break factor.

So it’s super useful. To know, it’s great to take that test and just have it on hand, but it is not the [00:28:00] make or break it’s Ilan tries to look at every single part of your application holistically, because you are not just your test scores or your classroom grade. You are. Yeah. I took the sat. Yeah. I took super difficult classes.

I’m a good student, but I also volunteer. I’m also really passionate about ABCD. This is how I want to grow as a person. So Elan tries to look at you holistically. So take the sat, do your best, but especially for Elan that will not make or break.

Our next question is what are the core requirements like to graduate? And can you test out classes? So there are some classes you can test out. Yeah. But they’re very limited. Like I think you have to take specifically AP English, but like for the 12th grade to test out of your English class, otherwise you have to take that first year English course.

You can test out of math. Math is the one that you definitely can test. Otherwise, you have to take two, what do you call them? It was to like psychology, sociology classes have to take two science [00:29:00] classes and mom lab in a lab. You have to take to like humanities, like classes like English or art.

And you have to take two what’s that last one, history like classes. So let’s just make sure that you get that well-rounded experience in the arts and science. So you’re not just oh, I’m a business student. And all I study is business. Elan’s really big on yes. You study business, but you also understand how to communicate with other people.

You understand? What’s it like to build relationships? Do you understand what it’s like to be multicultural or culturally diverse and what that really means what that really looks like? So Elon tries to more or less force you into being a well-rounded. On the right side, though, that is a way I got my majors and minors done.

I graduated with a minor in business administration and as previously mentioned in women’s and gender studies, and I really picked up those miners just by knocking out all those classes to take. I just took them in a similar kind of field and Ooh, it made a minor. I almost had a history minor when I graduated.

I was like, okay, thanks.[00:30:00]

Our next question is what is a typical day on campus? Oh, it’s so fun. A lot of people take classes. Usually end for many people right around that two o’clock three o’clock time. So if you go up in the day, super cool in the morning, everybody’s groggy. Nobody likes 8:00 AM sweets take them, but there aren’t a lot of people out there.

On Tuesdays we have a thing called college coffee, which is every Tuesday morning outside of our religious studies building. There’s like a giant pavilion. Everybody on campus is invited to get breakfast and coffee and chit chat and hang out. It’s a super fun. So Tuesdays it might be busier in the morning.

Otherwise you’re either sleeping or in class, right around lunchtime. You’ll see students start to come outside, go do homework outside because the weather is usually pretty good. Start to fill up the student center really start doing like the whole back and forth to class thing by three to four o’clock or so that’s all done.

Students are out there on the lawn, they’re doing homework, they’re in the library. And then later on into the evening, you get a lot of those [00:31:00] oh, I have a meeting for C D E. The student union board is doing bingo this Thursday. So a lot of people are headed to bingo, things like that. So the later it gets the more like extracurriculars you have the earlier in the day classes in the middle of the day, sitting in the sun, largely I spent a lot of time in the sun.

That sounds wonderful. It’s great. Our next question is how can I write a great day? Yeah. So I always recommend writing your truest stories. So everybody wants to tell the story of how they were on like the soccer team. And that’s great if you’re on the soccer team, about the soccer team. But if you’re like, oh I’m on the soccer team, but I’m more passionate about it.

Researching goldfish for two years, but I don’t know if that’ll make a great essay, if that’s what you’re passionate about, about the goldfish, because your voice and your emotions come across the page way more than yeah, I was captain of the [00:32:00] soccer team. Cool. Great shows, incredible leadership skills.

Definitely tell that story if that’s what you’re passionate about, but if you’re passionate about the goldfish, about the goldfish. Additionally, I want to say start earlier as opposed to later the earlier you start, the more you can edit, the more you can prove for you. The more you can ask a friend to proofread.

But my third tip is also ask one or two friends to proofread and then call it a day. You don’t want to stress yourself out, writing the perfect essay. You want to write the best essay that you can. You don’t want to spend all your time, second guessing yourself and driving yourself bananas. So start really don’t ask them any people, right?

What you care about. All very good tips. Okay. Our next question is what is the average, whether it is. It’s pretty, pretty good. We’re in the south, so it never gets too cold. As somebody who’s always lived in the south, it’s cold to me, like it was the high, today was 57 and I had on a turtleneck and a long sleeve shirt.

I was like, it’s, I don’t really like it here. But it usually gets [00:33:00] mid to low thirties in the winter. Not a lot of snow. Like we usually have one big snow and then otherwise it just is slush. But in the summer, spring and winter, summer, spring and fall, it’s pretty warm highs up to 80 degrees, usually right around that seventies to sixties for most of the year.

Okay, our next question is, what do you wish you’d known about going into freshman year? I wish I had known that it’s okay to say no to this. I was so excited to, to be there, to be a part of it and to be a part of everything that I really did run the risk of burning myself out just by shining too bright in the beginning.

And I didn’t know how, or feel like I had the authority to say Hey, thank you for thinking of me for this, but this doesn’t fit in my schedule or this isn’t something I’m passionate about. I wish that because Elon has so many opportunities and so many people want you to do that. Setting boundaries was really hard for myself really early on.

Additionally, I think it’s important to remember [00:34:00] that you’re going to make friends. You will make friends, but it’s also okay. If you stop having those same friends as you go about. I ended my first year with a whole different batch of people than what I started with, because it was great to have them.

We got lunch together. We built a really cool community, but as the year went on, we found what we’re passionate about. We found people we really cared about. Moved on and that’s okay. I still wish them a happy birthday. I’m proud of them for graduating. We high-five on the way out, but we don’t have to spend all that time together.

Cause they’re my first friend. You’ve got your best friends and you have your first friends and that’s okay too.

Our next question is what careers have recent graduates gone on to? Cool. That’s a good one. We go on to, yeah. Lots of really cool stuff. I’m pretty excited to do this personally. But I know that we’ve had other students go on to a lot of our communication students will get either internships or full-time jobs at like major news [00:35:00] companies.

Some work. I see it in, I have a friend right now who’s working for NBC. I have a friend who was working in LA on I think the bachelor right now, so that’s pretty cool. A lot will go into tech and a lot, we’ll go work for like the JP Morgan’s of the world. So our business students tend to head in that more JP Morgan ish route.

Our comm students will go on to work in of course, big communication fields and a lot of art science and humanities people. The Alon people usually find a job in the field they’re interested in long story short. So I do this, but I also teach creative writing to kindergarten through second grade.

Cause I was a creative writing major. I have another friend who went on to work for a publishing house cause she was an English major. So a lot of us tend to go on to jobs that relate to what we studied in undergrad.

Our next question is I’d like to, or I guess not question, but I’d like to learn more about scholarships and financial aid. Oh cool. You came to the right [00:36:00] place. So Elan recognizes that it can be expensive and kind of Hartford for students who attend Elan. So first things first we have our obviously scholars program.

That’s for our students who are like first-generation low income students of color, LGBTQ, like students who might really need those resources. We just added over a hundred new scholarships. So if you fit into like literally any of those categories, check online and apply for a scholarship.

And we also offer scholarships too. Student for being like a super great leader or for being in the top 15% of their class. So keep your grades up. Or for studying abroad, like really getting involved in the world and being like culturally diverse. So there are lots of opportunities for scholarships before coming to Elon and don’t forget to fill out FAFSA, please.

Like just put it here. Fill out FAFSA, don’t forget. But once you get to Ilan, a lot of departments have their own like personal scholarships. And so I know my junior year I won the English department scholarship. So I found 8,000 more [00:37:00] dollars via the English department. And that took off a good amount of my tuition.

So this I will say this for everybody, but if you can have the time and have the guts, go ahead. Just go ask I know one day my mom was just like, Hey Jordan, I really need you to go down to the financial aid office and just see what we can figure out. So I, bounce down there and it turns out they had a little pocket of money left.

They were like, oh we didn’t give away this $5,000 here. And I was like, thank you. Thank you. But that would have happened if I didn’t go ask. So there are lots and lots of opportunities for scholars. In department, outside of department before you get there after you get there. But sometimes the best thing you can do is just go ask and either maybe they have some money lying around or maybe they can point you to the right direction.

So you can find some cause we want you to say, we want you to come and we want you to say so we try to make that as doable as possible. That’s awesome. Okay. So we’re going to take a quick break. And if you want to work one-on-one with an advisor. From our team of over 155 [00:38:00] advisors and admissions officers, then you can sign up for a free consultation with us.

That’s you do that by going to CollegeAdvisor.com and clicking the green chat button in the bottom right of the screen from there, just write in consultation and the live team member will get back to you to help coordinate your free consultation with us. All right. Back to the Q and a. Our next question is what are the policies about freshmen and cars and what’s your opinion of the food?

Oh, exciting. So the role about freshmen to cars is that you can bring your car, you can bring your car at any point, your Elon experience. I think a parking sticker is $180. You apply for your parking permit or your parking sticker. You get your parking pass. You’re good to go. So if you’re a freshman, you can definitely bring your car.

I don’t have a driver’s license fun fact. So there are other ways to get around on campus. If you need to, if you don’t have a car or choose not to bring yours your first year, but you can, if you would like to, I had a good amount of friends who did[00:39:00] in terms of the food. I really liked the food. I think the food is diverse and options.

Like I like the fact that as a picky eater, I can always go find pasta, but as somebody who doesn’t always want to be a picky eater, I can go to a different dining hall and try food for North or South Korea for a week. So there are lots of options. I think the food is really, I think it’s good.

Honestly, we live nicely. It’s good.

Our next question is what are the vibes of the campus and surrounding areas like, oh, great. It’s a lot of like small town vibes. Everybody knows everybody’s face. I, it was like, It’s small enough that if you want to make friends, you can make tons, but it’s big enough that you don’t always have to see the person you’ve been avoiding.

If you and Hannah just don’t get along, you don’t have to pass him. It’s okay. But if Penn is your best friend and you’re looking for Hannah, you can find Hannah. So I like to say it’s small town vibes. Very. It’s just a lot of students are [00:40:00] passionate about what they do. They like to make friends and build community, but if you’re looking for people to push you Elan pushes.

It’s why I always like to tell people to establish boundaries early, because it’s like a school of just like overachievers. It’s wow. My first year I was like, oh, I’m in like one club. And then I pass a girl who was in like six clubs and I was like, I should join more clubs. It turns out three was my magic number.

Cause I joined six and I was like too much kept the cameras. But that three really worked for me. So if you’re looking to be pushed and challenged, but also loved and supported. Either one is a great place to go. And as previously mentioned, swell enough to make friends big enough to have with people you don’t want to be friends with.

I love that as a metric. I think that’s a great metric for college. Thank you. Our next question is, does Ilan offer internships to undergrads? Yes, absolutely. So there are five ELRs experiential learning requirements, just five things you can do. To get your out of, [00:41:00] outside of the classroom experience.

And one of those is an internship. So internships are easy to find, easy to come across. I had an internship personally, in the president’s office or through the president’s office. I ended up working in the admissions office for six months or so. That was really fun as an undergrad. I had enough the friend who got an internship, we have some study of study abroad there study USA programs where you can study abroad in the United.

Yeah. And get your internship credit done. So I had a friend who, I don’t know if anybody remembers vine, but back in the day there’s king batch on vine, I had a friend who went to LA for a semester and he worked with king batch for that semester as an internship. My other friend, who’s currently working on the bachelor.

He went to LA to work on, I think he worked with MTV for the semester. So there are lots of internships. We’re recently getting a Elon in Tennessee Elan in Nashville. So if you’re in trouble, Great way to find music internships. If you’re into communication, it’s a great way to find communication internships, but [00:42:00] I worked at the children’s museum for an internship, like their options.

Our next question is there lots of school, spirit? Yeah. I think so Elan has sports but we’re not like a big sports school. Like we play football, we love football. But the school spirit really comes across in the way that people talk about Elon and the way people like to be at Elan. So the games like they’re crowded, it’s fun, but like we’re a D one school or yeah.

In the colonial athletic association. So the CAA and we’re not duke and Carolina, but we have sports. We love our sports, but people. If you love Elan. Like I love Elan. So we’re at Ulan. T-shirts around still tell people I go there or went there. So their school spirit, it’s just not necessarily in the form of yay sports.

It’s more yay, Ilan.[00:43:00]

Okay. Our next question is how is Ilan different from other great schools? Yeah. So I think it’s different in the, those relationships you get to form. I think that the really cool thing about Elon that I know, like my sister goes to chapel hill and she’s having a fun time. But one thing that I know that I have, that she had, that she doesn’t have is like the access to a very strong support system.

Anytime I was in anything. A project. I didn’t understand, or a paper I was struggling to write too. Yeah, me and my boyfriend broke up and I don’t know what to do with myself too. I’m just really stressed out lately. And my boss always reminded me to eat. Like I always had people in my corner, no matter what I was going through.

And it was really nice to know that I had that support because when I needed it, it was always there. I’ll never forget. I went to India and I loved it. It was great. But there was a lot of culture [00:44:00] shock. There was a lot of just. Hi. I’m like, I’m a black girl in India where they don’t see a lot of black girls.

When I tell you, you might have hands in my hair. Amazing. But by the end I was super stressed out. I just remember I was stressed. I was tired of being photographed and pulled on and picked at, and I like burst into tears. I just, I was minding my business. I start crying and my professor comes up and pulls me over and she hugs me and she’s Hey, it’s going to be okay.

Do you want to talk it out? We talked it out for 30 minutes. They, the class went on, we were in a village and they went on to what they were doing. And I got my emotions out and she supported me through that. And then we went back to what we were doing and it was just so nice to know that I wasn’t alone in that experience.

She was like, you’re not alone in this. Like we’re here to, we love you. We support you. You’re going to be okay. It was just, it was great. So that, I think that the thing that makes Ilan different is the way that people. Love and care about you both as a student. Like they really do want you to do your best, but also as like an independent, just human beings.[00:45:00]

I think it’s great.

All right. Our next question is how much reading and writing is expected or writing and reading? It depends on your class. It depends on the classes that you take. So I know that as an English major, I’m already biased. I read and I write and I read my friends in the stem fields did significantly less writing, but they did more reading.

So like they were always reading the textbook. They were always working on labs. They probably worked harder than I did, and I was writing like 4,000 word essays on a consistent basis. But they didn’t do a lot of like writing, writing conversely in my business class. I didn’t do a lot of reading and writing.

We had one or two papers due a semester. They were like 500 to a thousand words. A bunch of writing and reading. So it really depends on the classes that you take and your major you’ll find work that is equivalent depending on your field. So if you’re a [00:46:00] communications major, you’ll do a lot of movie watching, a lot of movie watching and a lot of SMS.

That’s my friends, constantly watching movies, writing about them all the time. I was reading books and writing about them all the time. This, the students learned a business idea, wrote a 500 word response on how we can apply this in the real world. Okay. Yeah. Everyone keep those questions coming. Our next question is who is the ideal Elan student? I think that the ideal Ilan student is somebody who wants to learn and wants to achieve and wants to grow. It’s a busy school with a lot of opportunities. If you want if that’s something you’re into.

Wanting to do a whole bunch. Elan’s a great school regardless, but it might not be like the ideal place for you. If you like that big school feel, Elan’s not the place we just don’t have it. If you are interested in building a lot of like super close relationship with your professors, which is totally fine, my sister is the same way all as well.[00:47:00]

But professors that you learn are going to try to get to know you, everybody Isla is going to try and get to know them. Be a little bit in your business and if that’s not something you’re interested in Isla might not be the school for you. But if you want to be pushed and challenged and have these opportunities to do a, B, C, D E F G, Elon is a great place.

Our next question is what are the policies about freshmen housing and what are the options? Yeah. So your first year on campus, or first and second year, You have to live in a residence hall. So your first year you can live we have five neighborhoods. We call them neighborhoods and they’ll have a theme and it’s super cute.

There’s the global neighborhood which focuses on international diversity. There is colonnades deeper hood, which does a lot of stem as well as environmentalism. There is historic neighborhood, which focuses on tradition. There is east neighborhood that focuses on civic engagement and there’s the dandelion neighborhood that focuses on.

You don’t have to remember that. I’m just [00:48:00] letting you know you can live anywhere on campus that first year, but a lot of our students tend to live in our first year exclusive neighborhoods, which are historic and east. And in that breakdown, there are three options. There is the suite-style, which is me and my roommate share the bathroom with the roommates set next door.

There is hall style, which is me and my roommate share the bathroom with everybody on the floor. And then there is. Kinda like a, both it’s there eight of us in one like large set of four roommates, and we have a bathroom that the eight of us share. So it depends, but those are your three options.

Most people end up in suite-style. We only have five residence halls that are that hall style. So most end up in the suite style some end up in that third bonus option, but either suite or hall and mostly sweet.

Our next question is, would you say that there was an easy [00:49:00] interaction between students considering the lack of diversity? Yeah, I think so. In fact, I know, so I had friends all over the place. Everybody was really nice. Almost all the time were there ever hiccups? Of course, but there’ll be hiccups at every school.

But I think at the end of the day, the students. Really care about each other, even if they don’t look alike or come from the same background. So I think it’s pretty, pretty easy. Most of the time, like I remember one day, like this girl was just crying. I don’t know why she’s crying. She was crying and I just sat with her and I was like, Hey friends, Yeah.

Okay. And she was like, I actually know. And I was like, okay, want to get lunch? And we just got lunch. I still talk to her sometimes. It’s really easy to make friends cause people are really nice. And you all go through a similar experience, like you’re all at Isla and you’re like in the Elon bubble in a way, like it’s a shared experience.

So it builds community really well.

Our next question is what was the first option [00:50:00] of the housing options? Again? They’re sweet style, which is me and you like me and Hannah could be roommates across the hall might be you and another roommate. The four of us will share the bathroom in the middle. That’s called sweet style. We used to call it Jack and Jack or Jill and Jill, but no, we just call it suite style.

Our next question is what’s your best memory with a professor? Oh, gosh, that’s a hard one. There’s so many. Okay. So my freshman year I was looking for more scholarship money, but I was also looking for just more ways to be involved on campus. And I was talking to my academic advisor. Her name is Dr.

Isaac and she’s wondering. And she said, Jordan, we have this program that just have a few openings. So we have we have an honors program and there are four options, one dependent on each school. So there’s a college fellows for the arts and sciences, the business fellows for the business school, so on and so forth.[00:51:00]

And she said, Jordan, we just got three new openings in the college fellows program. And I think you should apply. And I was like, but I’ll be a lateral entry college fellows. Don’t do lateral entry. And they were like, for this year only you need to do it. Like I need you to apply. And so she helped me with the application.

She walked me through the steps. We did it together. And I got in and I, and that, that completely shaped, altered the path of my Elon experience. I ended up doing research in a world where I never thought I’d do research. Turns out you can do research creatively. I have four short stories under my belt.

Now that just would not exist without this program. I ended up being the first like event coordinator for the college fellows. Like I planned, what would it be? College fellow prom. If the pandemic hadn’t hit, I planned all of these different events. I helped build community in ways. I didn’t think I could through this program all because when the Dr Isaac said, Hey, you should apply for this.

And I think her greatly and still talk to her all the time.

Okay. I think this is probably going to be our last [00:52:00] question, but what surprised you most about being in college? How. Fast, it moves. On one hand it feels like it like when you’re in the middle of writing that 4,000 word essay, it’s I can’t do this anymore. I’m going to drop out and become a potato farmer in Idaho.

But when you look back by the end, it’s I can’t believe I did that. And it’s like a lot of times I think about it and reflection and I’m like, wow, like I walked in and did everything. I set my mind to. And I made all these friends and I have this new community in four years. And while it felt like a long time in the middle, it was a blink by the end.

Okay. So we’ll wait a little longer to see if any more questions come in. But in case they don’t thank you everyone so much for coming out tonight and thank you, Jordan, for presenting. Thank you for having me. So we’ll the same shirt today that I have on that day. [00:53:00] Yeah.

Okay. So it looks like we don’t have any more coming in. So this is the end of the webinar. We had a wonderful time telling you about Ilan university and here is the rest of our webinars series tomorrow night as Stanford. And I think we have brown starting us off next week. Thank you so much for coming out and have a great night.

Hi everyone.