1780 – The Official Blog of Transylvania University

1780 | The Official Blog of Transylvania University

Discovering and choosing Transylvania from the perspective of a first-year student

students in front of a building

Hello to all prospective and first-year Transylvania University students.

My name is Myah Becker, and I’m a first-year student myself here at Transylvania doing work-study through the Office of Marketing and Communications.

Being a full-time college student has been an entirely different experience than taking college classes through high school. I am out on my own in the big city, and, despite being here for just over a month, I’ve met so many cool people and have gotten involved and learned so much. 

The community that makes Transy what it is has been so incredibly welcoming that I can’t help but wonder: Where has this been all my life? Well, believe it or not, I didn’t even know that Transylvania University existed until late fall of my senior year.

I understand choosing a college is hard, and you’re looking for reasons to fall in love with one school out of so many. When I first started getting into the process of looking for where I was meant to go, I could have sworn I was going to Georgetown College, and then I swore I was going to Northern Kentucky University — then, for two years, I thought for sure I was going to the University of Kentucky. It wasn’t until my mom decided to take me on numerous tours of the smaller, liberal arts schools that I actually found places I really liked. 

In the end, I applied to eight schools and was accepted into all of them. Sounds exhausting and unhelpful doesn’t it? Despite all these possible opportunities, in my heart it was between just two: Hanover College and Transylvania. For the longest time, I just couldn’t make up my mind. Obviously, we know the outcome to this story, but why did I choose Transy over Hanover?

If you’re looking for a reason to come here, or you’re already a first-year student trying your best but don’t quite know why you should keep going, I have composed a list of all the reasons I chose to one day be a Transy alum. It may help you make that tough decision seem less daunting.

Quality Education

It’s likely you will hear every college in the world talk about why it provides the best education above all. However, I am in class every day experiencing how much every professor here at Transy cares about their students’ education. The faculty are selected for a reason: Their continuous drive and passion for learning — which they work to instill in their students — is what helps make Transylvania an institution of academic excellence. They genuinely encourage you to connect with them one on one so that they can meet you where you are in your academic development and help you move forward toward success. It’s also not hard to see, even during exploratory visits, that the university itself wants students to have a quality education, which it demonstrates by putting funding directly into the development of academic facilities and student life. 

Read more: Inaugural Bingham Endowed Chairs for Teaching Excellence at Transylvania University selected and Transylvania launches new Bingham Center for Teaching Excellence as next step in providing high-quality education for 21st century.

Research opportunities

One of the reasons I had thought I was going to UK was because it’s a research school. Every teacher has to conduct research in their field in order to teach there, and the university is constantly talking about its research discoveries. However, Transylvania professors are accomplished as well, and there’s a lot of variety to the types of exciting research that students can get involved in. I knew that at some point I was going to need to do some research in my major to fully understand what my prospective career was about — and I needed somewhere that offered quality research. Transylvania has developed on-campus programs and is more than willing to collaborate with schools around the world to help get these opportunities for their students. If I’m going to do research for a school, I want it to work as hard for me as I do for it.

Read more: Transylvania professor teams up with Friends of the Library to research 442-year-old donated book and Transylvania em‘barks’ on new field of research with opening of Dog Behavior and Cognition Lab.

Tune in next week for more reasons why you, too, should choose Transy.