so i definitely met with my guidance counselor joining here started thinking about colleges asking what colleges you think would be a best fit for me and my barren sounds actually recommended merits to me so i came up i believe summer going into my senior year for a visit with my dad and i just love the campus absolutely so i came back i think three or four more times i didn't overnight with the city and i got to attend some classes and i just fell in love the school i fell in love with the teachers the community i'm so i was really how it shows maris but i did get started looking at colleges around junior year so yeah sure so my mom and dad were very hands on in college process they definitely want to look at the financials of affording college of course i'm one of four girls in my family so definitely pricing was a big thing just looking at campus kind of different campuses kind of asking me what i liked in a school whether  and it's just far enough away where my parents are here every week and i do love my parents and i'm glad when they visit but i can also go home if i need to have so it's the perfect location we have a close proximity in new york city in the city all the time as well so it's really great  college fair that we went to merits is there i met someone there and also at my high school there was college fair they had computers in our guidance office that we can go down and work with a guidance counselor to research colleges as well marriage was always number one on that listen my guidance counselor so he was very helpful  peer where i worked with different students i played field hockey and where i was captain i also played lacrosse i'm so that i'm very involved i think that definitely helps and i'm very involved now merest as well as i think that that really helps when you're playing for the colleges i think they really like to see your well rounded student doing well in potter i think that's kind of sure it looks like a castle but i think just the people here everyone so friendly even students that are not working in missions are masters the hold the door for you they'll ask you for new directions where you're going and i just felt so welcomed when i came here it really felt like home so i think that was my biggest reason and also i knew i wanted to study finance so i came here a few more times and i looked at the business program and we have a huge mess and center here and we have faculty there working in the real world on wall street for the big investment banks and that was just something that was really big for me too as well just knowing i would be able to come here and get such a great learning experience interesting to see my sisters i have three other sisters two of them are twins they're in college at growing in new jersey but i'm trying to get a younger sister carrots come here so she's a junior in high school so i'm starting push so there are a lot of factors i want to look at like i said before definitely financial it's just comparing pricing i know it's a lot easier sometimes going to state school but for me i was going to pay a little more to go to marriage knowing i would get a great education here and it definitely paid off i have a job for after graduation in may i'm just looking at the size of school i wanted to know i want to go to a smaller school but not too small where i don't know everyone but i'm also meeting new people so that was definitely a huge factor and i really like the camp is the proximity to the city and definitely the faculty definitely look at those academic programs i really like the merest because you have to come to clare major right away i knew i wanted to do business and you know if i wanted to finance and marketing international i mean they were just very helpful about taking on different classes and things like that and i also really like maris because it's a liberal arts school so i still got to then i applied for the common application so it's really easy you can buy the multiple columns through the comic book asian which makes it really easy for various army then there's i believe a supplemental section of the common app where you write an essay why you want to come to merits things like that and they were very very quick with the decision  definitely come here to get to or like i said i didn't overnight program once i was an accepted but they were very very quick i applied early action and they got back to me within a few months so i knew well before may first the decision that i wanted to come to marius and i was accepted get head start on your application so you supply early without being legally binding to the school rather than waiting for the regular decision process so it's really great to apply only because then you get to know where early especially if there's a school you really want to go to and you'll know that decision well before everyone else extremely helpful with that i also received financial aid so that was great because i would see colleges that burden on a family with four girls four daughters so they were extremely helpful at that time so those that we saw gets available i also receive them in doubt scholarship that i applied for once i got here and they're all listed on the website everything's very easy to apply for so i would definitely courage you to apply for scholarships as well as apply for scholarships in your hometown as well i found that was very helpful so it's frustrating oh sure so when you apply if the presidential and outs are shipping other and out scholarships someone through the school those you get when you apply based on your grades and things like that but there are other scholarships licit right on the merits website and out scholarships there are some particularly just for freshmen and there are some for upper class of orientation activities you don't even have time to be upset in their family because you're having so much fun meeting new people so automatically like i said welcome with open arms absolutely did you have any problems adjusting for those things that may have a little bit of problem just saying we have a first year mentors program we have faculty that are here to do that to help you with that so really like i said you don't have time to even miss home but you're having so much fun getting to know the college and your people and how to use the principals so that orientation you actually come for a one day orientation in the summer before you get here so that's where you meet people you can see all the dorms a fellow survey about your roommate things like that and then when you get to you america there's also a welcome week for freshmen as well so they do all types of different activities we played like a field day activity and games on the football field so there is a lot going on church so when you come to that orientation you do fill out a survey and it will say oh do you stay up late you go to bed early keep your room clean and they parry with a roommate so i got her with an awesome roommate she was great she did end of transferring from closer to home at the end of my first semester so i was nervous again fix that situation if you need to switch roommates i do not know many people that have to do that they really do a great job sharing with you with a roommate it's also nice because everyone's in the same boat even athletes here don't get sick there remains so everyone's kind of coming into that new college a little bit nervous that all ready to meet new people so they really have a great way of doing extra curricular activities we go here yeah absolutely so we have over eighty clubs and activities i'm probably in way too many of them but i just really like getting involved on campus and we have a huge community feel on campus so a lot of students are involved when they are heavily involved in his marriage campus ministry which is our biggest organization campus so i'm on the board of that so we do a lot of activities and brain scenes together in different legends learning about each other we do a lot of service w the community as well so for example this december we did the merest entry project where we donated over a thousand gifts to thirty local families and that's about it so even our small school with about five thousand five hundred to five hundred kids we were still able to do that for the community such really awesome as well college there's a job fair person in jobs and there's also an activity center so you can go around collect all of them information talk to soon see what you like and join right away that's a great way to make friends because you can hang out with like minded people kind of discuss things and it also works really well for marriage because when your freshman and sophomore year as an underclassman but i think they have to leave knowing my tour guides that's one hundred percent acceptance rate for those juniors and seniors that wanted to live on campus we just felt the new new gartman housing as well so those are really nice they're single rooms we have great housing near a campus i don't think after college will probably ever live in an apartment and nice as the one that i live in now but it's really great so if you want to live on campus as an upperclassman there are some students that do live off campus but you're basically guaranteed as long as you do well in school you get involved in there are different ways to do that as well actually a class a few semesters ago i took a few arabic course it's in my third ever course there was only two of us in the class there wasn't there wasn't as popular of a class of some of my other ones but the present still met with us every week twice a week we went over the arabic lesson that was really nice because she really wanted us to succeed and be with us that most of my classes average like fifteen to twenty students which is really nice as i said before because the professors really get to know your name to get to know what you want to do after college and up and write you an internship and job opportunities as well so i really enjoy that kind of small aspect of  college sure so on my dad works in business all my life he works for james hardie building products and he works in marketing he was gung ho about me doing marketing but i'm just not a marketing person i'm not as creative as i would like to be  but i always been interested in both politics and business i'm still coming into college and know what i want to meijer and whether i want to be business or politics but then i realized that all the politics i was interested in were about economics so i decided to try my hand at finance so i'm a business administration major with a concentration in finance and i was a minor in political science and i seen that that's a great pair because you can see all the time how the government policies are affecting the finance industry so that was just great but i met with my guidance counselor in my high school as well as faculty here before deciding and i and you're able to experience all different aspects of different majors and then you can choose afterward so they're really helpful about kind of help you figure out what you want to do and not just what your parents ron or whatever one says is going to get you a job so i found that's very great and  places that people like to go aberrants are restaurants because there's great food and it's a valley so if we're not on the walking bridge they can walk over the river where at lolo's or ross's deli or one of the great food places around here so you're definitely never bored there's something for everyone to do  that and just getting involved in clubs and things you meet older students like i just love maris and i'm a senior so i love helping the freshmen and sophomores kind of explore their explore the campus so just for me as a freshman a lot of upper class and i'm very hopeful about as well make sure you check out this place or go here for you graduate so have a bucket list that i still have the finish with all those various things on it and so i'm not very athletic so i'm not in sports that i still have opportunities to do in general so i play intramural badminton with my friends because it's a lot of fun you can get very points throughout the through that as well for your housing but we do have twenty one division one double a sports at merion so we have a great school spirit we love going to watch the football games you have a mascot shooter fox it's always there talking to students high five ing them across teams are great men's and midterms so it's kind of nice you get a three day weekend it's a friday off so you can go home see your family when you go home for thanksgiving break or you can stay here as well i know for those students that might be international from far away mass provides them with housing for over those breaks as well and then you your files in december and usually around december fifteenth you go home for winter break which is about a month so you get to spend the holidays home with your families celebrate the new year at home and then come back america in january there's a spring break around march we just had a spring break is about a week  long and then you come back to finish out the semester and tell me so it really goes fast so my advice would be to definitely enjoy it while it lasts because it's coming up very quick my graduation so it goes pretty fast  show so the atmosphere it like i said a bunch of times before is really just a huge sense of community everyone is so nice to each other so welcoming even people you don't know if you're walking around campus though to smile and wave just because you're not interested in the faculty are great as well bill staying long hours a red fox family so i would say that's the atmosphere we did a dress for success suit drive like thing suits for women who maybe don't have a lot of money maybe or low income but need a new suit for an interview or a job so they got to deliver those at a job session our sports teams are very involved they're always doing cleanup days like me cleaning up the highway or volunteering with kids or at a soup kitchen so you can see our students are very involved in the community and it's just really nice on that puts everything into perspective he said something  courses in all of the humanities all different classes so you are required to take a science or religion or philosophy class in english class these are class and that definitely helped me because you learn stuff in those classes that you can kind of apply even in finance classes sometimes so it's really great they offer a variety of different classes and i even took a really cool class history of the american presidency recently and i got to learn all about the president's so there's definite classes for everyone there's a like gives like i said i took arabic i have some friends in german which is great because they can learn german and go study abroad in germany as well so definitely lots of classes  america has plenty of same broader vocations but we do have a campus lorenzo de mini key in florence italy so a lot of students will go there for a semester we also have a freshman florence experience program where freshmen actually go there for a full year and we have a master's program there but i have plenty of s i've study abroad in all different countries all over the world if america doesn't have a program you're looking for they will pardon you with another school that has that program so if you want to go to thailand or southeast asia or germany will get you there so i can probably almost all of my friends ninety percent have studied abroad at some oh yeah sure so i actually applied for that internship i worked for the national republican congressional committee in the finance department which is really cool because i got from my own experiences with finances and also with politics as my minor so i worked in their office so i got to work with a lot of  republican members of the house of representatives they would come in every day at interact with them and ask them firsthand how do you think politics are affecting the finance industry so that was so awesome great experience and that experience actually helped me get further internships and now my job now just talking about that experience  so that was phenomenal it was definitely what worked for me so that there's those opportunities we also have american manhattan program where students get to go to manhattan for a semester take classes their merits and entering as well as be abroad opportunities so there's definitely something for everyone and ho new every time you come here you might get a different tour guide something like that but it will definitely help you make that decision even if you go to college and you don't like it as in the process of your list so it's only good to visit everywhere and i think parents just work with their students work with their students in their guidance counselor make sure you  at all your options but definitely go this is on the tour encourage them to apply early schools and definitely part america is the best school out there i can definitely say that yeah no problem i really appreciate it so you do what you can see so college