Looks aren’t everything.
Maybe you don’t fit the mold in high school. You don’t look like the other
kids. You don’t dress like they dress. You don’t think like they think. You
don’t know where the cool party is and you don’t care. You might even be more
intelligent than your grades makes you look. You’re a thinker, a dreamer, an
idealist. You can’t wait to escape high school and surround yourself with a
bunch of other bright, interesting, wonderfully weird students who didn’t fit
the mold in high school either and who think you look just fine.
Have we got the college for you…
Welcome to Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, a haven for progressive,
radical, idealistic students. And much like the 570 students (that’s not a
misprint) who inhabit this liberal arts college, Antioch is more than what you
see on the surface.
A quick glance at Antioch will likely only tell you the surface story. You’ll
see Antioch’s unstructured, liberal curriculum where students receive written
faculty evaluations instead of grades, and you’ll hear that students are
required to submit self-evaluations of their course performance. You’ll almost
certainly hear about the co-op experience, where students spend a total of
three to four semesters in worldwide positions with research centers, Fortune
500 companies, cultural organizations and non-profit groups. And most people
who visit Antioch aren’t exactly bowled over by the campus or by the
surrounding town of Yellow Springs.
But that’s just the surface.
Beneath Antioch’s liberal curriculum is a group of motivated, intellectual
students who spend four years working closely with professors to create their
own major and plan their own course of study. Beneath the adventure of the
co-op program is a group of professionally marketable students with full
resumes who have spent nearly two years working with organizations around the
world, students who already know how to find a job, get hired, find their own
housing, pack up and move to a new place. Beneath the seemingly drab campus is
a lively, progressive, legitimate democracy where every student has a say in
every decision that matters to the college—Antioch treats them as citizens of
the college with rights and responsibilities.
You won’t find frat parties or football at Antioch, though you will find a
popular campus t-shirts that reads, "No football team since 1927."
A lot of colleges look and sound the same, promising to be all things to all
students. That’s why we love a college like Antioch who comes out and tells you
exactly what your experience will be like. Some prospective students will be
instantly turned off by Antioch, but that’s only because Antioch has the guts
to be honest. Why wouldn’t they be? That honesty is how they find the right
students who can flourish there.
Choosing the right college should be about finding a place where you’ll be
happy, where you’ll feel appreciated, and where you’ll feel comfortable pushing
yourself to learn and grow for four years. If you didn’t feel that from your
high school, if you want to be at a place that will appreciate you for who you
are, and if you feel that you’re more than what people might see on the
surface, take a look at Antioch College at www.antioch.edu.