jyi90

is it podunk or does it have small-town charm?

AND

What do you at Beloit during spare time? Do you get bored there

Can I send in stuff with my app as an undecided major?

What don't you love about Beloit?
How would you describe the students?

jyi90

and how many letters of rec are required?

jyi90

? please reply

jyi90

k

...at least answer this: Beloit the city is podunk or has small-town charm?
please
I like this school

emosen

hey...seems no one comes here anymore.heh.i dont know much about the town myself. im an international student so i cant really say much about...what i can say is that i havent heard 'raving' reviews regarding the town. i think the college itself is very good in terms of value and otherwise.its really what u make of it. and what factors are more important to u? for me location wasn't a big factor. not as much as others like say financial aid and overall academic value for what i want to study. i suppose it depends on what u want. but in general ive heard its a bit of a dump. on a positive note its not too far from chicago and pretty close to madison. its on the illionois-wisconsin state line so u can get to chicago or madison if u feel u need to get out. i checked, a bus ticket from south beloit to chicago is abt 24 dollars or so (one way). im not too sure, u can check this info out on the van gilder bus service website (i think thats what its called, check the beloit site to confirm)
carolyn helped me a lot regarding beloit. she has a lot of info on the college and town so u might wanna try getting in touch with her.also try searching for posts on the forum related to beloit college. u will probably find some info if u dig around.
cheers

emosen

u also might want to check out the messageboard at the beloit college admitted students website. that is if uve been accepted for 2007. if ur thinking abt applying next year try getting in touch with carolyn. her daughter is a student there.

jyi90

thank you!

lantern5

jyi90-

I agree that Carolyn is the Beloit College expert here at CC. I visited with my son in 2005. I thought the campus --high on a bluff over the river -- was beautiful and the perfect scale for a small college. I also thought that the downtown was just fine for a small college town. It had one of the best small hotels I encountered during college visits.

My son went back to visit for 3 days as a senior, flying into O'Hare and taking the Van Gilder bus to Beloit. He thought the traveling was easy. One of his good friends from HS attends Beloit and is summering in Chicago. She says lots of Beloit kids start thinking more about visiting and eventually relocating to Chicago by Junior or Senior year.

Ultimately my son, who wants to be an actor, selected a school closer to NYC. But he really, really liked Beloit and would have gone there (were it not for the school he ultimately selected). By way of comparison, he was admitted to Kenyon, Macalester and Bard, all schools with different, but 'great' campus locations, and he preferred Beloit to all three of those schools.

Hope that this helps.

jyi90

yes it does, thank you

barrons

Charm and Beloit don't really go together. It's an old midwestern industrial town with few major attractions outside the college. Best thing is it's only an hour to Madison and 1.5 hours to Chicago--two great towns.

jyi90

Rockford and Janesville are all right too aren't they?

lalady

Rockford and Janesville are just fine. While Beloit certainly isn't a cutle little college town, it is not horrible, and Beloit students find plenty to do on campus to entertain themselves.

great lakes mom

Rockford and Janesville both have highway area commercial areas, shopping, some cultural features in the towns. Good functional small cities. Nothing too cute. They also are part of the old 'rust belt' as is Beloit, factory/industrial towns, and Janesville seems to have a number of functioning factories. There are other, cute little Wisconsin towns close by, and lots of agriculture. Van Galder goes right to downtown Madison and the UW campus.

Remember that Beloit is known for fostering a wonderful sense of community on campus, and the students are a creative bunch. If involved with school, the town is not such a big deal one way or the other.

carolyn

I agree with Great Lakes Mom -- really, the attraction at Beloit is the wonderful sense of campus community, and the creative slant of the students. As my daughter told JYi in a PM, Beloit is the kind of place where you're likely to encounter a herd of unicyclists out for a midnight ride, people hanging out listening to the many student bands in the C-Haus, a group of folks discussing who would survive a zombie invasion in the campus coffee house, people doing inpromptu Tai Chi on the steps of the dining hall, a group of Tibetan Monks out for a stroll with a student guide, and just about every sort of do-your-own thing zaniness in between. My daughter's fondest memory of her first week at Beloit is when, walking back from a class, she felt so happy to be there that she started to do a spontaneous little dance on the sidewalk --- and five or six strangers walking by just as spontaneously joined in.

Beloit is not right for everyone. The campus is pretty, but not as "shiny" around the edges as some other schools. You won't find folks walking around in the latest fashions. The approach to academics is sometimes a little less traditional (but not totally out there!) People who get nervous around people who are very different than them may not feel comfortable. The city of Beloit will never win any awards as an urban hot spot.

But, you will find a place that expands to fit students of many different intellectual abilities, teachers who honestly care, an administration that works hard to build in great experiences and opportunities for students, and a warm and friendly student body that is very accepting of each other's differences.

If it's right for you, you'll know when you visit.

jyi90

thank you for the advice everyone, especially Carolyn!