Oxy Students Here to Help Out w/ Your Questions!

DapperDaf
Tue, 24 Sep 2013 19:06:44 +0000

Hey everyone, I’m still around to answer questions! :)

Midnightscarlet- The “liberal” in liberal arts college refers to the interdisciplinary nature of the education you’ll receive here at Occidental College. The Core Program, which everyone must complete as a prerequisite for graduation, ensures that students develop intercultural awareness and complete coursework in a variety of disciplines. I have often heard Oxy students comment on the phenomenon of how specific and seemingly unrelated courses connect with one another. When speaking with one of the Deans of the college administration, I learned that when the school is hiring professors, they make sure those candidates are willing to have their research and projects intersect with other departments.

The academics at Oxy also take advantage of the fact that we are a small liberal arts school within an urban setting. Many courses integrate community engagement into their curriculum, requiring students to work with L.A. based organizations or attend cultural events. We also have classes where the coursework extends into a broader scope, such as a Disaster Politics class that sends students to volunteer in New Orleans over winter break or a Religious Studies class that sends students to Turkey to carry out their own research projects.

Oxy also offers programs that are unique in the sense that they aren’t often opportunities offered to undergraduates at other schools. For example, we have Oxy at the U.N., where we send students to intern for the United Nations in New York City. To my knowledge we are the only college in the United States that allows undergraduates to participate in a program like this. We also have Campaign Semester, where students enroll in a course and spend most of the semester interning for political campaigns across the nation. During your time at Oxy you can choose to apply to do Undergraduate Summer Research and work one-on-one with a professor on developing an individual project. Like other schools, students have the option of studying abroad their junior year. While Oxy is a small campus, academic departments encourage students’ exploration and hands-on learning within the surrounding community.

In terms of social atmosphere, Oxy is a community of ~2,000 students. So there’s a huge chance that you’re going to get to know pretty much everyone (aside from first-years) by your senior year. There’s always a chance that you will run into someone you know when you’re making your way across the Quad, and you might see this as either a good or a bad thing. I’ve found that Oxy’s student body is comparable to the size of my old high school, but the atmosphere isn’t clique-y or exclusive at all. Generally people have the tendency to form their own social groups depending on what extracurriculars or courses they partake in but they are all very open and friendly towards one another.

If you’d like me to elaborate any further, please let me know!