Semmes and Towers weekend 2018

TexasHunter
Tue, 06 Mar 2018 16:59:25 +0000

Overall, I thought the day was very informative and the Trinity staff did a great job promoting Trinity. I especially enjoyed the student panel with Dean Tuttle. My child has always liked Trinity and left the day with an even more positive impression. We also took in some baseball and enjoyed the game- despite the wet weather. We ended the day with some great Mexican food. Always a treat in San Antonio.

I was very disappointed, however, to learn the way the scholarship recipients are going to be determined. My child was placed in a physics lecture. My child has very little interest in physics and very little background in physics. Needless to say, that particular class was not one of the classes that was requested. My child found the lecture to be quite boring, so I’m guessing the quiz results will not be very impressive. There was, however, one boy in the classroom who was very interested in physics and used the opportunity to dominate the conversation and later monopolize the same professors’ time during the subsequent info session at the auditorium. I question whether a good student evaluation can be made using this format.

I was much more impressed with some of the other colleges where my child interviewed for full tuition scholarships. The professors actually interviewed and interacted with the students and got to know their true strengths and weaknesses, as opposed to asking questions on one particular topic that was chosen through a lottery system. Picking the best and brightest students using Trinity’s approach appears to be (at least partially) based on random chance depending on whether your assigned session matched your strengths.

Trinity definitely has some great qualities and we have been treated well during each visit, but this particular process just didn’t seem to make sense to me. If I would have known the process, I probably would have suggested that we skip this opportunity once I learned the assigned class. It would have saved a great deal of travel time and money.