Towson, review

walkinghome
Wed, 13 Apr 2005 10:53:40 +0000

Since there has been some talk about Towson lately, I thought I’d post a review I did of it in late September after my son and I visited. Not sure if I posted it here or not:

Saturday my son, his friend and her mother and I visited Towson University in Towson, Maryland. It came up on my radar screen when our next door neighbors son, who happens to be my son’s close friend, was accepted and decided to go there. He’s a freshman this year. My son’s friend that visited with us is a senior in hs this year so this was her last college to look at. She’s also good friends with the current student.

Towson is a large College with about 16,000 students. Most of them are from Maryland and my guess is many applied to U of Md., and chose Towson as a safety. My son’s friend’s roommate for instance, goes home every weekend. We were told that the avg. SAT scores for admitted students ranged from 970 - 1100. There is an honors college with merit money, special housing and perks.

Our son’s friend is a history major and would like one day to teach at a college level. One of the reasons he picked Towson was because of the depth of the history classes. It has a broad range of majors and one in computer security that I thought might interest my son.

When we arrived on campus we went to the Enrollment Services building. We were given a very brief talk about the college and watched a fairly generic video that featured students talking about why they LOVED Towson. It was good - I’ve just seen so many it was hard to pay attention. Afterwards we were broken up into groups of about 20 people and three guides. My son’s friend joined us for the tour.

The campus is quite large, hilly and fairly well maintained. Lots of trees, open grassy areas and places to hang out. The dining facilities looked great - large variety and well placed. The meal plan was flexible and freshman could choose between 14 - 19 meals a week or something called 19 unlimited meals which I think was meant for football players… There was a lot of activity on campus but I think many students were on their way to the stadium when we arrived, getting ready for the first football game. My son’s friend had joined an ultimate frisbee team and it was much more competitive then what he was used to. But he was getting used to and enjoying it.

The dorms were pretty typical except they don’t seperate freshman out so you could potentially share a dorm with juniors or seniors. In actuallity most dorms are freshman and sophmores because they have very nearby off campus housing that the upperclassman use. They had two orientation mixers that our son’s friend declined before school started. I think one was a raft trip and the other was helping to build a Habitat for Humanity house. His mother was quite frustrated when he wouldn’t do either one.

Classrooms looked nice. Avg. class size was about 20 students although some beginning classes could have 100 students with labs broken down to groups of 20. They were renovating a very large theatre arts building and said it would be done by summer 2005.

We ate on campus in the dining hall. I had a made to order omelet, tater tots and a salad. It was good. My son liked the all you can eat thing and got a grilled cheese, 4 slices (small) of pizza and a bowl of ice cream. A good candidate for the freshman 15 - but that wouldn’t be a bad thing!

Something appealing about Towson is it’s proximity to Baltimore. The tour guide said it was about 15 minutes to Inner Harbour. There’s a nearby bus service into the city and the walk to the town of Towson was just a mile. We saw the town and it had a beautiful large library, a Borders book store and a nearby mall. Very conveinent.

The cost for out of state students is about $22,000. My son did like it as did his girl friend (those two words are not hooked together on purpose!) and she did decide to apply at Towson. Her other schools to apply to are Elon and NC State. Her mother is also suggesting she decide on a Pennsylvania safety school.

All in all, I liked Towson. It was a fairly pleasant 3 hour drive - we decided to go west through PA and then South into Md. instead of the faster, but more congested route on route I-95. I think it would be a match school for my son and slightly challenging and enjoyable college experience.

Postscript: My son’s friend who attends Towson has been really enjoying his freshman year and is doing very, very well academically.