 Hello my people, welcome to the Score Channel. Today we are at Hillsdale College. Hillsdale College is a small university located in South Central Michigan. Hillsdale has proof that there are great universities hiding in little towns like these. As always, I sat down with the International Admissions Counselor to learn more about Hillsdale and see what makes this small university a great option for students from abroad. My name is Alexander Green and I am an Admissions Counselor with Hillsdale College where we are today. I do international recruitment with all other countries. So I am from Virginia and I went to Michigan to go to Hillsdale College back in 2015 and I graduated in 2019. I was an English major and a Spanish minor. I lived on campus all four years and even stayed an extra year to work in the dorms with students on campus. So I absolutely love Hillsdale. I love the student experience. I really am thankful and excited to help other students figure out if it's a good fit for them. The history of Hillsdale is actually really interesting. This was the first ever university to actually include in its charter a strict prohibition on discrimination. African-American people were welcomed here as early as 1844, years before the Civil War ended slavery in the United States. So we are over 175 years old. We were started by a group of free will Baptist Christians. They wanted the abolition of slavery in our country. That's something we care about today, the value of every human being and we teach about that and we talk about that and we really live that out here at Hillsdale. Despite the small campus, Hillsdale somehow packs over 40 majors and minors inside its beautiful building. The top five majors at Hillsdale are history, English, biology, financial management and economics. All students at Hillsdale also take our core curriculum. Two years of different classes from the humanities, so English and history and philosophy to classes in our science department. So we have physics and biology and chemistry and a math course. We also have other things like physical wellness dynamics. So this really helps to give students a full understanding of the world and how it works from a lot of different perspectives. These things intertwine and you can really understand the whole by studying economics, connecting that with maybe your Spanish course and saying, well, how do they interplay and how does my English class play into that? When I heard Alexander was an English major, I just had to ask him more as a former teacher of English literature. The English major, you study American literature, British literature and you can also take other courses of different types of literature. English majors do a lot of reading, of course. You read a lot of books and then you create the responses through your essay. It really teaches you how to communicate well. Now, I know a lot of you watching probably dream of waking up in a big city and partying your nights and weekends away on a campus full of thousands of students, but that's exactly why I wanted to highlight Hillsdale. The small town rural campus life comes with a lot of benefits that huge universities just can't offer. You know, I didn't know, I knew some about Hillsdale, but I still wanted to apply to other schools and I thought a big university would have all of the opportunities that I wanted. What I was surprised by was though you may not have every opportunity available to you as you might at a large university, a place like Hillsdale is very good at helping you learn, helping you know how to learn well and still helping you connect with people and opportunities that are useful for post college. I found that students and faculty like really turn into campus and love interacting with students on campus and the town that we live in, the small town that you can engage with. I know some people are attracted to a big university where there's a myriad of things to do and I understand that I applied to some myself. What I fell in love with at Hillsdale was the sense of belonging, the sense of this is where I live, this is my town, these are my people. I loved the sense of community that Hillsdale has. We have only about 1,450 students but the average class size is only 15 students. So you get a lot of connection with your fellow students. When you trust someone and you know somebody, you can have a more free discussion about the world and how it works or your beliefs about the world. Nine students for every one professor. So you get to know your professors, they know your name, they know who you are, they know when you're in class and when you may not be in class. I could go to their office. They all have office hours every week, at least two or three hours every week where you can go meet with them as a student. Actually, this classroom that we're standing in, we had one of my favorite classes here with Dr. Blackstock who is now retired but we learned about leadership and it was sort of a classical understanding of leadership and we learned all sorts of different ways that different leaders have led well and have not led well and I've actually been to Dr. Blackstock's house for dinner with his family and we recently met up again for coffee and lunch. That was just this classroom. There are all sorts of connections that you can have with your fellow professors or other students just by virtue of being a student here. Another big advantage is the price. Hillsdale's costs are much more affordable than other universities in the US and they've got a very unique approach to financial aid. We're also known nationally for not accepting any federal funding. We have thousands of people that give money to Hillsdale to help us operate and to help give financial aid to students. So we also make it quite affordable to attend Hillsdale. 98% of students have some kind of financial aid. 70% of students graduate debt-free from Hillsdale. So you will be considered for all merit scholarships if you apply to Hillsdale by January 1st. Merit scholarships are just based on the strength of your application. International students can either fill out the CSS profile. We have an international student aid form. You can actually email me to get that information or just email our financial aid department. They'd be happy to share that with you. You can add to that financial aid by getting an athletic scholarship at any one of these awesome facilities. Check them out. We have 14 different Division II NCAA sports. Our football team. We also have women's swimming. We even have a shotgun team. We also have music scholarships, theater scholarships and art scholarships. 98% of students that go to Hillsdale are placed into a job or to graduate school or to volunteering or the military within six months of their graduation. 90% of students that were placed into their jobs were happy and they felt like it was connected with their career goals long-term. So what kind of student is Hillsdale looking for? So Hillsdale has this thing called an honor code and it talks about being honorable and respectful and dutiful and honest. I don't know that there's one specific type of Hillsdale student. I think there are things that Hillsdale students tend to have. They tend to be students that are willing, want to engage with the things that they're learning. The education at Hillsdale is definitely difficult. But I also think that it's an inability, a sense of I both want to learn and I can learn. And so the willingness and the ability kind of go together like this. There are two different types of applications. The first is our early decision application and that is due November 1st. The second way to apply is through our regular decision application. There is a leadership scholarship that is due December 1st. So I would just encourage you to apply early fall if you're able to. I'm so excited that you're watching this video and I would encourage you to apply to Hillsdale. Maybe even visit if possible and reach out to your admissions counselor. And thank you so much for prepwithscore.com for making this video and making this opportunity to speak with you today. Thanks so much for Andrew, me, Jim and his excellent work in contacting us to be able to tell you about Hillsdale and what we're doing here in Michigan. Thanks so much for your time today. Huge thanks to Hillsdale for having me today. It was awesome getting a chance to check out this university firsthand. There are a ton of great universities like this all around the United States. Places that you probably haven't heard of but if you take a good look you'll find a great university for you. Now I gotta hit the road.