 After driving through Canada, I am back in America at Niagara University. I've just gotten here, so let's check out the campus together. You'll notice there's not like a ton of students on campus today, and that's because it's Sunday. And I don't think I've ever actually visited a university on Sunday before. Today is sports day, I guess, which is a big deal. And so I said I absolutely have to come here and check this out for myself. Well, I mean, if you can ask me questions, that'd be great. I can probably do that. All right, first of all, let's try, what's your name? My name's Riley. I'm a freshman nursing major. So you're doing this whole like RSA weekend. What have they had you guys do so far? A lot of icebreaker events. So this is our, we're in group seven, there's 10 groups. Have you already like met some cool people now? Yeah. All right. We've got a little group going. We've got a little group going. Yeah? These cool people? The camera shy one over there that I'm trying. I can always blur you out later and pose. Like I'm respectful of people's wishes. Don't worry. All right, cool. Everybody's telling me sports day, but like. Yeah. It's called Ridge Day. So it's like the biggest icebreaker event. Where all of our different orientation groups compete against all of the other groups of freshmen. How you guys doing? I mean, he's got green on them. Well, they gave it to me. I mean, you guys could cancel this out with another set of beads. Yeah. Now it's like, I can collect them all. Who's in charge here? Me. Me. Yeah. You got the cape on. Yeah. Can you tell me a little bit about what you're doing here and like how this works? Yeah. So this is called Ridge Day, formerly known as sports day. All the orientation leaders have a separate team to compete for bragging rights. One, two, three, Yellow Heart. One, one, one, one, one, two, three, D-R-A-R. It's obviously a very big deal, but I want to know more about admissions and programs and like everything else that you're going to do. I mean, these days are fun, but like tomorrow the classes start. You ready for class? Absolutely not. Since it's Sunday though, there's really nobody who can like come and talk to me. So I'm going to have to come back here another day. It'd be pretty cool if I could just magically make it Wednesday. It's Wednesday. So back at Niagara University, we're going to go and learn a little bit more about the admissions process and the programs that they have to offer here. So I'm going to go in here and talk to Kyle. He's going to tell us a little bit more about the programs here at Niagara and how you can get admitted. We're also going to talk about those sweet, sweet scholarships. Welcome to Niagara University. My name's Kyle Schwindler. I'm the Associate Director of Admissions. Niagara University was founded in 1856 as a Catholic Vincentian University, founded on just being good people, being able to give back to the poor and the marginalized in the community. Niagara University sits right across the street from Canada, about seven minutes from Niagara Falls, 80 different majors that we have across campus, within a bunch of different colleges. College of Arts and Sciences, College of Business, College of Education, College of Nursing, College of Hospitality, Sport and Tourism Management, and also with our undecided program, Academic Exploration Program. We have put a couple million dollars into Nursing Simulation Centers right here on campus. In addition to our Nursing Simulation Labs, the university has also invested in virtual reality. There's so many different opportunities for you here on campus to be able to learn. So when you hit the hospitals, you're prepared, ready to go, and confident. It's a great tool for students to be able to see and hear everything in real time, but also being able to engage before you hit the hospitals. Sports Management here is another strong program because not only are you close to professional sports organizations from the city of Buffalo, but the university itself has a ton of Division I sports. And you just take a look at this tennis court right here. You can see clearly that there are really high level programs at this university. And so the students can help out with those programs. And so you're getting hands on experience while at the same time being so close to your university that you don't have to go very far. Now if you're an international student and you're thinking about coming to university in the United States, it's important for you to have a good support system. And honestly, I think the super friendly community here is already a great support system, but then we talk to Dilip and you're going to love this guy. Like he works with international students all the time in his office. And I want him to introduce himself and just tell you a little bit more about what he does. I think you're going to feel right at home here at Niagara. Yeah, whenever you're ready. Oh, OK, I am ready. My name is Dilip De Oztale. I am the Vice President for International Relations and the Brennan Center. We receive all the international students who come to Niagara University and we provide them all the necessary services to make their stay here a wonderful experience. All the immigration needs of the students, so from the time they apply to the university, the paperwork that needs to be generated, and they land over here and they can write a slide into the university and start their classes. We have an English Language Center, so if they need to take any classes in English to improve their levels of proficiency, then we have that. The social aspect, you know, kinds of things and activities they do because we want their experience to be shared by the entire community. We want them to talk about their life, their country, their culture, their traditions, their experiences and share it with the American students. The idea of these flags, which you see over here, is basically a representation of the many of the countries that are represented here. Just this week, we had the international student orientation, so all the flags were taken out and we had a big barbecue for the students and all the flags were represented. So it added a lot of color to all the green, which you see around you. So it kind of made students feel like they belong here. They are representatives, they are ambassadors of their countries. The university also prides itself on being affordable. That's why we have five generous Merrick Bay scholarships offered to all accepted students from $10,000 per year, all the way up to $24,000 per year. There's also what we call an SOS portal, Scholarship Opportunity Search. Once you're accepted, you can log into this portal and apply to all these different scholarships that are only for accepted Niagara students. The university really wants you to be comfortable and also to afford it. Our average cost for one student is right around $19,000 per year. After having the opportunity to be here two different times on two different days, the thing that stands out to me is just how friendly and accommodating and kind everybody is here on campus. If this is the kind of institution that you're looking for, maybe a smaller university that has these majors that you're interested in and is relatively reasonably priced, being a private university, then you should consider applying here. And if you want to apply here, here's what you've got to do. You can apply in one of two ways through our common application or the Niagara University website. Both are free. It doesn't cost anything to apply to Niagara. We typically look for around a 3.0 GPA. And we are also really encouraging students to apply with at least two letters of recommendation and include an essay. We are completely test optional. However, with nursing and education, SAT scores are typically encouraged. You apply test optional for education. There will be a placement exam. And if you take in the SAT twice, we also super score as well. The application process for us, we are rolling. However, we have what we call the Eagle Experience Scholarship. There's two requirements in order to complete that. It's one, visit campus, virtually or in person. And two, submit your application by October 31st. If you do just those two simple things, you're going to receive a $5,000 scholarship. Thank you for watching this video today. Please be sure to visit in person or virtually. But if you have any questions at all, you can visit the admissions section of our website to figure out who your specific admissions counselor is. All of us here in the office are happy to help and answer any questions at any time. So thank you so much. And we hope to see you on the ridge soon. Every single person that I've talked to here has been super friendly, super helpful, and just has really made me feel at home. And I'm not even a student here. Like, I got to give a big shout out to Cassie and to Bridget for setting this up. Big thank you to Kyle for taking the time to do the video with us. And of course, to Lee too for his time. And Bill too for everything he did on ridge day. Like, everybody I've met in the university, student, faculty, staff, whatever, has been an absolute treat. So I just want to say thank you so much to everybody at Niagara University. And thank you to you guys for watching this video. I feel like you'd really love it here.