 Hello, my people, welcome to the Score Channel and welcome to my favorite city in the United States, Chicago, Illinois. I seriously love Chicago. This is probably like the fifth time I've been here. But this beautiful downtown that you're looking at right now isn't where we're gonna start our trip. We're gonna be going to Beloit College, a college in a small town called Beloit, Wisconsin, that is located just outside of the border of Illinois. I want you guys to see the whole breadth of your options here in the United States. You've got big city options located right downtown like Columbia College, Chicago. You also have suburban options just on the outskirts like Elmhurst, where we're gonna be next. And you also have rural areas, places like Beloit, Wisconsin, which is where I'm headed right now. But if you're interested in the big city, don't worry, subscribe to the channel because I'm gonna be coming back here to Chicago to show you guys other universities like Illinois Tech. But for today, we're going out to the country. Beloit, Wisconsin is a small town of about 40,000 people and it's home to Beloit College, a liberal arts college. And I wanna show you guys what it's like in Beloit. As you can see, it's pretty cold here and that's because we're in the state of Wisconsin. This is a small town in Wisconsin in the Midwest. It's gonna be cold in wintertime, but I'm here to show you the real Beloit College. This is a college that is over 175 years of continuous activity, making it one of the oldest universities in the entire state of Wisconsin. Check out the video I made a week ago on liberal arts colleges because I explained pretty much everything about what these places are like and this video is a perfect example of a liberal arts college. I reached out to International Admissions, as always for this episode of University and Hernan Santa Cruz was nice enough to sit down with me on this cold, frigid Saturday when he totally didn't have to come to work. So thanks, Hernan. Let's meet the guy. I'm Hernan Santa Cruz. I'm one of the International Admissions counselors here at Beloit College. I'm from Quito, Ecuador, so I was an international student at Beloit, but it certainly felt like home when it was an absolutely remarkable experience. We have about 1,250 students hailing from nearly every state in the United States and over 40 countries around the world. Top majors at Beloit include anthropology due to a remarkable anthropology museum, our economics program, which has four different branches of economics, including pure economics, business economics, international political economy, and quantitative economics. Psychology is a really strong program. Our biochemistry program in preparation for pre-med is a strong program and certainly our political science department is a very popular major as well. The liberal arts in general is the idea that we want to develop the whole person. It's kind of rooted in a renaissance, ideology, or philosophy that the individual should be whole by being able to understand a variety of different disciplines and humanities. At Beloit, the way that manifests itself is through our domain system. There's five domains at Beloit College and those five domains span a variety of different, again, not disciplines, but areas of intellectual increase which students have to complete within their first two years here to make sure that they are getting that strong liberal arts foundation. I think one of the greatest examples of how a major at Beloit College differs from a large public university is the way our units or our credits are structured. In order to graduate from Beloit, you need 31 credit units, but only around 13 of those will be comprised by your major. That means that more than two thirds of your classes will not be part of your major. It can be part of a second major or a minor or two minors if you like to choose that. But again, the idea is to get both the breadth of the liberal arts and the humanities while you're here and the depth through your chosen major or major. Choose your own adventure, not just for the four years that you're here at Beloit, but for the rest of your life. One of the things I really liked that Arnan told me about was just how much they mentor students. He said that from when you first admit and decide to be a student here, you will be assigned a mentor, which is one of the professors or teachers or senior faculty here. That person is gonna guide you into this college and throughout your entire experience here. That's something that you're not gonna get at a bigger university. I know that a lot of times people are interested in bigger universities, but there's a lot of things that you can get in a small town that you might not be able to get at a big city or a big college. The relations at Beloit are at the core of everything we do here. We have a student faculty ratio of 10 to one, an average class size of about 12 to 15 students. So really the student really gets to know their professor more than just a mentor and someone who teaches them, but someone who honestly becomes friends and mentors in ways that are non-academic in ways that are career oriented and professionally based. It is not uncommon for students to go to dinner to professors houses who live around campus to babysit, to pet sit, to be invited to weddings and a variety of different important moments in each other's lives. 99% of students year to year say that they have a mentor that is significant to their life during their time here at Beloit. One of the things that really stands out to me with these small colleges is the town and the college and the connection between the two. Honestly, you could say that Beloit, the town is Beloit College and Beloit College is Beloit. The two are so interconnected. There's activities for the town here on campus and students on campus work on projects in the town. Even old buildings like the powerhouse used to be integral parts of this town's economy and society. Today they're a major part of the university. It's like you can't really separate the two. When you become a student at a place like Beloit College you're becoming a part of a bigger community. And even though it's a small community of just about 40,000 people, it's got a lot to offer. How about I show you guys a little bit of what downtown looks like? Explore everything that the up and coming city of Beloit has to offer. And I say up and coming because there has been a revitalization of the city over the last 10, 20 years. Incredible restaurants. Fortune 500 and Fortune 1000 companies. The world famous Beloit International Film Festival to be hosted in our newly inaugurated powerhouse in our auditorium there. I wanna fly the drone around here. The powerhouse, which awesome name by the way, is, as Arnan put it, the coolest place on campus. And I kinda have to agree. I was walking around here and I just wanted to literally drop all my winter clothes and go do a workout right away because, man, I mean, just look at this open layout. You got the track on the second floor. You got this awesome swimming pool. All these open air exercise spaces. And you're in the environment of an old abandoned coal processing plant. So this is where they used to make electricity and now you're making your own watts by lifting weights. Every time I come to these small schools I'm reminded of that fact that no two places are the same and that you should really judge each one on its merits. Don't assume that because you're going to a small college that you're not getting a good education. You're gonna get a great education from people that really care about you. The students who do best at Beloit are those that make the most out of the experiences outside of class. We have a strong belief in the philosophy that what you're learning outside of class is just as important if not more so than what you're learning inside. The ideal student for Beloit is not one that has absolutely perfect grades always but rather someone who's willing to be a leader, who is willing to be part of the community. Applying to Beloit is straightforward. We want to remove as many obstacles as possible for it to make it easy for you to apply and experience the fantastic education that we offer here. It's either the Beloit College application or the Common application which is perhaps the easier choice. Within the Common application we put quite a bit of emphasis on your essay and your extracurricular activity so make sure you fill those out very strongly and without too much humility. Other than that we require one letter of recommendation from a teacher. It needs to be an academic letter of recommendation. For international students we require an international student financial aid application should you apply for financial aid. Beloit College has a sticker prize that is high as most private institutions in the United States do upwards of 65,000 this year tuition fees, room and board. So the living component as well. However, Beloit is renowned for its generosity and 95% of our international students will receive financial aid and 95% of those students will have their need met. We have scholarships that range between $24,000 and $36,000 here to be here and in addition to that grants which is also money that you do not have to pay back. So the international student at Beloit College on average pays something around like $25,000. We have three application deadlines. The first actually is November 1st. Two rounds, early action one and early decision. We have early action two on December 1st if you just needed a little extra time. Regular decision is January 15. However, if a deadline has passed we encourage you to reach out to us and see if we can make it work. I wanted to thank you, Score Peru for the opportunity to highlight Beloit College and all the other colleges that they highlight. I wanna give a big thanks to Erdan for taking the time to talk to us today and just giving me his Saturday. He had no business being here today. I'm like the only person here. There's opportunities everywhere and I think that the key is to find the right fit for you to find the university that fits you as a person and that's why we're doing this series. And if you think Beloit College might be the right fit for you then go to beloit.edu, email Erdan or go to purpose score.com to talk to us about how we can help you apply to colleges like this. That's all we got for this week. Make sure you subscribe to the channel cause I got more liberal arts colleges, more universities in the Chicago area and a lot of other cool stuff coming up for you too. I'll see you next week.