College Visits

Our fourth child is now in the process of discerning where she wants to go to college. You would think that we would have a really good idea of what the college decision process would be like by now, but since our first three all wanted to go to the same place, making the decision was relatively easy once they were admitted.  Now we're trying to decide between a couple good choices for our daughter. She knew she wanted to stay in California and to go to a smaller Christian school (we ruled out the bigger UC/CSU schools. If she had wanted to study a particular program that was only offered or that was offered by a premier program in the field at the state school, we might have looked into them, but she didn't, and we are not permanent residents of California, so the financial advantage doesn't exist for us.) 

This past month we visited the two schools that our daughter is deciding between. One is Pepperdine, which is a solid school and has a GI Bill program, so academically and financially it is attractive.  I worried a bit about the faith aspect, but our friends' son, who gave us the tour, showed us the Catholic church across the street (where he is getting married in the fall to a girl he met at Pepperdine who since has become Catholic). He also talked about the Catholic Bible study sponsored by one of the professors on campus. (An advantage for professors in these high rent districts like Malibu: The university has faculty housing on campus up the hill removed from the students in an attractive little community.)  

The next weekend we went to visit Westmont College, which is a small (1200 students) nondenominational Christian school outside of Santa Barbara. I fell in love with the campus, as you can tell by all the pictures I took of the flowers, gardens, and hillside views. They have an honors program called the Augustinian Scholars program that features seminars in which the students discuss Augustine, Aquinas, St. Teresa Aquinas, Ignatius Loyola, among others, like Luther and Calvin... I was ready to sign up. 

Every time we do these college visits (granted, we haven't done many), I get excited about the possibilities, the pretty campuses, the new programs.  We are facing our own big decision here soon about where we'll go next.  There isn't one option out of the several that makes me really excited about the possibility, but I do get excited about visiting schools. Maybe I'll just go back to school. 

Main building at Westmont, founded by Ruth Kerr, heiress of the Kerr canning jar company.
The grounds were previously a private estate. 

Magnolias in bloom

One of the delights of the campus are small gardens with lovely statuary.

Chapel at Westmont

View of the Pacific from the highest point on campus

Playing fields at Westmont

We made a quick stop at Mount St Mary's in LA

View from the top of Pepperdine's campus on a cloudy day. 

Every building has an ocean view on clear days. 

The chapel at Pepperdine

Our Lady of Malibu, the church near Pepperdine. A simple sanctuary, but apparently the musicians are really good.