Amazon.com description: Product Description: Introduction from the Author

When I was a junior in high school, I began looking at engineering schools. The first one I looked at was Georgia Tech, which is located in a downtown area of Atlanta. While I was driving around the campus before my information sessions, I could hardly tell I was at a school. The buildings were not attractive, and the surrounding area was run down—to say the least; there was simply not one ounce of beauty about the place. The information session did not add to my experience. I found myself among other students who were far more bent on coming to the school; the counselors, in no uncertain terms, said that only the best of the best even get into Georgia Tech, and that, as a prospective student, I should feel honored to even send in an application. It was true; Georgia Tech is one of the highest-rated engineering schools in the country, and there was no way they were about to accept someone who could alter that perception. As I then went on a tour around campus with a student,! I soon realized one inescapable truth: the whole place was filled with guys! This was not good. On top of that, they were all engineering majors—not to say that being around engineering majors is a bad thing, it’s just that I can handle aloof sarcasm only so much. It did not take long to realize that Georgia Tech was not the place for me.

I fell upon St. Louis University from the deluge of college mailers I had gotten throughout my junior and senior years of high school. The pictures of the campus were nice, with students sitting around grassy areas and tulips sprouting from the ground. From the brochure, I found that the campus was located in Midtown St. Louis—I wasn’t sure where Midtown was, but the idea of living in the city sounded great after my Purdue experience. Of course, neither my guidance counselors nor any of my fellow classmates had ever heard of it. For some reason, though, SLU (pronounced “slew”) stuck out among all the other prospective schools. I visited in the fall of my senior year of high school, and I was convinced from then on that this is where I wanted to go. The school had a fantastic aerospace engineering program at their Parks College of Engineering and Aviation, but it was still small compared to Georgia Tech and Purdue. That meant all my classes would be small enough that the professors would actually know my name, and that engineering students would not surround me all of the time. Best of all was the campus’s location within the city of St. Louis. It is in an urban area full of excitement and adventure, but when I walked around the campus, I hardly noticed it. I had found the best of both worlds, and I have not looked back since. Even for those who study English or business, SLU is a great combination of a small, liberal arts school with the availability of an entire city.

When I took on the job of writing this guidebook, I reexamined my choice of going to SLU—just as you, the prospective student, must examine your choice in where to go. In hindsight, I have no hesitation in saying I would make the same choice—in a heartbeat.

Drew Ewing, Author
St. Louis University