By Emma Anselin & Daisy Hassani
2006-07 Gargoyle Co-Editors-in-Chief
Posted Saturday, July 1, 2006, The OG, news

The day the much-awaited SSO college map goes up, throngs of students are seen staring intently at the clumps of mugshots.

There's the usual mass of Uni heads floating near Urbana-Champaign. The seniors' love affair with the East Coast has once again left Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado in the dust. The California surfer bums have accepted a few new members into their ranks, with a spattering of seniors attending West Coast colleges. No surprises here.

There's only one new trend that really jumps out from the intricate pattern of roads and state lines. Several of the seniors are smiling in pairs.

This year, a number of students have decided to attend the same college as one of their classmates. But though each pair chose to attend the same college, they each based their decision on very dfifferent motivations.

Tess Garvey and Ben Sims, who attend St. Olaf College in Minnesota, and Sara Sligar and Justin Park, who will attend Amherst College in Massachusetts, form two of the eight “college couples” in the Class of 2006. (Note: See sidebar at the end of this article for a complete list of the twosomes.)

These seniors have especially varied interests but were drawn to the same schools, illustrating how many different factors go into making a college decision.

The fact that Amherst “feeds into the top schools in the nation” was one of the core factors in Park's decision. Park believes that college is “just a mere stepping stone into the next step of education.”

Thus, in looking at different undergraduate institutions, Park wanted “whatever college could best launch me to the next level.” According to Park, Amherst students are known for their high rates of acceptance into elite graduate schools such as Harvard and Yale.

But while Amherst “has the name to get you where you want to go,” Park was also influenced in his decision by the college's lack of required classes or a core curriculum.

Sligar, who will also be attending Amherst in the fall, did not consider preparation for graduate school as a large factor in her decision. However, like Park, she did zero in on Amherst's flexible curriculum.

“There's a really big focus on intellectual independence — no core curriculum or distribution requirements at all, which I think is really raw,” says Sligar.

All four of our subjects put “undecided” as their major on the SSO Class of 2006 college list. Nevertheless, they each have a general idea of the fields they want to concentrate on.

Park is considering economics or black studies, whie Sligar is considering English, biology, or Spanish. Neither of them deemed majors a determining factor in their college choice.

“My decision was pretty off the cuff,” says Park. “I have no idea what's good there … I didn't think too hard about it.”

Sims is also very flexible on possible fields of study.

“I love to write and hate doing math, so I may focus on writing and literature,” he says. “I'm really not concerned — at least not right now — with how much money I will or won't make. I see college as a place to make yourself an intangibly better person, not necessarily one who makes a lot.”

In contrast, Garvey's decision to go to St. Olaf was partly based on specific academic interests.

“[I] was basically looking for a good Russian program (with the option of a study abroad in Russia) and a good music program in a smallish liberal arts school,” she says. “It was a pretty hard search, but I think I settled on a good one.”

The fact that many St. Olaf students have multiple majors was also an important factor.

“At the least I'd like to keep up with languages, primarily Russian, physics, math, and music, primarily singing,” says Garvey. “Which of these I will end up majoring in, I have no idea yet.”

Sims' final decision was more based on the quality of student life than academic factors such as curriculum requirements and graduate school.

“The most important thing for me was to go somewhere that felt like it could be home,” says Sims. “Financial aid awards served as tie-breakers.”

Sims is also looking forward to college as an opportunity to make new friends as well as keep the old.

“Like many others, I have dug myself into a hole when it comes to who I interact with at Uni,” says Sims. “So it might be fun to be immersed in a totally new situation.”

After five years of high school these students have fated themselves to four more years of being in a fellow Uni alum's company. Will chaos ensue? Not for these college couples.

“I'm pretty happy that I'll be going to school with Tess,” says Sims. “It's nice to know that I'll already have a friend when I get there, and yes, I plan to see her often. Hopefully we'll each make other friends and won't have to confine ourselves solely to each other's company, but I certainly see us remaining friends through our college years.”

Garvey also plans to keep up strong ties with Sims throughout the college years.

“It is very strange that we are going to the same college because Ben Sims and I were friends in preschool,” she says. “Maybe we will watch kung fu movies or join the curling team.”

Park and Sligar have not been as close over the years as Garvey and Sims. Nevertheless, Sligar also has an optimistic view of her college relations with Park.

“I think it will be nice to know someone already,” says Sligar. “Amherst only has 1600 students, so I'll probably see Justin a lot.”

So whether it's the community, the curriculum, or preparation for graduate school, these seniors have all made similar college choices for very individual reasons. Perhaps the one factor that unites all of their criteria is the gut feeling.

“There really wasn't one ‘most important' thing,” says Sligar on what went into her college decision. “It was a lot of little things added together. I just went for the place I felt was best for me.”

Uni's college twosomes are:

• David Boyle & Cameron Cropek, University of Michigan at Ann Arbor
• Alejandra Collopy & Tom Wiltzius, Stanford University
• Annie Fehrenbacher & Max Rich, Johns Hopkins University
• Tess Garvey & Ben Sims, St. Olaf College
• Leah Imlay & Rose Kory, Grinnell College
• Angelina Liang & Hannah Snyder, University of Chicago
• Justin Park & Sara Sligar, Amherst College
• Michael Pitt & Batia Snir, Brandeis University