Make Sure Your University Offers These Four Things
If you could design your own university experience — one without skyrocketing tuition costs, a “campus bubble” environment, or dull 300-student lectures — what would it look like?
As the world becomes even more interconnected and complex, the need for intelligent, dynamic, experienced, and open-minded leaders is increasingly important. It may seem far off right now, but you are the generation poised to become these very leaders. Don’t you want to be prepared for success?
The Minerva Schools at KGI university program was designed with you in mind: someone who recognizes that traditional higher education simply isn’t delivering all that it promises or all that it should.
If today’s college graduates are emerging ill-prepared, just imagine how far behind students graduating later may be. But Minerva is different — intentionally different — with the results to prove it.
For students about to embark on their four years of college or those currently at a university and finding they aren’t really learning what’s needed for after graduation, consider the key elements below. Whatever institution you ultimately attend, make sure the program includes these components because they are critical to your success.
1. Global Understanding
As you probably know, a majority of universities promise global education. But can you really acquire global awareness and experiences if you spend the entire year in the same campus and city?
This type of education is very difficult to achieve, unless you have different cities or even countries as your campus. You can only acquire true global awareness and international experience when you travel abroad and spend some time in completely different cultures.
At Minerva, you don’t just study diverse cultures, you actually experience them firsthand, living in up to seven of the world’s most important cities during your four years — including San Francisco, Seoul, Hyderabad, London, Berlin, Buenos Aires, and Taipei. Learning transcends the classroom thanks to curated partnerships and activities unique to each location that give students opportunities to apply concepts learned in class in a variety of contexts and situations with local employers and organizations.
For examples, see the brief overview below on how a semester at Minerva Schools looks in two completely different cities: San Francisco and Seoul.
2. Pragmatic Liberal Arts
Have you ever found yourself sitting in the lecture hall with hundreds of other students, listening to the professor talk, wondering, Will I ever use this in my real professional life? You are not alone. We have all had those questions pop up while listening to something that sounds overly theoretical and impractical.
Applied knowledge is at the core of Minerva’s transdisciplinary curriculum. Each of our five majors — Arts & Humanities, Computational Sciences, Natural Sciences, Social Sciences, and Business — are intentionally designed to change the way you think and assess problems, equipping you to find practical, well-reasoned solutions to 21st century challenges. Classes are exclusively small seminars that help you develop critical and creative thinking skills through intensive discussion and debate, a.k.a. “fully active learning,” not memorization.
If you want to dig deeper into the science behind the Active Learning Forum, go to this article.
3. Real-world Experience:
In addition to offering you practical and applied knowledge, your dream university should also open the world of various career opportunities, right?
As a Minerva student, you receive lifelong career support. After just one year, over 80% of Minerva students secure an internship or research position at organizations including Apple, Airbnb, Amazon, Google, AMBEV, Fujitsu, Uber, CalTech, Stanford, and UCSF Medical School. Minerva graduates also matriculate into cutting-edge postgraduate academic programs using Minerva’s innovative liberal arts foundation to continue developing expertise in their chosen fields.
In addition to that, Minerva Schools accepts and celebrates a variety of career choices. Their students embark on different professional journeys, from working at startups or corporations to starting their own companies or pursuing academic paths.
For example, this video includes a Minerva student discussing the entrepreneurial project she began, a clothing company called blacktogrey, in partnership with HALLOTEX, a Spanish textile company.
This student pursued a more corporate path through her assignment at Autodesk.
And for some students, the academic path is most desirable, like Nicolas, a first-year doctoral student at Harvard Medical School in the department of Systems Biology.
Article in Spanish
4. Accessibility
I am sure you agree that your university education should not cost an arm and a leg. Looming debt can be one of the most difficult burdens on your post graduation life and early career days. There should be a better way.
Tuition at Minerva Schools is less than a quarter of what you’ll pay at other institutions, like that of Ivy League universities. But Minerva goes even further, offering need-based financial aid to enable all admitted students to attend, regardless of their background. You can find more info about their tuition fees and financial aid here.
Now that you know your dream university exists, do you want to know if this approach works?
The short answer is: Yes, this type of approach works! Minerva was recently ranked number 1 of all schools that administer the CLA+, a standardized test that assesses critical thinking, problem-solving and written expression. Minerva freshmen performed at the 99th percentile when compared to seniors at all the other institutions. Sound good?
If you’re interested in applying to your new dream school, you can start your application here. The next application deadline is March 15, 2021.
