colleges that never were

In the blog The Social Network- college Edition the author Tom Dretler talks about college transfer students in America, and what he said was surprising to me. I knew that many college students weren't particularly happy with their college and that they would possibly then transfer out. I also knew that it was very expensive to do that and that if one transferred out mid-year, they would have catching up to do. I have no idea why but I just never put two and two together. One of the points that was made in the blog is the fact that when a student transfers between different colleges, it costs roughly $25,000 now this is done by about 2.5 million students. Adding it all together gives you a total just over 60 billion dollars. that doesn't even seem to be possible, but the math is their. That is about .6% of the GDP of the US. I know families could use that money else where, and I know that there are ways to prevent families from losing that money. Even though its the colleges/universities that get the 60 billion, they still don't want to see their students unhappy, and they don't want students to be spending the extra money to transfer.
When I visited Clark University, one of the first things that the counselor told me was that he wanted me to go to the school, but only if I knew I was going to be happy here. He told me that in the end it all comes down to me and not the school, and that is something that I really liked about Clark. Clark also did a well job in staying in touch with me when I was in the undecided stage. I was even able to talk to a representative from Clark a number of times in my home town. That was amazing to me. Clark University is at least a 6 hour drive from my house but because the University has such a great network and because it attracts good people, I was able to talk to them. I cannot even stress how important that was to me. No other school contacted me and asked if I could talk to a representative, and the rest of my schools were only an hour or two away from me. I decided to go to Clark because of those conversations I had with the representative.
 I felt as if Clark did a very good job in showing what campus life was like. when I visited, there was a fair to show all of the prospective students different clubs and activities that are open to them if they went to Clark, Clark was the only school that did that. Thing only thing that I wished Clark did, was have panel of upperclassmen where we could ask them different questions about Clark life. A couple of other schools that I visited did that but I don't recall anything of the sorts at Clark. There was the option of asking someone when you passed them by or you could call a student at some point, but when a student is applying/deciding for or on a college, a lot can slip their mind. So I believe that having a whole room of prospective students with different questions will not only help the student with a question he or she may have, but it will also help other students in the room that would have the same question but just didn't come up with it. Regardless of that one thing, Clark did a very good job in portraying its campus, and it's exactly what I thought it would be, and I'm very glad that I came to this school.