Aaron

03/09/2020 1:06 AM

The most common question I am asked on tours is why did I choose Bradley, and that’s a little bit of a complicated story. Up until the end of the first trimester Junior year of high school, I thought I wanted to go into engineering of some sort. So during my time in high school, I spent most of my time looking at engineering schools like Purdue, Valparaiso University, University of Cincinnati, Iowa State, etc. I visited Bradley University during my sophomore year of high school, and I didn’t think much of it at the time. Then during my Junior year of high school, I realized I wanted to make a total career switch. I realized I wanted to go into nursing instead of engineering.

Thankfully most of the schools I looked at had a nursing program so I didn’t have to change my schools too much. I wasn’t picky either, I wanted a good nursing program, close hospitals, direct admit, and A/C in the dorms. The rest I could figure out when I got onto campus. I sorta had forgotten about Bradley since visiting my sophomore year of high school. During the application season of senior year, my high school counselor told me that I had to apply to at least 8 colleges. I remembered hearing that Bradley had a nursing program, and I liked the school. So I figured I would put an application in and it was super easy to add onto my common application so I did.

I later found out I got accepted to all 8 schools I applied to so I found myself back in square one trying to decide where I wanted to go to college. Towards the end of October, I found myself really leaning towards the University of Cincinnati. They had a great nursing program, close hospitals, tons of ways to be involved on campus, and I got the instate tuition rate even though I was out of state. I thought it was going to be a great school. I was all set on going there, but my parents said I needed to wait to accept until after I got the financial aid offer, I was fine with waiting, I was in the nursing program I didn’t have much to worry about.

Later that month I got a piece of mail from Bradley talking about an out of state student overnight visit. It didn’t feel right to say no to a school without visiting, after all, it didn’t cost me anything to visit. So I signed up for the visit planning on using it to confirm that I didn’t want to go to Bradley and could feel better about going to the University of Cincinnati.

At the out of state overnight visit, I had a blast. Just within the first few hours, I loved the atmosphere I experienced on Bradley’s campus. Everyone was so nice and caring towards me and everyone they ran into on campus. The place really felt like somewhere I could fit in and see myself getting super involved in many different activities. Then the next day when I learned about the nursing program, I loved everything that I was hearing. I left the visit day early because I had already made the decision that I was going to go to Bradley.

That’s my Bradley story, in the span of 24 hours I went from not wanting to go to this school to being absolutely in love with it.