The end of the school year is always a time that mixes reflection with a look ahead. For a lot of Cobbers, that future planning involves even more school, which means even more applications.
While Concordia is a great school, and the name carries some weight in the Fargo-Moorhead area, nationally it’s not nearly as well known. It’s certainly no Ivy League or giant state school. Luckily, Concordia gives us some really great opportunities that those other schools might miss out on. It’s in our favor that the school is undergrad-only, as it keeps everything the school has to offer for us alone. We don’t have to compete for limited spots with graduate students, who would likely get the preference anyways.
It doesn’t matter what you’re doing either. Even at a school this small, the options are varied enough that you can find something to do, join, or lead. If you somehow can’t find exactly what you are looking for, then you can start something – there’s support for you there too.
I got to see the Fargo-Moorhead Opera for the first time this spring, and let me tell you, it was phenomenal. Didn’t know I was a fan of opera until then. The best part was looking up on stage and picking out all the Cobbers.
I remember telling a potential student last year that even though Fargo was smaller than say, Madison or Minneapolis, she would have a much better chance of performing in some of the top spots here than in a larger metro area.
Here, within a year, freshmen can be in a professional opera. Not bad for a school in a town with a population of about 40,000. The F-M symphony also has some of our student musicians performing in it – another professional level ensemble that would be much harder to get access to in a larger city.
There are plenty of research opportunities too. From psychology to chemistry, biology and beyond, there’s plenty to go around. It’s not all that easy for undergrads at some schools to see time in a research setting, but at Concordia, if you want to do it, there’s an option for it. The school is also proactive about giving those students a chance to share their work – take, for example, the students who just participated in the Celebration of Student Scholarship, and then the whole slew of students sent out to New York to present their work.
While a small school in the middle of hundreds of miles of cornfields might not sound like much in terms of opportunities, Concordia offers a lot of chances for large-scale participation to students.
A class of 2013 psychology major with chemistry and biology minors, Patrick joined the Concordian as a contributing writer for Arts & Entertainment before writing and editing for the Opinions section.
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