Why I Chose Hillsdale Archives

Why I Chose Hillsdale: Isabelle Parell

I came into my freshman year at Hillsdale College expecting failure. A great way to start off a major life change, I know. I’d never attended college before; I had no idea how it was supposed to go.

Why I Chose Hillsdale: Daniel Ziegler

High school swim practices in Colorado are awful. Regular breath control is hard. Breath control at our home pools’ elevation of 7600 feet could get downright brutal. In my high school swim team, we had a competition for whichever swimmer could cause the coach to become sidetracked the longest, thereby causing us to run out of time for our breath set at the end. With that intent in mind, I asked my coach if he had any college application advice for me.

Why I Chose Hillsdale: Katie Kortepeter

I love my grandpa. When I was a freshman in high school, he was already scheming to get me into an Ivy League school. “Brown or Harvard would be great,” I remember him saying. “Or you could go to Canada! The healthcare there is terrific.” One day, when I was fifteen, he made me sit on his lap and firmly explained why the one school I must never, ever apply to was Hillsdale College.

Why I Chose Hillsdale: Emma McCormick

I visited Hillsdale College this February during Scholars Weekend. At that time, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to come to Hillsdale, because of its small size and what I assumed was a lack of diversity. My visit is the reason I chose Hillsdale in the end.

From Mindless Parroting to Deep, Independent Thinking

By my freshman year of high school, I had decided that I would attend Hillsdale College. When people asked me why Hillsdale and not any other school, I answered “’Cause I want to learn how to think, not what to think!”

Hillsdale is a Home

At the beginning of the year, you get asked the same five questions over and over again: name, year, potential major, hometown, and why you chose Hillsdale. Through this litany of questions, I began to realize that the way I had found and chosen Hillsdale College was perhaps not the most typical amongst my peers.

Continuing the Legacy of Hillsdale Mentors

I was in eighth grade the first time I heard about Hillsdale College. My band teacher and middle school track coach graduated from here. Back then, I played the clarinet and ran the 800. I attended The Classical Academy—a K-12 charter school founded by parents in my home-town of Colorado Springs. My teachers all believed in classical liberal arts educational values, and I grew to believe in them as well.

Mary Blendermann and the Three Bears

For Mary Blendermann, Hillsdale College was a happy medium between the larger Liberty and dwarf Patrick Henry.

I will come out of Hillsdale a different person

After arriving on campus for freshman orientation, Hillsdale has been exceeding Claudia Sladick’s expectations. She aspires to study Politics and Economics and has already gotten involved in groups such as the Conservative Women’s Club and Praxis.

Paul Mittermeier

Paul Mittermeier, Student Federation’s Greek representative for the freshman class, first heard about Hillsdale College through his involvement with the Cincinnati Tea Party and the local liberty groups in his hometown of Cincinnati, Ohio. As a high school junior, he was just beginning the college search but didn’t have a fixed idea of what he wanted in a school yet: “I kind of had an idea of a larger school in a city as my ideal vision, but at the same time, I was also dreading progressive academia and the dreaded idea of ‘indoctrination,’ so I wanted primarily a school that had a similarity of view in values.”