Some guidebooks provide insight…
Fiske: “Beloit is a bundle of contradictions: a small liberal arts college in the heart of Big Ten state university country, where the academic program has an East Coast rigor but the laid-back classroom vibe reflects the free-and-easy spirit of the Midwest. “People are accepting of new ideas, attitudes, and beliefs,” a sophomore says. “students at Beloit are not numbers; each student is a name, a face, a set of values, and a smile.”
Colleges That Change Lives: “If product research had ever been done in higher education, today’s college scene would be turned upside down. Beloit, and a few others like it, would be at the top, and the very selective elites at the bottom. Also, there’d be little need for a book such as this, because people would know Beloit is a happy place that multiplies talents. Since record-keeping was started in 1920, Beloit has consistently been one of fifty colleges producing the highest percentages of the nation’s future scientists and scholars. That also applies to achievers and contributors to society.”
Princeton Review: “All this activity in such a concentrated space creates an intense but positive environment; Beloit students report themselves happier with their overall college experience than many students we surveyed elsewhere.”
There are more, of course.
Perhaps, though, the words of recent Beloit graduate Peter Bartanen ’08, reflect Beloit more accurately. Here are excerpts from his spring 2008 speech at the scholarship recognition luncheon where he accepted the Wirtz Prize:
“In high school I was a serious introvert, uncomfortable in a Catholic school, complacently keeping my head down and trying to merely finish my homework before settling in front of the computer or television waiting for time to march forward. I visited Beloit only because my father wished to round out a Midwest college tour and because of the few options I encountered, Beloit was the only choice with a computer science department, which I was sure was my life calling.
Months later I found myself arriving here in Wisconsin, far from home, and experiencing a seemingly immediate transformation, which turned out to be only part of what has defined my Beloit experience. I enrolled in a computer science course and lasted literally an hour before re-evaluating my decision to pursue a narrow course of study, and at that point I began to embrace the liberal arts philosophy. I dropped that class and started political science, Spanish language, and calculus. By the end of that first semester I was sufficiently engaged in the 2004 presidential election and decided to study political science, which has certainly been fortunate.
My Beloit College experience has truly been a transformation. My academic interests and pursuits have been the driving force, and those have only been enhanced by my co-curricular involvement and by the people I have come to regard as colleagues and friends. I did not anticipate joining student government, running for office, or representing the students. It was a fortuitous accident that in my first student government meeting, I, as a shy first-year unsure of what to do or say, sat next to the loudest, most opinionated and outgoing guy in the room, who made it his personal mission to find suckers like me to join a committee. I ended up on two that night, and never looked back.
There are a whole host of Beloit experiences I will not forget. But as I look to the future, I recognize that Beloit has given me the knowledge and the confidence to improve the world. Beloit instilled a sense of activism and service that I lacked as a young first year. As I move forward in life I will not forget the importance of engaging challenges, asking questions, and demanding precision and clarity in all that I do. I am the first to admit I have not mastered a single one of these tenets yet, but Beloit has also taught me that learning is a life-long process. My education is off to a wonderful beginning.”