My middle child is a junior and it’s time to go visiting schools…yikes! I didn’t get to go on the college tours with my oldest; my husband had organized that wee-long trip while I was out of town. For this child, we are not taking a whirlwind tour but breaking it up.
We have already visited our first school: Florida Polytechnic University. It’s a brand new University in the Florida University System. This was its first year. Last year when you toured the campus, it was with closed shoes and a hard hat because it was just a construction zone! This year they have 5 buildings: Admissions, one residence hall, the Wellness center, a maintenance building and the iconic IST building. The tour was scheduled for 10:00 so we got an early start and got there with time to sign in and use the facilities.
Media room available to the students
IBM donated a supercomputer!
Lots of glass everywhere so they write on the walls! (This is a lab room.)
Cool architecture
Plenty of room for expansion 
The iconic IST building with louvers that move to keep the building shaded and to protect the glass in the event of a storm.
The bookstore had almost no books in it. Oh and the library has no books in it! [It’s all digital.] I’m not sure how I feel about that.
I confess that I went in with low expectations but came out pleasantly impressed. It’s a STEM school so all the majors offered were in computers and engineering (definitely not a school for ME!) Small class sizes, one-on-one attention, hands-on projects all left a favorable impression. Also because it’s so new, you have the opportunity to make an impression on the school. The cons are that it’s still a brand new school so it hasn’t established itself yet. The students were a bit on the – shall I say it? – on the nerdy side (a giant game of zombies vs humans was taking place while we were there, complete with large Nerf guns! and LARGE group games of League of Legends). There’s not much campus life but then again, because the student body is so small, there’s plenty of opportunity to start something new or run for student government (if that’s your sort of thing).
All in all, we have decided not to rule it out. Next week is Clemson University, my husband’s alma mater. He will be leading that tour.
