Last week, we toured the University of North Texas in Denton, Texas. https://www.unt.edu/
Here's a link to register for a tour: https://tours.unt.edu/
The Welcome Center
They have a dedicated Welcome Center on campus about half a block from a covered parking garage. The tour starts with a short introduction and a video about the college. Then, the tour guide takes everyone on a walk around campus to see the Student Union building, the campus bookstore, the cafeteria building (I can't remember its official name), some of the classroom buildings, the business building and the administration building. The guide tells you about the history of the campus, the meaning of the green spotlight and shows you how to make the UNT eagle sign with your hand.
Their mascot is the eagle. Colors are green and white. You'd better like green, because it's everywhere.
My impressions:
- This campus seems very clean, safe and well-taken care of.
- It's massive. You have to walk far to get from one building to another. That's actually my biggest worry with my daughter. As an art major, she is going to be hauling art gear and canvases all over campus in the rain, heat, cold, etc.
- There seems to be only three parking situations. Two are lots and one is a covered garage. The garage is the most expensive, but one of the lots is very far away. The tour guide said there are shuttle buses that go from the lots to the main campus buildings.
- Everything seems to be run very well and organized.
- We walked through the art building and my daughter was impressed with the art classrooms.
Things I thought were interesting:
- The business building actually has a day trading room on the first floor. There are computer stations and a ticker that runs along the wall with real-time stock information. The guide told us that the business students are allowed to use university money to practice trading stocks. Any gains are added to a scholarship fund. Any losses are absorbed by the university.
- UNT ranks #10 in the country for transfer students. Since my daughter will be a transfer student, I though this was a plus.
- They have a world-class music program.
- Several of the tour guides were double majors or majors with minors. I was relieved to hear this, because my daughter's current college discourages double majors or taking extra classes, in general.
- They have a dedicated bus stop area that looks almost like a bus station. There are express busses that travel from other areas of DFW to the UNT campus. There is also an express bus that goes from North Fort Worth directly to the bus stop at UNT.
After the tour, this university rose to #1 on our list of possibilities for my college transfer student. We still need to contact Admissions to see how they handle transfers, how they feel about homeschooled students (this will be a big issue - if it's not homeschool-friendly, we don't want to go), how transferring goes with fine arts majors, etc. I can update this post when I find out more homeschool-specific details.
