Kent State University Kent

Much to my dismay, we toured both campuses(Kent and 'Kron). I was literally stunned. Akron's campus, dorms, everything were superior to KSU! I was almost in denial at first. After that, I got curious. So I did a little research about both schools and here is what I came up with: UA has and enrollment of about 28,000 students. KSU claims to have about 32,000--but the truth is that they only have about 21,000 on their main campus and the rest of that 32,000 is made up of little satellite community college around NEO. Then I looked at the student body--Kent claims to have a selective admissions policy. Akron is open enrollment(meaning they admit essentially anyone). But when you compare the average ACT scores there was barely any difference. That made no sense, so I looked in to it further. It turns out, that Kent essentially accepts the same type of kids that Akron does, but they send people with an ACT below 18 or so to their little satellite community colleges. So they paint this picture that they are some prestige university, when all they are doing is holding up some pretentious facade. Meanwhile, Akron has seen a surge in applicants far greater than Kent but refuses to implement any sort of selective admissions. Sort of silly if you ask me, but whatever floats their boat, I suppose.

And then I looked into research(my son was looking at majoring in psychology). There was no comparison. Akron seems to have some big things going on in the science and health fields. The only big thing I saw at Kent was liquid crystals. I can't make and educated statement there, this is just after searching for a few hours. Perhaps Akron is just better at advertising themselves?

But don't get me wrong, I loved my time at Kent. It's still a great school. But I just wouldn't let aged reputations get in the way of looking at all your options when you are searching for a college. And for what it's worth, my son ended up choosing Boston College(go figure). I was still a little bummed he didn't choose my alma mater;) but he's a junior there now and loves it.And regardless of what Akron does, GO FLASHES!