Discover Biola is an exciting one-day event for prospective students to come and get immersed in Biola's campus lifestyle. We plan a whole day of events and tours to show prospective students and their families a little bit about what the school has to offer. In the morning, we lay out a breakfast of burritos, muffins, and coffee as we move students through check-in, greeting them for the day ahead. Yeah, it can be a little hard to be peppy and cheery so early in the morning (especially me since I am NOT a morning person) but the excitement and energy displayed from the the high school students makes it much easier to push through.

After breakfast, the students headed into one of our auditoriums where they got to engage in an interactive panel with Biola faculty to ask questions about programs, classes, and all things Biola! After many questions have been answered, my fellow ambassadors got to take students around campus for a tour where even MORE questions could be answered if need be. During the tour, if those reading are interested, we take students to see our new science building where we take about life as a student. Then we show off our famous Biola Bells where we go over the history of the schools, departments on campus aimed to help students, and chapels. After that, we show off our dorm buildings and even check out some rooms. Hopefully they were clean is all I’m saying…

Once the dorms have been visited we talk about different programs students can engage in, such as student government! Lastly, we go over the departments we have for intercultural students, global students, and different services we offer on campus through those programs as well as the activities they plan for our students. Once the tour finished up, the prospective students headed over to our buffet style cafeteria to have lunch and mingle with current students about life at Biola.

The last two activities planned for the students at Discover Biola are pretty special. They are question-and-answer panels where a few of our representative ambassadors answer more questions about the school or maybe even specific questions or stories about why they picked Biola to be there home for the next few years. This is a wonderfully honest time for our ambassadors to be transparent with these students to let them know everything that goes on and why Biola has changed their lives not only as a student and worker, but also as a Christian. Lastly, the prospective had the opportunity to meet with our school admissions counselors to go over the possibility of coming to Biola—all the details for every question they had. This is also the perfect opportunity for students and their parents to ask about financial aid and other important “need-to-knows”.

And that brings me to my final point. What Discover Biola does is give a chance for students to look into life after high school or junior college. For me, I know the most important thing about my college search was researching and visiting different campuses.  So I implore all those reading this…

TRY AND VISIT COLLEGES!

Sometimes visiting a college makes a world of a difference. It happened when I visited Biola—I came and I  just… knew… if that makes sense. Discover Biola is our hand reaching out to students to take the leap and visit to see if Biola could be a good fit. Do this for a lot of schools if you have the chance. I know the search process can be stressful, boring, and maybe even seem pointless. But trust me, it is worth it in the end.