Review: Grace College

I took a couple of students up to visit Grace College this week. I'm not one of those insanely obsessed people with the college (if God is calling you to be an engineer and you can get into MIT or GMI, by all means, go there!) but I did make a few observations:

1. College is expensive. As I'm sitting through a financial aide meeting with my students, I hear a representative from the school mention the yearly price. My mouth hit the floor as I heard the price was over $10,000/year more than it was 9 years ago. Then, he follows that point by stating that Grace is still one of the cheapest Christian colleges in Indiana. (Ouch! I'm not looking forward to three in college at once!)
2. There are some nice buildings. My college life pretty much consisted of Beta, Alpha, Philathea and McClain. These are all old worn down buildings. But now they have Kent, Indiana, Rec Center, Mount Memorial and Westminster. There are some really good looking buildings on campus. I've even been told that the library is nice. I should check it out some day.
3. Campus life has developed. It sounds like they have a great intermural program and have really found ways to plug students in. Campus life was good when I was there, but it sounds like it's even better now.
4. Restaurants. We had Ponderosa (a couple of years) and a few fast food places. Now they have Applebees, Hacienda, Ritters Frozen Custard. All kinds of good stuff.
5. Beards. What's up with that? It seemed like everywhere I turned there were beards. Not just gotees or a soul patch, I'm talking full beards. Fortunately, the trend hasn't caught on with the ladies yet.

Overall, I guess it was pretty cool to see the alma mater doing well!