Background

Gender Identity: Female
Race/Ethnicity: Hispanic
Sexual Orientation: Heterosexual
Graduation Year: 2020 for my undergraduate degree and MBA in 2021. I’m doing a 4+1 program.
High School Experience: Public school in Fishkill, NY with a graduating class of about 550 students. There was a culture of going to college.
First Generation College Student: No
Major: International Business
Minor: Marketing
Extracurricular Activities: I’m part of the International Business Society, Dance Fusion, and last fall I had an internship with the Central European Institute, which is a Quinnipiac organization.

Did any of your extracurricular activities have a particularly big impact on your experience?
The one that mattered the most was Dance Fusion because I had danced all through high school and wanted to continue to stay active as well as meet new people. That was a great outlet for me to do that.

Academic Experience

Can you describe your weekly coursework for your major?
My major is predominantly case studies and group work. It’s a lot of reading and analyzing case studies and then writing papers. That’s what dominates upper-level classes. It’s also a lot of group presentations and writing case studies as a group. For Marketing, it’s a lot of conducting market research. We usually have a midterm and a final exam, but the papers play a role as well.

Is there anything you feel your major’s department does especially well or poorly?
My department has a 100% job placement rate after six months, which I would say is pretty impressive. I think they do that well because the professors have such good connections from the fields they were in before they were professors. A weakness is that we’re not a prominent department in the business school and I sometimes feel that we’re overlooked. They don’t advertise it well.

How would you describe the learning environment? Do you think it’s particularly competitive or collaborative?
It’s very collaborative. It’s not competitive. The group work makes you interact with your other students and you’re always working towards a common goal rather than working against each other. It’s never about who has the best presentation or paper, it’s more working with the professor to get the best paper you can.

How accessible are your professors?
It depends on the professor. The head of the department has very few time slots because he’s doing so many things. As long as you make an appointment in advance, they’re fairly accessible.

What has been your favorite class you’ve taken for your major?
International Management. That class actually introduced me to what I want to do. I want to focus in global logistics and that class introduced me to being an expatriate, which is a fancy way of saying someone who works in a country that’s not their own for an extended period of time. That class introduced me to that possibility, and that’s why it’s my favorite class.

Why did you pick your major? Are you happy with your choice?
I came in undecided and I looked through the majors and International Business stood out to me. I recently studied abroad in Barcelona and it confirmed that I want to spend.

On and Around Campus

Where have you lived on campus?
Freshman: Commons with three other roommates

Sophomore: Old Village with four other roommates.

Junior: Off-campus in an apartment with two other people.

What is your favorite living situation?
I love my apartment now, but, on campus, my favorite living situation is Commons.

How was transitioning from Fishkill, NY to Hamden, CT in terms of location?
It was a fairly smooth transition, the town I’m from is a very small town so moving to a suburb, which is still a pretty small town, was a nice upgrade.

Can you describe the level of safety you’ve experienced on and around campus?
I’ve always felt safe at Quinnipiac. I do a work-study with public safety and I think that offers an extra layer of clarity on the safety on campus and how much the public safety officers care about us.

Pros and cons of being in Hamden, CT?
(1) The lack of restaurants in Hamden. When my parents come we only go to Eli’s because that’s the only place that’s close for dinner.
(2) The weather here, for New England, is not too bad. We have all four seasons.
(3) We’re about 40-minutes from the beach.

Cons: (1) There’s not that much to do around here. I do like the close proximity to New Haven, but in Hamden itself, there is not a lot to do.

Social Opportunities

What kind of nightlife or weekend activities do you like to participate in?
Going to New Haven and going to Toad’s or Brother Jimmy’s. As a junior, I feel like I don’t do that much anymore. Freshman and sophomore year I would go to New Haven Friday, Saturday, and occasionally Thursday. One downside is it gets extremely expensive going downtown to clubs all the time. We have to rely heavily on Ubers too.

What is the impact of Greek life on nightlife?
Going to frat parties was more popular my freshman and sophomore year. Now, I just go to formals and socials when I know the guys in the frat and the event is more exclusive.

What’s an alternative to going to a party or a bar that you like for a night out?
New Haven does offer a lot of non-drinking alternatives. I also think Quinnipiac does a good job of offering things on campus. The other activities I personally like is going to the movies and going to new restaurants in New Haven.

How happy are you with the weekend options at Quinnipiac? Is there anything you would change if you could?
I’m content. As I get older money is shorter and there’s more homework to be done, so we go out a lot less. We normally stay in, do homework, and drink wine. It seems lame [laughs]. The weekend options are good if you want to go out but just as good if you want to stay in.

Campus Culture

How did you meet your closest friends?
I was really, really lucky and they were my roommates freshman year and my next door neighbors. The Quinnipiac housing system worked really well.

How would you describe the social scene?
I’m really lucky that I have a good, diverse, group of friends from the Northeast who do different things and are different majors. The social scene is not like high school at all in that there are not any cliques. Even if they’re in a fraternity or on a sports team, people don’t stick to just their group. I feel like we intermingle a lot. It’s a close campus in the sense that we bump into each other very often. There’s a lot of intermingling of diverse groups of people.

To what extent do people of different races and sexual orientations mix on campus?
In that perspective, I think we can do better. In terms of sexual orientations, we’re fine. That stigma doesn’t exist around campus. It’s unfortunate, but there are certain races that stick more to themselves.

How would you describe the Hispanic community on campus? How strong is it?
They’re not very present. We do have the Latin Cultural Society, but I’m not in it. They have a Latina sorority as well, and when they show up they’re prominent. Otherwise, they’re not very prominent. They are a group that sticks together.

How has the size of your school influenced your social experience? [There are about 7,300 undergraduate students.]
I think the size is perfect in the sense that I still meet new people and it’s not too small so I have the same classes with the same people. It’s also not a large university, so I have still have small class sizes. [The student to faculty ratio is 16 to 1.]

Do you think people are generally happy with their choice of Quinnipiac by senior year? Do you think people leave loving Quinnipiac?
I love it here. I came to Quinnipiac because of the financial aid package I received and then I got here and joined the organizations I did and met the people I did and it changed my mind.

Careers

Has the alumni network helped you find internships or jobs?
I have not looked into the alumni network. The way I’ve found internships and jobs is through the school of business, so their emails, career fairs, and what’s offered on campus. I haven’t even tried the alumni because the school of business has been so successful in finding me options.

Have you used the career office? If so, how helpful are they?
They’re extremely helpful. I’m required to take a career class and that showed me all the resources that are available to me, which includes resume help, cover letter help, and mock interviews. They also host a number of events where older students who have internships will come and talk about their internships.

Have you learned any computer programs through your coursework that will be helpful to you professionally?
We use Excel in pretty much all of my classes. In my marketing research class, we also used SPSS. Those two are the ones I use the most.

Financial Aid

Have you used financial aid? If so, how responsive are they?
They’re very responsive. If you call them, they’ll get back to you. You also can go in and speak to a representative about your situation.

Advice for Prospective Freshmen

What is something you wish you knew about Quinnipiac before entering as a freshman?
I wish I knew more about the clubs on campus. I think from an outsider’s perspective it’s a little hard to get a good sense of what’s available here. Once you’re here, there’s a laundry list of ways to access what’s available to you, but from an outsider’s perspective, I think it’s kind of hard.

What is something a prospective student may miss on a visit that’s worth checking out?
The food is subpar here. I think that’s an area we definitely need to work on. If somebody is picking between two schools and is very picky or has a food allergy, they should look at the options Quinnipiac has because they are suffering in that department.

Reasons to attend Quinnipiac University:
1) The extracurricular activities that are offered are really extensive and there’s something for everybody.
2) The career office is really good. I think they really go out of their way to help students succeed. Especially the school of business goes above and beyond.
3) The overall environment. The professors really want the students to succeed and everyone who works there creates a very welcoming environment. From orientation to now, they’ve made me feel at home.

Reasons to not attend Quinnipiac University:
1) The food is bad.
2) Although they offer programs for people who don’t want to participate in drinking, if you really don’t like to party, you’ll be really bored on Friday and Saturday night.