If you will be applying for admission as a freshman, you need to submit your application before May 15. You still have time!

The application for transfer students and international students is still open.

How do we feel about closing the application?

Awesome. This is the fourth straight year of record growth at Eastern. With close proximity to jobs and internships in Spokane, it’s easy to identify the value of a academically rigorous school that also has the state’s lowest tuition. Compared to other state universities, students can save nearly $5,000 on total costs and fees every year at EWU, and that’s pretty impressive. You can buy a lot ramen with that kind of savings.

We pride ourselves on providing access to higher education for as many students as possible, and we wish we could offer every interested student the opportunity to pursue a four-year degree. Yet it’s important for us to keep class sizes small, too, and to continue to provide the exceptional value and learning experience that students have come to expect from EWU.

You would have been wrong.

It was robots. Lots and lots of robots hooping it up on the basketball court.

Over the last few weeks, the EWU campus has been home to FIRST Lego robot builders and FIRST Robotics competitors, and this weekend Eastern will host hundreds of students competing in the Washington State Science Olympiad.

Besides being genuinely fun to watch, these events also create a profound love of science in young students. It’s a hardcore, full-on geek love that cannot be stopped by Jersey Shore or Ke$ha or the newest Internet time-suck (I’m looking at you, Ridiculously Photogenic Guy).

It’s the type of love that can make even the hardiest, most overworked, about-to-graduate EWU science major smile out of sheer joy.

Remember the first time you fell in love with a book or a sport or a song? Remember how you just couldn’t stop? That’s what these kids have.

Eastern is quickly becoming a top home for regional science activity. Part of it is the increased emphasis the university places on helping EWU students become fantastic engineers, programmers and designers.

Part of it is the recently built Computing and Engineering Building. It houses robots. Complex machines for testing thermal dynamics and fluid mechanics. Cyber security laboratories. Sweet 3D graphics and animation equipment.

It all comes together to make Eastern a perfect place for STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math).

EWU students are passionate about their studies in STEM, which is why so many of them volunteer for these events. It’s a great way for EWU students to share their love of science and help educate the next generation of American scientists and inventors, but it’s also a great way to test real world skills.

After all, if you can explain difficult scientific theories and principles to children and their parents, you can definitely explain them to your peers and professors.

We’ve all read the stories about the decline of science and math education in the United States, but these are the types of events that reverse the trend.

It’s time to get your geek on.

Marilyn Hagerty catapulted to Internet fame for her review of the Olive Garden, and my middle-of-nowhere, small-town heart loves it.

The story, that is, not the Olive Garden. The Olive Garden is sometimes hard to love … but Marilyn—she’s something special. If you haven’t followed her story, here’s the gist of it.

For several decades, Marilyn has reviewed restaurants in Grand Forks, ND, population 66,991. With only 100 or so active restaurants in the whole town, necessity has forced her to review places like Taco Bell and Dippin’ Dots. Desperate times, desperate measures.

When her review of the Olive Garden went viral, people didn’t know what to make of it. Was it irony? Was she totally honest? Was she crazy?

Now that the full story is out, it’s clear that the snarky, hard-working 85-year-old and her friendly reviews embody the absolute best of small-town life.

Some might call it niceness. Some might call it sincerity. We might even describe it as grace or honesty or perseverance or a warm acceptance of small-town reality. Because let’s face it: small towns don’t have the same night-life that big cities do.

If you live in a small town, you know this. Having grown up in a community of less than 5,000 people, it felt like we had survived a nuclear apocalypse and all we got in exchange was a Pizza Ranch with really bad hours. But we still went, because that’s what we had … and we had fun.

Marilyn doesn’t impersonate critics in New York or Paris or someplace else, and she doesn’t come across as cynical or jaded like the food critics in those cities. That’s how her homey review of the Olive Garden captured the attention of so many people: it made people realize you can still enjoy life without living in one of the world’s top cities or pretending that you’re in some posh glamor ad.

That realization makes Eastern great, too. We get the small-town sincerity of Cheney, but we also get the large-city culture of Spokane. You actually get to choose which world you call home. You can even choose both, if you want. Few schools that can say that.

Cheney is the best of small towns, of course. It has a major university and businesses that cater to students. It’s safe. There’s free transportation for students. It has a handful of unique restaurants coupled with all the dives and fast food joints that college students love. (Speaking from experience, Taco Bell at 2 a.m. sounds way better than it turns out to be.) It’s surrounded by adventure including hiking, cycling, skiing, swimming, rafting and rock climbing.

But it’s still a small town, and it feels that way when you step into a café or stop by the grocery store. It’s kind of nice, really.

If small town friendliness isn’t for you, you can choose Spokane and the half million people in the metro area. You can have your arena shows, dozens of coffee shops, nightlife and genuinely amazing restaurants. (The best Italian in Spokane is clearly Italia Trattoria, FYI.)

But that’s the essence of Eastern: having choices. City mouse, country mouse. Small town quiet, big city hustle. It’s entirely up to you, and we love that freedom.

Showalter Hall in midwinter. Loving EWU means loving all four seasons!

This week, NPR released new standards for its journalists. For an organization as big and respected as NPR, this is a pretty big deal. It’s like the Seattle Seahawks writing a new playbook, or Daft Punk deciding they’re going to start playing the type of music Nickelback plays. (Scary, right?) In the just-published standards, NPR introduces an entirely new concept: “being fair to the truth.” It definitely has a nice ring to it, and it marks a major departure for journalism in contemporary America. Right now, most news organizations adopt a “balanced reporting norm” approach: both sides get the same amount of air time to create a sense of fairness. Anybody who’s ever been in trouble knows how the balanced approach works in real life: you get called into the principal’s office and tell your side of the story, the other guy gets called into the principal’s office and tells their side, and in the end the principal decides who’s right. In the news world, the audience is supposed to play the role of the principal. Sometimes called the “he said, she said” approach, this approach forces the reader to figure out what’s actually true and accurate. It works great in theory … except there’s always “spin” on the story. If you’ve followed politics at all this election year, you know that someone is always trying to “spin” the story … and sometimes the facts, too. That makes it much, much harder to decide what’s actually true. Something similar happens with colleges. You can read their viewbooks, go online to their websites and open all their emails, but you might never get to heart of the matter. So what can you do?

• Turn to students already on campus. If you know somebody at Eastern, you should reach out and see what they say.
• Read the common data set. This is a loooooooooooong list of numbers and checkboxes, but nearly every school has one.. That makes it easy for you to compare schools on things such as cost, average debt load, and financial aid packages. Fair warning, though: some schools don’t give you all the information. You can find Eastern’s common data sets via this page.
• Visit campus. While many visit activities are planned, you get a chance to see the university without editing, photoshopping or someone’s “spin.” Students are doing what students do on campus. You get to try the food. You can explore the neighborhood or nearby city.A full 71 percent of students say that a visit to campus is the absolute best way to get a feel for the college without the “spin.”

We agree, which is why a college visit, either as part of a tour or as part of an event like goEastern, is such an important part of finding the college that’s the right fit for you. We know that Eastern is the state’s best value and a phenomenal school … but we want you to discover it for yourself without the spin.

• Feb. 15: Priority Application Deadline
• Feb. 15: Priority FAFSA Deadline
• Feb. 15: Priority Scholarship Deadline

Is your application incomplete? Be sure to send missing transcripts, test scores and other materials by the Feb. 15 deadline.

What if you don’t have final transcripts? Apply! Apply! Apply! We don’t expect to see your final transcripts until your courses are over or until you graduate from high school. If you’re still in school or taking classes, just send your current transcripts and make sure your materials reach us by the deadline.

Should I mail or fax my materials? Definitely mail! We need original copies.

What if I have questions? Give us a call at 509.359.2397, email us at admissions@ewu.edu or chat online. If you don’t need an immediate response, you can also tweet us at @EWUAdmission or reach us on our Facebook page.

Demetrius Dennis shopped carefully to find the best college education for the lowest price.

“I reviewed the departments, programs offered and cost of tuition,” said Dennis, 34. “Financing contributed at least 75 percent of the deciding factor when I chose a transfer college.”

The Lakewood, Wash., resident had already saved about $20,000 on a bachelor’s degree in journalism by attending Pierce Community College before determining Eastern Washington University offered the best value to finish his studies.

EWU “provides the most reasonable tuition-to-education ratio available in the state,” Dennis said.

You can read the whole article about the rising cost of college tuition and the challenges that today’s students and families face.

By 2018, at least 63 percent of all jobs nationally will require a postsecondary degree, which means college will be necessary for more and more workers.

As states have cut budgets, however, college has grown more expensive, forcing students to be extra savvy when they make their college decisions.

Our goal at Eastern is to make an amazing college education as affordable and accessible to as many talented people as possible, which is why we’ve had fewer and smaller tuition increases than most universities in the state.

Without sacrificing innovative programs like justice studies, psychology, dental hygiene, education or engineering, we’ve quickly become the state’s best value in education … and our students are smarter than ever. Our average incoming freshman GPA went up again this year (from 3.17 to 3.24), which means we’re attracting more and more talented students who see the incredible value in what Eastern offers.

We’re glad Demetrius compared colleges, and we hope you’re doing the same. We’d love it if everyone made their comparisons and decided that Eastern was the best place to be (because it is!), but more importantly, we want you to choose the university that’s best for you and your future.

Wherever you go, we’re here to answer any questions you have along the way.

Boxcar races are an annual Greek tradition at EWU and include closing down the streets of Cheney.

Traditionally, our society emphasizes two approaches to answering this question. One is the “true love” approach: there’s one school out there that’s going to be perfect for you. All you have to do is find that one school, and suddenly you’ll know that’s where you’re supposed to be. Stars will streak across the sky and purple glitter will rain from giant glitter clouds, and perhaps a choir will burst into song. You can’t miss the signs.

Of course, some of you probably have experience with the second approach, which is a bit like an arranged marriage: 15 years ago, before you’d even had your first nap time in kindergarten, someone picked your college for you. Sweatshirts. Water bottles. Maybe even a tattoo. Even if your situation isn’t this extreme, chances are you know someone who wants you to attend a particular school.

Both approaches have flaws. For instance, the “true love” approach is just like true love in romantic comedies: if you want to be happy in the long term, your true love needs to last. Consider this: that school that has you infatuated right now? It costs twice as much as another school you like, and that could mean a lifetime of debt. That school that seems too good to be true? Students there take classes taught by assistants, not by professors. Will you still be in love when the hard part of the relationship begins?

The arranged marriage approach has a serious flaw, too: it might not be your choice. After all, you’re the one who has to take the classes, live in the residence hall and talk to the professors. You’re the one who will spend four years or more in the college community. So is your college making you happy, or is it making the people you know happy?

All this comes down to one big point that should be your first step in any discussion about college fit: you need to decide who you are and what makes you tick before you decide which school is best for you.

1. What makes you truly happy?
2. What’s your learning style?
3. What classes do you love? What classes do you hate?
4. Your favorite teacher: what makes that teacher special?
5. What activities and hobbies define you?
6. What does “value” mean to you?

Because here’s the truth: you can have fun at almost any college. You’ll meet amazing, brilliant people everywhere in the world. But if you’re choosing a school that emphasizes research when you really want close mentorships with your professors, you’re setting yourself up for heartache. If you need an internship to help land your dream job but you choose a school that isn’t close to a large city, you’re making your dream harder to achieve.

In the end, choosing a college isn’t always about the college. It’s about discovering who you are, determining what you want to do after college and finding a place that helps you make it happen.

Normally what you post online isn’t much of an issue, but that changes once you start applying for college. Suddenly the information you share in your online profile can affect your future. What you say, what you do, even who you hang out with: all of it can influence an admissions decision.

First the good news: Eastern never looks at your Facebook or Twitter pages as part of the admissions process. Never. Naturally we love it when your reach out to us through Facebook or Twitter. It’s a great way to get your questions answered … but it’s not part of our admissions decision. We only consider the materials you submit when we make admissions decisions.

Now the bad news: according to a recent report, 24 percent of college admissions offices look at your Facebook page and 20 percent Google you as part of the admissions process. If you’re applying to multiple schools, chances are at least one of them is trying to learn more about you through social media.

Eastern Will Never Search for You

So if Eastern doesn’t use Facebook or Google to learn more about you, why blog about it? Well, we have a few good reasons.

1. We care about the students who apply here, and we want you to feel confident that your private life is really private.
2. We want you to know that you’re being admitted based on merit only. If you have great grades and high test scores, it doesn’t seem fair to make an admissions decision based on a few photos from your junior prom.
3. We want you to lock down your personal info. What’s true of the college admissions process is true of the job market, too, and keeping your private life truly private keeps the focus on your achievements, not the crazy antics of your friends. In 20 years, who knows how you or your employers will feel about what you posted on Facebook when you were 17.

So What Should You Do?

If you’re applying for schools, there are a few quick things you can do.

1. Lock down your Facebook page so that it’s not available to the public, and untag yourself in any of your friends’ photos.
2. Delete your Twitter feed. If that’s too extreme, visit the “Account” tab and select “Protect My Updates.” Search engines won’t index protected tweets, and they’re not available on the public timeline.
3. Make your Tumblr or blog invitation-only unless it paints you in a positive light.
4. Google yourself and start scrubbing anything that might be considered negative.

Let colleges and employers focus on what you’re capable of … not what you did when you were 15.

“Oh, not for the whole year,” he said. “That was for a semester. It was $50 for the year.”

Amazingly, this is completely true … and it’s not like we’re talking about an era before electricity or running water. People had cars. Rock and roll. Sliced bread even. It was the golden era of education, and for a long time in the United States, tuition to most state universities was free or next to free. In fact, it wasn’t until 1956 that Eastern started to charge tuition at all.

Things have certainly changed. Governments pay less for education than ever before, and that forces students and their families to pay more.

Eastern has always focused on providing the best possible education to its students and to making that education available to as many students as possible. That’s why we’re the best educational value in the state of Washington, and it’s why students who study here save thousands of dollars in tuition and fees compared to other public schools in the state.

One of the ways students can reduce tuition is a program called WUE.

WUE is an acronym for Western Undergraduate Exchange, and it’s pronounced so that it rhymes with “chewy” or “screwy.” Repeat the acronym fast enough and you start to sound like an ambulance.

(Admit it: you’re trying to sound like an ambulance right now. WUE WUE WUE.)

WUE is a financial aid exchange program that lets out-of state students from 14 western states (AK, AZ, CA, CO, HI, ID, MT, NV, NM, ND, OR, SD, UT, WY) save thousands of dollars on tuition at Eastern. Over four years, students can save $25,000 or more when they study at Eastern.

There’s an important deadline (Feb. 15, 2012), a GPA requirement and a residency requirement, so there are some details you’ll need to check out if you’re interested in making WUE work for you.

Here’s the best place to get started with WUE information, but we always encourage you to call or email with your questions so that you can talk to a real person about your particular situation.

WUE. WUE. WUE. WUE. WUE. Completely sounds like an ambulance.

It is obvious to almost everyone that there would be negative consequences associated with skipping class in high school.  In college however, it is more difficult to see these consequences because there is no assistant principal calling your parents when you skip and assigning you Saturday school.  The consequences still exist, though, and it is important to understand them.  It is also important to understand the reasons why a college student might skip a class so you can make an informed decision for yourself when you attend college.  When you miss class, whether the reason for missing is excusable or not, you are missing out on the opportunity to gain additional knowledge.  Of course it is possible to gain that knowledge in alternative ways or with additional effort, but really if you are already skipping class are you going to put in the additional effort?

I’ve worked on college campuses for the past nine years and one of the most commonly overheard conversations in the dining halls goes something like this:

Student A: Hey did you go to class today?  (Student A is not asking because they went to class and want to follow up about a certain topic covered in lecture.  They skipped and want to know if they missed a quiz or something)

Student B: Yeah I was there, where were you?

Student A: I didn’t feel like going.  Did we do anything in class?

Student B: No, not really.

Student A: Oh cool, then I didn’t miss anything.

Really?  You think the professor just stared at the class blankly for the class period and didn’t say a word?  That may be how it occasionally works in high school, where your teacher allows you to work on homework during the entire class period, but in college a professor lectures to the class for pretty much the entire time.  However, I understand what the student is probably thinking.  They think they can just read over notes from a friend and read the class textbook and pick up everything they would have learned by going to class that day, and honestly that would work for some classes and for some students.  All students have different learning styles and while some do better absorbing material when it is spoken to them, others learn better from reading the same material.  My question is, though, why not just do both?  There is no easier way to get the information than sitting in class and listening for 50 minutes.

One other way college is different than high school is that in college you are paying to attend your class.  According to EducationOnline.net the current average cost for a year of tuition at a 4 year public college is 6,585 dollars a year or 2195 per quarter.  A college quarter is 10 weeks long so that is 219.50 and the average student is in class 15 hours a week so that comes out to $14.63 per hour of class.  If you are going to skip a class then, whatever you are going to do with that time better be worth at least 14 dollars.  If you skip class to take a nap or play World of Warcraft, are those things worth 14 dollars to you?  14 dollars may not seem like much, but if you were to skip class just once a week for the entire quarter, you would be out $140 over the course of ten weeks.

I realize it might sound like I’m a bit of a prude who never skipped class and that isn’t true.  On occasion I did skip class, but I had to believe that I would pay at least 14 dollars to do whatever it was that I did while I skipped.  For example during my senior year of college there was a presentation on campus that was happening during one of my classes that I wanted to attend.  The presentation was by Graham Kerr, who was a TV chef and a childhood hero of mine (if you were a huge fan of Emeril Lagasse growing up maybe you can relate) and I felt like seeing him speak was a once in a lifetime opportunity.  If I had to I would have paid at least 20 dollars to see the presentation, so for me I felt comfortable skipping my class to attend.

Maybe if college students had to pay someone cash every time they skipped a class they would think twice about whether or not it was worth missing class.  You could work out a deal with your roommate so when either of you skip class they have to pay the other one 14 dollars.

However, we are still left with the question of why do college students skip class?  I think I have come up with the answer, and it comes back to me telling that high school student they could drop out and run away if they wanted to.  College is the first time most people have full control of their lives, or at least realize they have full control over their lives because really they could have always just run away.  Discovering and exploring that freedom is one of the most exciting, and scary, parts of college.  I believe college students skip class is a way to rebel against the system and show they are in charge.  More simply, college students usually skip class just because it is the first time that feels like they can.

Now I know exactly what any college student who regularly skips class would say back to me, “But class is just boring.  That is why I skip it.”  To be completely honest, that student might be right.  However, since in college you can pick almost whatever classes you want, maybe that student should take subjects they find more engaging and that don’t feel like a burden to learn about for an hour.

College is about developing a work ethic that will serve you for the rest of your life.  I’m going to let you in on a little secret; most people will occasionally be bored at their job.  Now if one day you felt like work was going to be boring and decided to skip it that probably wouldn’t go over very well with your boss.  You have the opportunity to set habits that will stick with you for the rest of your life and the decision is yours on the habits you develop.

If going to class is such an inconvenience for you there is a way around it.  You could go pick up a nice piece of cardstock, print yourself out a fake degree, doctor your resume, and start applying for jobs.  Now that plan might not work out so well if you are planning on being a neurosurgeon or looking for a job that needs special training but there are tons of job where you just need any college degree (what do you think all those philosophy majors are doing, they aren’t opening a lot of philosophy shops in the mall).

You might find the thought of faking your college degree to be morally off-putting but you could justify it in the same way you justify skipping class.  When you apply for a job an employer rarely, if ever, contacts your university to ensure that you were awarded a degree which is similar to a college professor not taking attendance in the class.  You could learn how to perform job duties by watching videos on YouTube in the same way you could catch up on a missed class by reading the textbook.  In all honesty, with a little training you would probably end up doing fine, and there are plenty of examples of people doctoring resumes or faking degrees who were highly valued employees within their organization.  The question you have to ask yourself, whether you are skipping class or printing out your degree, is how many shortcuts in life are you willing to take?  Are they worth the consequences?  What do they say about your work ethic?