School Spotlight: College of Charleston

There are over 4,000 colleges and universities in the U.S. And while the media tends to focus on just a handful of schools, we at College Coach encourage students to think outside the box during their college selection process and explore a wide range of colleges. As such, we are highlighting a new college each week in our School Spotlight series. Check out the college below, along with the other posts in our series, and you may just stumble upon your dream school! School Spotlight: College of Charleston Charleston, SC  Over the past several years, approximately 80 million dollars have poured into the College of Charleston’s beautiful and historic campus. Since 2007, 14 buildings on campus have either been significantly renovated or completely built from the ground up, including a center for the arts, an athletics complex, and two residence halls. And here’s great news for science students! This fall, a major overhaul of the Rita Hollings Science Center will be completed, not only expanding classroom and laboratory space, but also creating a rooftop astronomy lab. Nearly 10,000 undergraduates are enrolled at this public university, of whom almost 65 percent are female and approximately one-third come from out-of-state. The College offers 60 majors, including unique programs in Computing in the Arts and Historic Preservation & Community Planning. To help incoming students acclimate to college life, all freshmen are required to take a first year seminar or learning community, the latter of which links two interdisciplinary courses around a common theme. This past fall, students could discover “Psychological and Literary Analysis of Harry Potter,” a learning community course that combined English and psychology, or “From Russia with Code,” which joined Russian and computer science. Fun fact: College of Charleston is one of only 55 schools in the country to offer Division 1 NCAA women’s beach volleyball!  Image Credit: Top, Courtesy of College of Charleston