College is a largely transitional part of students’ lives where many changes and new things occur. Several students stick to a four-year university or complete their two-year degree at a community college.
Kirkwood and the University of Iowa have many different options for transfer students. As former Kirkwood students, we’ve experienced lots of positives in both learning atmospheres and the overall college transition.
Kirkwood offers a personal learning environment for students who are new to college and questioning what their future may hold. From our experience at Kirkwood, it was easy to make connections with your professors because of the smaller class size, allowing more participation.
The club atmosphere at Kirkwood allowed students to connect with their peers and other people at the college. We both were a part of Kirkwood’s student newspaper, the Communiqué, which offered many diverse opportunities and allowed us to branch out and meet many students and staff through interviews and club meetings.
The University of Iowa is a much larger, but still very welcoming campus. Tuition is more costly than Kirkwood, but transferring from Kirkwood has also been a decision that financially benefits us. There are also many transfer-student scholarships both colleges have.
Although lecture classes can be large and it’s challenging to get to know your professors, simply attending their office hours and participating is an easy way to build a good student-professor relationship.
Surprisingly, not every class at Iowa is a lecture. As transfer students, most of our classes consist of 20-30 students where we participate in small groups and are able to have discussions with the whole class. This was surprising to us, but a very similar learning environment to Kirkwood and one of many positives about our experiences so far. Most classes also require and take attendance, like Kirkwood, except for huge lectures.
Being Journalism and Mass Communication students with our Associate Degrees in Liberal Arts, we’ve observed that there is not a large change in classwork and difficulty from one college to another. Both of us were worried and had preconceived notions as well as a stigma that the University of Iowa would be much more difficult.
Having two years of Kirkwood under our belts with experienced college life prior has helped us a lot with what it means to be a good student. Both Kirkwood and Iowa professors are more than willing to help if you reach out to them.
Although some class guidelines may be more strict, the two college classroom environments are very similar and have provided a smooth transition. Before attending Iowa, we both expected extremely difficult classes compared to Kirkwood and lots of studying. After attending a few weeks of classes, we realized this was not really the case.
Though it depends on your major and area of study, the School of Journalism and Mass Communication offers a welcoming environment and a very smooth transition from Kirkwood. We encourage students to do the research, tour, and consider transferring to Iowa after Kirkwood.
Categories: Contributed, Opinion
