Colleges Boston College

Boston College www.bc.edu

Boston College is a private institution that was founded in 1863. It’s located on a 405-acre suburban campus in historic Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts just outside downtown Boston. Although Boston College is classified as a research university, it still uses the word “college” in its name to reflect its historical position as a small liberal arts college. Due largely to its location and presence of buildings featuring gothic towers reaching into the sky, the Boston College campus is known generally as the “Heights” and to some as the “Crowned Hilltop.” The main campus is also listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Students can join more than 300 clubs and organizations, but there is no Greek system on campus. Freshmen are not required to live on campus, but the majority choose to do so. More than 1,000 students participate in study abroad each year.

Academics

The university offers bachelor’s degrees, master’s degrees, and doctoral degrees through its nine colleges and schools, which include highly ranked graduate programs as the Lynch School of Education, Boston College Law School, and Carroll School of Management. The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching classifies it as a university with high research activity. Its main campus is a historic district and features some of the earliest examples of collegiate gothic architecture in North America. In accordance with its Jesuit heritage, the university offers a liberal arts curriculum with an emphasis on formative education and service to others. The student-faculty ratio at Boston College is 11:1, and the school has 51% of its classes with fewer than 20 students. Popular majors include Economics, Finance, and Psychology.

Special Highlights

McMullen Museum of Art. A gateway to Boston College, the McMullen is known as a teaching museum in a research university. The McMullen has mounted more than 75 large-scale loan exhibitions and produced nearly as many scholarly catalogues. Subjects explored range from contemporary art by ethnically and racially diverse artists from around the globe, including classical and Asian antiquities, Italian baroque paintings, and medieval and Islamic artifacts, to nineteenth- and twentieth-century paintings and works on paper from Europe, Asia, and the Americas. The McMullen’s permanent collection features Coptic textiles, Haitian paintings, European and American paintings, tapestries, prints, and photographs.

Office of Student Involvement. The Office of Student Involvement offers resources and support for students to promote learning and build community by focusing on four key areas: student organizations, student governance, leadership education, and campus-wide programming. Programs and services include: The Campus Activities Board is a student-led group that coordinates campus-wide events, including concerts, dances, off-campus trips, and more; Emerging Leader Program is a one-year leadership development program for a select group of 50 first-year students that enhances leadership skills and potential, and fosters interpersonal, social, ethical, and moral development; O’Connell House is a home away from home where students can feel comfortable to study, socialize, and spend recreational time on Upper Campus.

School Mission & Unique Qualities

Boston College seeks both to advance its place among the nation’s finest universities and to bring to the company of its distinguished peers and to contemporary society the richness of the Catholic intellectual ideal of a mutually illuminating relationship between religious faith and free intellectual inquiry. Boston College, the first institution of higher education to operate in the city of Boston, is today among the nation’s foremost universities, a leader in the liberal arts, scientific inquiry, and student formation. Marathon Monday is among many school traditions where every Patriot’s Day, the BC community cheers on runners in the Boston Marathon, including the BC Campus School team, as they make their way up Commonwealth Avenue.

Student Reviews…

“Boston College is exactly what you make of it. Much of the social life revolves around clubs and student organizations. Diversity on campus was lacking though there are organizations meant to help. Overall, BC had a welcoming student body and amazing campus. As a young woman, I never felt unsafe walking around campus at night.”