Letter to the Editor

Dear Editor,

First off to answer the question why many college bound students in the Los Angeles area haven't heard of us ["National diversity? We think not," Nov. 1] is because we are a small school. Have you ever heard of Ripon College, Regis University, University of Evansville, or Holy Names College...probably not. These colleges, like ULV, aren't in big name cities and don't have their athletic events nationally televised every weekend.

We do heavy recruiting in the Los Angeles area, I'll be attending the National Hispanic College Fair in L.A. on Nov. 6 if you want to go! We visit a countless number of high schools and college fairs in Los Angeles, including the Valley.

And for your information we do visit high schools and attend fairs in Washington, Oregon, Arizona, Nevada, and Hawaii. Also we only have a couple of months to recruit before we have to start reading applications, so instead of going back East and trying to convince students, who generally want to stay back East, to come to California, we concentrate on getting students in our own back yard.

The reason we don't have a huge number of out of state students is because when most of them look at colleges in southern California they're looking for similar attractions that a tourist would, the beach, Disneyland and the big cities (L.A., Hollywood, Long Beach). If you didn't know, ULV is nestled in a small suburb in the Inland Empire/Desert.

The most common question that I'm asked when on the road is who/what/where is La Verne. I'm willing to bet most students here had not heard of La Verne much longer before they began applying to schools. A lot of students don't want to check into a school they've never heard of, they're caught up on the name.

I would love to know who wrote this article and where they got there information from. In the future before you comment on a situation you should do a little homework and get your facts straight.

Falone Serna
Admissions Counselor