Oglethorpe University

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Founded in 1835, Oglethorpe University unites a close-knit campus community with big-city culture and opportunities. Today, Oglethorpe enrolls 1,250 students, representing 33 states and 38 countries.
Oglethorpe University provides a superior education in which liberal arts and sciences and professional programs complement each other in a small-college environment within a dynamic urban setting. Oglethorpe’s programs emphasize intellectual curiosity, close collaboration among faculty and students, and engaged learning in relevant field experiences. Oglethorpe educates students to be citizens globally, readies them for responsible leadership, and empowers them to pursue meaningful lives and productive careers.
The Oglethorpe experience is personal, and so is our admission process. There are no hard and fast rules—we evaluate every applicant individually. The better we know you, the better we will know if you have what it takes to be a Stormy Petrel! For this reason, we strongly suggest you get to know your admission counselor, visit the campus, and schedule an interview.
Your college years offer unbeatable opportunities to sample careers, explore areas of interest, and develop professional networks that you will rely on throughout your career. We will support you so that your resume-building becomes career-building, life-building, bridge-building. In other words: building the future.
The Oglethorpe classroom is everywhere – and that means life-changing opportunities for learning and growth. Some might even stretch you to new limits, like riding an elephant in Cape Town… petting an ostrich… or diving with the sharks (safety cage included!).
Whether you choose to study abroad for a semester (or longer!) or take a shorter trip (summer break is prime time for adventure!), travel is an incredible way to deepen your relationships with your classmates and forge friendships for life. You will also get to know your professors in a whole new way — there is nothing like an impassioned lecture right at the scene of some of history’s most famous archaeology and art! And through service activities, you will make meaningful connections with communities all over the world.
Learning is about exploring, examining, and investigating… and you will do all of that here at Oglethorpe. What makes this place unique is that you will also learn by creating, inventing, and innovating. Here, experimental thinking is championed. Collaborative truth-seeking is supported. And diving deeper into knowledge is always encouraged. Our students are not passive pupils. Instead, they are the type to take learning into their own hands — and research opportunities galore make that a lot easier to do.
At Oglethorpe, an intellectual inquiry has real-world implications. Just ask our Environmental Studies students, who have researched potential park locations in DeKalb County and helped the Chattahoochee National Recreation Area brainstorm ways to manage invasive plants.
The Oglethorpe Journal of Undergraduate Research (OJUR) is another way students can share their work. OJUR’s esteemed board of editors provides the same intellectual framework offered by a real-world peer-reviewed journal. This scholarly publication offers a one-of-kind resume credit for tomorrow’s world-shaking scientists and an inside look at the process of peer-review and publication.
You will learn from top professors in small, personal classes. You will develop critical thinking, communication, and problem-solving skills. You will develop in-depth knowledge in specific subject areas. And you will learn to apply your knowledge and skills in the real world.
Oglethorpe gives you that chance – from faculty-led excursions and short-term trips to longer-term experiences through our Atlanta Laboratory for Learning. The A_LAB is a different concept for a university. It leverages Oglethorpe’s unique location in the international city of Atlanta and offers experiences that let you test what you learn. With help from the A_LAB, you decide how to map your four-year journey. And everyone is unique. That journey may include any combination of experiences through study abroad (a few weeks, or a semester), internships (on the other side of the world, or down the street), research (independent, or side-by-side with your professor), or civic engagement (as part of your course of study, or just because you are driven to make a difference or both).
Sure, every university has a core curriculum — a set of courses needed to graduate. But only Oglethorpe has the Core. Ask any student, and you will find the Core is as central to the Oglethorpe experience as the gray stonework of its gorgeous Gothic campus.
The Core is a sequence of courses intentionally designed to challenge perceptions, evoke questions, transform perspectives, and create connections. It is the kind of intensive intellectual exercise that could only happen in a small, supportive community like Oglethorpe. The Core makes our graduates sharper thinkers, better writers, and stronger leaders who excel in whatever they choose.
There is a thriving metropolis outside our green campus: Atlanta, the cultural cornerstone and economic powerhouse of the South. Oglethorpe students build their professional network and on-the-job skills through internships in Atlanta, home to the third-largest concentration of Fortune 500 corporations in the US.
They volunteer in our campus-wide days of service and take on active roles in community engagement, helping feed the hungry at soup kitchens, tend the vegetables in community gardens, mentor school children, and so much more. They also take advantage of our international study opportunities to travel abroad, whether for a semester or a two-week trip. Then they return to our multicultural campus — and our global city — with new experiences, new friends, and new perspectives about the world.

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