A Quick Guide to The College of The Holy Cross
This article was written based on the information and opinions presented by Kamela Dino in a CollegeVine livestream. You can watch the full livestream for more info.
What’s Covered:
Overview of the College of the Holy Cross
Located 45 minutes outside of Boston, the College of the Holy Cross is a small liberal arts school in Western Massachusetts. The College of the Holy Cross is one of the few undergraduate-only Jesuit schools in the United States. Holy Cross’s mission is to ensure that its students are knowledgeable, well-rounded, and can apply what they learn in the classroom in a real-world context.
This mission is central to the curriculum regardless of major, or program of study, and is informed by four key questions:
- What is the moral character of learning and teaching?
- How do we find meaning in life and history?
- What are our obligations to one another?
- What is our special responsibility to the world’s poor and powerless?
Holy Cross emphasizes the importance of applying what they learn in the classroom by taking care of themselves and others by using their knowledge to the benefit of their local community and the world. Holy Cross is a community of justice, dignity, and integrity, committed to sustainability in school, on campus, and in everyday life.
Academics at Holy Cross
Holy Cross is a small school of 3,100 undergraduate students with a graduation rate of 86%. The average class size is about 19 and the student-to-faculty ratio is approximately 10 to one. Holy Cross has 295 full-time faculty members and around 30 part-time members. Thanks to the small class sizes at the college, Holy Cross’s faculty are very accessible to students and offer office hours for students to stop by with any questions.
As an undergraduate-only institution, Holy Cross doesn’t have graduate teaching assistants. That means that all courses are taught by experienced professors who have finished their Ph.D.s and are dedicated to the mission and the growth of their students.
Holy Cross offers several majors and minors that students can pursue. Students can complete a double major, a combination of majors, minors, and concentrations, or enroll in a Focused Career program. All first-year students arrive undeclared.
What Are Your Chances of Acceptance?
While Holy Cross’s acceptance rate is incredibly low, your personal chances of acceptance may actually be higher or lower. To better understand your chances at Holy Cross, we recommend using our free admissions calculator. Using your grades, test scores, and extracurriculars, we’ll estimate your odds of acceptance, and give you tips on improving your profile.
You can also search for best-fit schools based on your chances, and on other factors like size, location, majors and more. This tool will make it a lot easier to create a strategy for your college application process.
Do you want to learn more about Jesuit schools in the U.S.? Check out this post for a list of the 27 Jesuit colleges and which is right for you.
