Berea College Admission
Berea College Undergraduate Program
Berea College Application

The Facts

Berea College is a unique school located in the town of Berea, Kentucky that caters to financially needy students in the impoverished Appalachian region who show academic potential. The college offers a tuition-free education to the students they admit, and combines a full academic load with 10-15 hours of on-campus work per week. Students are assigned jobs that range from teaching assistant to health care. The school has a strong preprofessional emphasis, and students are able to choose from four distinctly preprofessional majors or over 22 majors in the liberal arts. Some of the most popular majors chosen include business administration, child and family studies, technical and industrial arts, biology, and educational studies.

Admission to the school is quite competitive, as the tuition-free nature of the college appeals to many students. The College only admits those who show both a severe financial need as well as strong academic promise. Last year, over 2,200 students applied for admission, and approximately 530 were admitted; of those, about 396 enrolled for the coming Fall semester. The admitted students exhibited quite a bit of academic success, particularly in comparison with the rest of the region, and had an average high school GPA of about 3.4.

The school has an impressive student to faculty ratio of 11:1, and students receive a huge amount of individualized attention from their professors and advisors. The required courses at Berea span a large amount of subject matter; students are required to take courses in reading and writing, cultural studies, social sciences, the arts, natural sciences, Western tradition, contemporary Christianity, and holistic wellness. Students also have the option of spending a January term at another school with which Berea has an exchange program including Gustavus Adolphus College in Minnesota and Middlebury College in Vermont.

The Social Scene

The town of Berea doesn't offer much besides a bounty of churches, and even though the campus is only about 40 miles away from the city of Lexington, it is hard to get there as students are not allowed to have cars on campus unless they are desperately needed. The campus itself is very ecologically friendly, and boasts a fantastic research facility for Appalachian studies, as well as an Eco-Village in which a center for ecological sustainability is housed.

The student body is known to be quite friendly, and its members manage to find their own ways to have fun. There are plenty of beautiful natural surroundings, and many students are heavily involved in various outdoor activities, particularly on the weekends. There are no fraternities or sororities, and the administration strictly enforces “dry” policy on campus, so there is not really any wild partying. The dating scene is bearable; people are really friendly, but usually not in “that” kind of way...

What’s Good

“Berea feels like one big happy family. We all have something in common, which helps to bond us together.”

“The teachers here are wonderful and they really want to help their students be the best they can be.”

“The housing is really nice. It's really easy to make it feel like home here.”

What’s Bad

“There is nothing to do. If you are looking for a traditional college experience, this isn't the place for you.”

“The administration is really really wound up tight. It's impossible to get away with anything even slightly rebellious here.”

“The requirements take forever to complete, and you don't get to start studying your major for a really long time.”

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