The Facts

Web site: www.wwc.edu

Location: college Place, Washington

Environment: green college town in the farmlands of Walla Walla Valley

Undergraduate enrollment: 1,914 46 percent male 54 percent female

Annual cost for tuition, room, and board, fees: $22,338

School year: three quarters late September to early June

Call for more information at: 1-800-541-8900

E-mail: info@wwc.edu

Nearest Taco Bell: 2.2 miles

Squirrel population (rough estimate): nobody knows (they're hard to count because they leap between trees and electrical wires instead of staying on the sidewalks)

Here's what you might write in your appointment book during a typical week at college:
Monday: classes, work, study.
Tuesday: work, classes, study.
Wednesday: same as Monday.
Thursday: same as Tuesday.
Friday: same as Wednesday.
Weekend: study, laundry, sleep.

How would you like to stay on that schedule for four years? Not a chance? I can't guarantee that your date book would look any different if you chose Walla Walla College in Washington State. Nobody can force you to have fun. But you could add some of these activities:

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Walla Walla College

Here's what you might write in your appointment book during a typical week at college:
Monday: classes, work, study.
Tuesday: work, classes, study.
Wednesday: same as Monday.
Thursday: same as Tuesday.
Friday: same as Wednesday.
Weekend: study, laundry, sleep.

How would you like to stay on that schedule for four years? Not a chance? I can't guarantee that your date book would look any different if you chose Walla Walla College in Washington State. Nobody can force you to have fun. But you could add some of these activities:

Monday: Start a new job at KGTS, the campus radio station that reaches thousands of people in Eastern Washington, and many more through the Positive Life Radio Network.

Tuesday: Put on something black and attend the monthly concert of the Walla Walla Symphony. Tonight you'll hear Tchaikovsy and Mozart last time it was Sullivan and Rachmaninoff. As the oldest continuous symphony west of the Mississippi, this ensemble displays the talents of community musicians as well as students and faculty from three area colleges. You can join them too, if you're good enough.

Wednesday: Meet your friends for a water polo game at the campus pool. Or learn to play racquetball or tennis.

Thursday: Roll out of bed to meet your 6:00 a.m. prayer group. Eat bagels together and read about how Jesus fed 5,000 people with a few loaves and fishes.

Friday: Go to vespers with your biology lab partner. Find out that the two of you were born in the same hospital just two weeks apart. Enjoy a great concert by a contemporary Christian singer.

Weekend: Help your roommate teach an early teen Sabbath school class. Drive into the mountains for a picnic. Attend a horse show in Walla Walla on Sunday. Visit the library at nearby Whitman College to get extra materials for an English lit research paper.

Will that schedule take care of you for a week? Keep reading, because I want to tell you more about Walla Walla College's lush green campus.

Have you ever seen one of those magazine articles about the best places to live in America? Some of the highest-rated areas are in the Pacific Northwest. Lots of people are moving to Washington and Oregon (and Walla Walla College) because of the mild climate, beautiful scenery, and healthy lifestyle.

Outdoor sports fans can try hiking, mountain biking, snowmobiling, and downhill or cross-country skiing in the Blue Mountains that rise to the east of the campus. And the Columbia and Snake rivers to the north offer waterskiing and some incredible boardsailing.

The adjoining towns of Walla Walla and College Place contain three colleges, so the whole area has a youthful feel. You can find a concert or play almost every weekend. Arts and lecture series bring world-famous performers to town. All three coleges have art galleries filled with sculpture, water color and oil paintings, and photography.

And here's a fact to impress your friends: The Walla Walla sweet onion, grown on farms in the area, is supposedly "so sweet you can eat it like an apple." (I asked a WWC cafeteria worker if raw onions are big sellers on campus, but she said that Häagen-Dazs ice cream is still a lot more popular.)

If you plan to study engineering at a Seventh-day Adventist college, you'll definitely end up at Walla Walla. Other colleges offer the first two years of the degree, but WWC offers a full program of civil, electrical, computer, mechanical, and bioengineering. On a national standardized engineering exam, WWC students averages 87 percent, well above the national average of 68 percent.

Not long ago I talked to a friend who graduated from Walla Walla's engineering program. "I can't start my full-time job until the end of summer," he complained, "so I'm just doing temporary work for now." I was sympathetic until I found out that temporary engineers just out of college make $15 an hour. I wouldn't recommend choosing your career for money, but you might want to look into Walla Walla's engineering program if you're good at math and science.

WWC is the first Adventist college to offer a degree in environmental science, an exciting field that could lead you to a career in resource management, public policy, environmental economics, law, or journalism. And the college's Biology Department owns the Rosario marine station near Seattle with 24 cabins, eight laboratories, and miniboats. How would you like to go to school on the ocean?

One last tip: Students sometimes refer to this school as "Wally World." I'm not sure how the name began, but I thought you'd like to know so you can fit right in from the start.