Levon: Hey, I'm Levon Harvey [phonetic] for Youniveristy TV, and we're at Occidental College to see what being a Tiger is all about. Come on. You can find Occidental in the Eagle Rock section of Los Angeles. Carved in the rolling hilltops where many Eagles forget it's just a short distance away from the legendary Griffith Park, [phonetic] and the hustle and bustle of L.A. City streets.

Oxy's in a really great location, because we're so close to everything that L.A. has to offer. Nothing's more than about 20 minutes away. You can go to Hollywood and see shows, and go to the El Capitan and walk on the stars. Disney Land is 45 minutes away.

Occidental students have many resources available. They have internships with museums. They can apprentice with musicians. Really [inaudible] great location for networking in the greater Los Angeles area.

Levon: Occidental College's 120-acre hillside campus was designed by Architect Myron Hunt, who worked on big time architectural projects like the Rose Bowl; giving Oxy's original buildings in Mediterranean Style with covered walkways and tiled roofs. This is a Foucault pendulum, and it swings in the Hameetman Science Center. It's a replica of the first science experiment that proved the earth rotates. Plus students have Southern California's warm weather, beaches, and even the dessert all within arms length. Oxy enrolls almost 1,900 students from 45 states and 22 countries with more than half of the student body coming from outside of California. Women students out number men 56% to 44%. Admission is highly selected at Occidental, because they receive about 5,800 applications, and can only admit about 39% of all applicants.

Most of the students who are professional [inaudible], Occidental admission process have a 3.7 or better GPA on a 4.0 scale. Mean SAT score for the three-part SAT was 2070, and the mean ACT was 30. We require that students submit an essay. We're very interested in student's capacity to communicate well in writing. We require two teacher recommendations that give us some insight into the intellectual curiosity; the level of participation the student has in classroom as well. Interviews are not a required part of the process, but we do recommend them.

Levon: All students pay about $36,000 for one year of tuition, plus room and board will come to an additional $10,00 a year. The college does offer generous financial aid, as well as merit scholarships. Occidental offers 30 majors, 9 interdisciplinary, double majors, or you can even create your own. The top five fields of study are Diplomacy in World Affairs, English and Comparative Literary Studies, Economics, Psychology, Art History, and Visual Arts.

Well Barack Obama spent his first two years at Occidental College. That's probably our, our most currently famous former student. For the first time ever we are offering something called Campaign Semester, where students actually get an entire course load of credits for going to work on a campaign, a presidential campaign, in a battle ground state. We also have an extensive study abroad program. And in the politics department and in various other departments, students can apply for funding of anywhere between $750 and a couple thousand dollars to go and do research anywhere in the world.

One of the main reasons why I decided to even look at Oxy is because they have an awesome [inaudible] the United Nations Program. And basically that program allows about 16 Oxy undergrads to pretty much work full time professionally at the United Nations.

If, if you are interested in being as small liberal arts environment that has an intimate relationship with your faculty, small classes, then Occidental is for you.

Levon: Occidental has 157 full time professors. 93% of which have a terminal degree.

Well I would say the relationships are very close. You get to know your students very well. And they get to know you as a human being. So there isn't that, that artificial divide; the student professor divide.

You know a lot of schools they're more interested in research or things like that. But at Oxy, the professors really focus on the undergrad. And you get that; you develop relationships with these people that I think really, the center of the Oxy experience.

Levon: The Occidental Tigers compete at the NCAA Division 3 level. And the SCIAC conference with 19 varsity sports teams producing many strong athletes and even 21 Olympians. All first and second year students are required to live on campus. Plus many choose to call Oxy their home. So Oxy supplies 12 residence halls ranging in design from modern to Spanish Colonial style.

Living on campus was quite the experience, especially my first year. Because it definitely helped to make the transition from home to college a lot easier. We all live in living learning communities, which basically means that the people in your hall also have the same core classes as you. So it's a nice support group, more or less, in your first year just to help you transition better. And also to make it easier to coordinate getting together for group projects, stuff like that.

Levon: Occidental has more than 100 clubs and organizations, with 19 sports, and the small but active Greek Community with 8 fraternities and sororities.

If you're interested in something, there's gonna be a club that can accommodate that. I know friends that have been involved in radio and, and K-Oxy, [phonetic] and midnight R and B sessions.

We have movie clubs. My personal, one of my personal favorites is The Bad Movie Club. Aside from that we do have a lot of dances on campus. Every year we have our splatter dance, which is where you go get splattered with glow in the dark paint, and then you dance around a black light.

Look familiar? Well Oxy's beautiful campus has been featured in more than 75 movies and television shows, including Crew List, [phonetic] Orange County, and the classic film Pad Mike. [phonetic] If you want a small liberal arts college with a park like campus in a highly diverse city, then check you Occidental College. I'm Levon Harvey, thanks for joining me around this beautiful Mediterranean style campus for our tour of Occidental College. See you real soon.