Browning Boys Head North on Annual College Trip
Bright and early on the morning of Wednesday, September 13, Forms V and VI boys, along with four proctors, pulled way from the curb at Madison Ave. and E. 62nd St. to embark on the School’s annual three-day College Trip. With College Guidance Counselor Sanford Pelz '71 at the helm and 53 boys in tow, the coach bus headed for Fairfield University, the first of three Day One destinations and the first of eight colleges or universities to which the journey would take the students. Assisting Mr. Pelz in proctoring duties were Upper School Head James Reynolds, history teacher Omar Qureshi, and Information Technology Support Specialist and JV basketball coach Sankara Iwelu. Mr. Reynolds provides the following report:
After an information session and tour at Fairfield, the group headed for New London, Conn., where they would have lunch, an info session and tour at Connecticut College, a beautiful private, liberal arts institution. As was typical, the boys divided into homeroom groups with a single proctor tagging along and listened attentively to the tour guides. They finished Day One on the hilly campus of the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass., where they had a tour and dinner.
The final stop for both Wednesday and Thursday nights was the Embassy Suites in Marlborough, Mass, where local vendors, such as McDonald’s and the Hannaford’s super market, experienced a significant uptick in revenue on those nights.
Day Two took the group to the spiffy Bryant University campus in Bristol, R.I., where the boys toured the campus, took in an info session with the school’s vice president of enrollment, and had lunch in Bryant’s spacious, airy dining hall. The next stop of the day was Brown University, beautifully situated atop Providence’s College Hill. The boys were happy to see Browning alumnus Liam Kerwin ‘16, who zipped over on his electric skateboard to greet the group before they entered a hall for an information session followed by a tour. The group finished the day at Wheaton College in Norton, Mass., where they toured the campus before hitting the dining hall jackpot: Lobster Night.
The last day of the trip began at Clark University in Worcester. The boys toured the compact campus in the heart of downtown Worcester after an information session, and then headed for the final campus of this year’s tour, the University of Connecticut, where many Browning travelers were surprised by the feeling of small-campus intimacy created at this school of 19,000 undergraduates. The boys had their final institutional meal during lunch in a UConn dining hall before attending an info session followed by a tour. The boys clamored back onto the bus for the three-plus-hour trip back to New York City, arriving at Madison and 62nd St. at 7:30 pm.
As always, the trip offered every boy a glimpse of, in the words of their fearless leader Mr. Pelz, “Something rural, something urban; a private liberal arts college; a medium-sized liberal arts college; a small business focused university; an Ivy League university; and a large, state university.” The trip’s objective was met: Each boy’s vision of what types of colleges exist was greatly expanded by this annual three-day trek.
