The University of Puget Sound is located in Tacoma, about 20 minutes south of downtown Seattle. Tacoma is a port town with lots of shipping and a downtown that has been somewhat upgraded. The entrance to the town features the Glass Museum where you can see glass blowing demonstrations. The town is known for this because of the famous glass artist, Chihuly, who was a student at UPS. The campus is located outside of the quaint downtown, in an upscale neighborhood not far away. The campus is attractive brick, reminiscing of small east coast colleges. There is a great student center with extensive food service and an award winning radio station that students run. The campus has a small redwood grove, state of the art athletic fields and facilities and nice dorms.
Our tour guide was from the Bay Area and said she loved her experience there. The school newspaper was one of the better examples we found on our college tour. All campus tours were full of Bay Area kids last week, with maybe one token kid from the east coast. There is an amazing library on campus with great reference librarians who are very helpful for term papers. The curriculum is characterized as a broad liberal arts curriculum with an emphasis on study abroad. There are more Californians here than any other state (30%). The average GPA for admitted students is 3.52. Junior year abroad program are very popular among students. Required courses include Writing and Rhetoric as well as Seminars in Scholarly and Creative Inquiry. Writing has a very big emphasis here.
