Rhodes College--Memphis, Tennessee

Rhodes College campus

One of the comments that I hear most frequently in meetings with juniors is that they want to go to a college “in a city but with a campus.” Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee perfectly meets those criteria! Memphis is a fun city with a lot of culture, big time sports, great food (ask me about the barbeque pork nachos that I ate!) and so many opportunities for research and internships.

St. Jude Children's Research  Hospital

My time in Memphis actually began by going to visit St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, which is located just a few minutes away from the Rhodes campus. I had heard about St. Jude from the commercials on TV and their giving campaign around the holidays but had no idea what an amazing facility it really is. St. Jude is a hospital for children with cancer and they do not charge their patients for any of their medical treatment. It currently costs $1.8 million a day to run the hospital and all of that money comes entirely from donations. Rhodes students are the only people who are able to intern at St. Jude- every year, they have tons of students getting hands-on opportunities to be involved in cutting edge cancer research. Over 70 percent of Rhodes students do academic internships in their junior or senior year because there are so many places to intern in Memphis. The director of career services told us that there are more law firms in the city wanting Rhodes students as interns than there are students to fill all of them!

the library

Rhodes is a small liberal arts college that has around 2,000 students on a beautiful Gothic campus.  Many colleges say that they look like Hogwarts and this is definitely one of them! I had the ability to attend an Introduction to International Relations class of only 25 students and the professor was able to call on the students by name during their heated discussion of the World Bank. The average class size is 14 students and some of the most popular majors are biology and business.

The Rhodes mascot is the Lynx

We learned about athletics at Rhodes also- as a Division III school, about 35 percent of their students are varsity athletes and some students even play more than one sport!  They have a ton of school spirit- their mascot is the Lynx and they are the only college in the country with the Lynx as a mascot. Besides all of the athletic opportunities on campus, Memphis has an NBA team and I got to see the Grizzlies in action. Students can get tickets to the games for just $5!

Rhodes is a great school if you are looking for smaller classes, a close community, and active school spirit in a city that gives you so many opportunities. The people at Rhodes have that wonderful southern hospitality and warmth- I had lunch with a student who attended Flint Hill School in northern Virginia and he said that even he has started saying “y’all” after being there for four years!

Thank you to the Admissions Office at Rhodes for a wonderful visit!

LP