It’s the middle of the third quarter, which means seniors have gotten most—if not all—of their college decisions by now. On January 31, the University of Maryland in College Park released decisions for students who applied for Early Action. Unsurprisingly, numerous seniors from ERHS have been accepted into UMD. It’s no surprise that UMD is one of the most common schools that seniors apply to; it is 20 minutes away from Eleanor Roosevelt, after all. However, I’ve noticed that ERHS has a lot more connections to UMD than one expects: multiple teachers and faculty are UMD alumni, its student teachers are usually UMD seniors, and a lot of last year’s seniors are currently UMD freshmen. This raises the question: Is UMD “too local” for ERHS seniors?

Now, don’t get me wrong; UMD is an impressive school. Its website boasts that it is ranked #10 among public universities in Forbes’ America’s Top Colleges list and #7 overall in the Princeton Review/Entrepreneur magazine among US universities for undergraduate entrepreneurship. It’s also ranked #9 among US public institutions for research and development spending and patents awarded in 2023, according to the National Science Foundation’s Higher Education Research and Development Survey and the National Academy of Inventors and Intellectual Property Owners Association, respectively. Despite all of these achievements (and more!), UMD may feel too close for comfort, especially since multiple staff members and recent ERHS graduates have or currently are attending the school.

At the end of junior year, students have the option to choose an internship or a dual enrollment course at UMD. Seniors may also need resources from UMD to complete their Research Practicum, a year-long project that’s presented in April. No matter which route seniors take, most of them are bound to have a relationship with UMD before or during college application season. And it’s not only students that have a relationship with UMD: many UMD students come to ERHS as student teachers, and are eventually hired by them as alumni, including our Raider Review supervisor, English, and Journalism Class teacher, Ms. Heather Seyler.

So back to the original question: Is UMD “too local” for ERHS seniors? With all of the connections that the schools have with each other, it can definitely feel like that. Despite the “marriage” between the two, UMD is more than just the college next to the high school; it’s a school that allows students to gain real-world opportunities at a high-school level.