I chose Oneonta because the first time I ever visited, the first moment I walked on campus, I felt like I was coming home. It was a weird feeling. It's the same feeling you get after you've been on a trip for like seven days and you walk back home and you're welcomed and you're happy to be there. That's the same feeling I got from coming on campus for the first time. And I thought, “I can't look at any other colleges. This is the one for me.”

If you’ve ever wondered how to cook spaghetti inside a meatball or wanted to see a giant Cheetos mozzarella stick being made, SUNY Oneonta alumna Julia “Goolia,” Class of 2012, is your girl.

My best experiences so far have really been the people and the connections that I made through EOP Summer Academy. When I got here in the fall, it was a really cool experience coming in and already knowing the campus really well and knowing a lot of people.

My interest and majoring in Business Economics actually came from my interest in fashion. I grew up loving fashion and every aspect of it and coming to college I knew I wanted to study fashion. It was just deciding which aspect of it, and I decided I wanted to do more of the business side. So my dream job after SUNY Oneonta would definitely be working in some type of fashion corporate office in the city or working for a stylist or anything that the business aspect of fashion could provide me.

My dream job is to be a statistician for pro sports. I love math and I love sports, so if I could couple those two things into a job that I get to do for the rest of my life? I’d love nothing more – that would be incredible!

I've had opportunities to meet tons of people. College has definitely changed me immensely already. I was kind of shy before, so I didn't think that I would openly talk to as many people as I did. But, my first week, I was like a social butterfly!

I’ve gotten so much experience here that I’ll definitely be prepared to be a director someday if that’s what I end up doing. For Film Club, we shoot a lot of videos, and I got to help out with the audio and see if shots looked good … all the things that need to be done in a film production.

I chose Oneonta because the community and the students here seemed friendly. It seemed like a welcoming environment. They also had my major and it was far enough away from home, the Bronx, but close enough at the same time. The perfect distance.

I love how friendly everyone is. Even if you're just at the dining hall, you could sit down and eat with anybody and they will befriend you. It’s not hard to make friends at all. My roommate and I met each other online through the class Facebook group, and we became really close.

I was really nervous that when I was going to school that I would get really homesick and that I wouldn't have professors who were as personable as my high school teachers. And I was thankfully very wrong. I love my professors. I genuinely like going to all my classes, which is really good. And I didn't get homesick at all.

My top experience was probably the tropical field biology course in Peru with one of my professors, Dr. Florian Reyda. We learned about conservation of the rainforest in the Andes Mountains and did many hikes and learned about our surroundings, including a lot of the animals and plant species that are there. There were 16 other students who went, and they felt like family by the end.

I’m in the Music for Life LLC (Living Learning Community), and it’s a lot of fun because through that I met a lot of friends who are also into music. You’ll talk about things and they just get it. We get each other. And then the class we all take is really interesting because we get to have guest speakers come in.