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21 Places Worth Seeing on College Tours

Explore campus facilities and fixtures after you've gone on the official college tour.

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It's critical for college applicants with clear academic interests to explore the building that houses their intended major.

If you're a soon-to-be college student, exploring a college campus in person can help you determine if a school is the right fit.

College admissions consultants, high school counselors, undergraduate admissions officers and parents of college-bound students recommend taking a school's official guided tour to see the institution's selling points.

Once the official presentation is over, it's important to take a self-guided tour, where you check out places that your guide didn't show you and encounter people you otherwise would not have met.

Here are 21 places on a college campus that applicants should consider exploring:

• Facilities associated with your desired major
• Places where students pursue hobbies
• A student union or student center
• A college dining hall
• Religious and cultural institutions
• The career center
• Fraternity and sorority houses
• The neighborhood, town or city surrounding the campus
• Unique parts of the campus
• Bulletin boards across the college campus
• Lecture halls and classrooms
• Student health facilities, including counseling centers
• Collaborative workspaces and hubs for hands-on learning
• Campus or municipal police department
• Stadiums and gyms
• Student housing options
• College offices that provide logistical assistance
• Outdoor spaces
• Transportation amenities
• School-affiliated publishers and bookstores

Facilities Associated With Your Desired Major

Martyne Lo Russo, a parent whose son earned a bachelor's degree in sports management from St. John's University in New York City, says that when her son was a college applicant, he looked for a school with a strong sports management program. So, when he toured St. John's as a prospective student, he visited its sports management department and met with the dean. Lo Russo advises college hopefuls to visit undergraduate academic departments for the college majors they are interested in.

Meaghan Arena, a higher education administrator who has held leadership roles at multiple schools, also says it's critical for college applicants with clear academic interests to explore the building that houses their intended major.

"Having a feel for the place you'll spend most of your time can help you know if you see yourself there over the next four years," Arena wrote in an email. "It can also help you to understand the average size of classes in your major and the availability of technology in the classrooms and labs."

Many experts advise science-oriented college hopefuls to visit a school's science research laboratories to learn about ongoing research at the school.

Places Where Students Pursue Hobbies

Amber Jin, founder of Get Into Ivy, a company that sells digital courses on how to apply to college, says applicants should visit the places on campus where they would spend the bulk of their leisure time if they were admitted. For instance, someone passionate about theater should visit a college's performing arts facilities, she says.

Meg Caddeau, a college admissions counselor at the IvyWise admissions consulting firm and a former associate dean at Princeton University and Amherst College , says it's important for college hopefuls to see the places on a college campus where students relax and have fun, including lounge areas and music practice rooms.

Experts note that some schools have impressive museums and art galleries, which if present, are worth visiting. Spaces connected to labor-intensive student organizations, such as campus newspapers, are also potentially interesting, experts say.

A Student Union or Student Center

"So much learning happens outside of the walls of the classroom," Deborah Cohan, a sociology professor at the University of South Carolina—Beaufort , wrote in an email. "The student center might be referred to as the living room of the campus. Once at these centers, students can see the sort of programming that is offered and the sort of public figures invited to campus."

A College Dining Hall

Michelle Mullooly, director of admissions at The Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York, says college applicants should be sure to eat a meal at a campus dining hall.

"College dining halls are where students relax, recharge and socialize," Mullooly wrote via email.

Religious and Cultural Institutions

Jin says college applicants who have a strong religious, racial or ethnic identity can benefit from visiting places on campus that cater to people with a shared background. For instance, a college applicant who is an ethnic minority might want to visit a minority student association, and a religiously affiliated college applicant might want to visit a student group connected to his or her faith.

Josef Blumenfeld, a Boston-based parent, says that during his daughters' college tours, his family made a point of stopping at the campus Hillel either in-person or virtually to inquire about how hospitable a college was for Jewish people like themselves.

"Interestingly, Hillel as an organization stepped up to provide much more information about campus security and anti-Semitism," Blumenfeld wrote in an email.

Black students may want to make a pit stop at a school's Black Student Union, experts say. Kat Gill, whose biracial daughter graduated from Harvard University in 2020, noted that her daughter made sure to stop by locations where Black students congregated on school campuses during her college search, and she also struck up conversations with Black students at the colleges she was considering.

Gill suggests that LGBTQ students take a similar approach to gauge whether a school's culture is tolerant and friendly.

Minority college applicants can get valuable information from current students in their minority group, Gill says. "It gives you a good idea of how things are on campus."

The Career Center

Joe Orsolini, president of College Aid Planners, a company that helps families save and pay for college, says a college tour is not complete without a visit to the career center.

"It may not be the 'sexy' part of the college tour, but it is important to see what companies are interviewing on campus," Orsolini wrote in an email. "This will give you an indication of your prospects for who is hiring that school's graduates."

How to Find the Right College Tour Group

Delece Smith-Barrow Nov. 2, 2017

Fraternity and Sorority Houses

Experts say that if a college has an active Greek scene and numerous sororities and fraternities, it would be a mistake to not visit a fraternity or sorority house.

"Walk or drive by the frats and sororities to see what they look like," Caddeau suggests. "Do a bit of online investigating as well. Stats on the percentage of undergrads who are involved in Greek life should be available. If Greek life dominates the social scene, it could be helpful to ask about alternatives to Greek life social events."

The Neighborhood, Town or City Surrounding the Campus

Brooke Fincke, director of college counseling at Chapel Hill—Chauncy Hall, a private school in Massachusetts, says college students generally take occasional trips off campus. A comprehensive college tour should include sightseeing in the communities around campus, she says.

Pierre Huguet, CEO of the H&C Education consulting firm, suggests that prospective undergraduates think about whether they'd prefer to attend an urban school .

"If the activities that give meaning to your life are hiking, canoeing, and fishing, you probably won’t want to go to college in an urban setting," he explained in an email. "On the other hand, if you’re all about visiting museums and writing a food blog, a school in New York or Chicago may be perfect for you."

Experts on college affordability also say that seeing the community around a college and the prices charged at local restaurants and stores can give college hopefuls a sense of how high living expenses would be at that particular college.

Unique Parts of the Campus

A college or university may have multiple statues or plaques that commemorate important events in the school's history, or it may have particularly noteworthy architecture. Experts say prospective students should try to see the most iconic and unusual features of a college campus, since those details can provide clues about the student experience.

Bulletin Boards Across the Campus

Fincke advises college applicants to read the bulletin board flyers posted on a college campus, since these flyers can indicate how vibrant student life is on the campus. She suggests that college applicants take photos of these bulletin boards to help them remember all the activities and clubs that were mentioned on them.

Christine Chu, a college admissions counselor at IvyWise and a former assistant director of undergraduate admissions at Yale University and Georgetown University , says prospective students can benefit from attending college events.

Lecture Halls and Classrooms

Experts say college applicants should ask to observe an undergraduate course in a subject of interest during their college tours. It's important for college applicants to gauge whether a college's teaching style matches their learning style.

"For students visiting campuses during the academic year, I would strongly encourage them to sit in on a lecture as well as a seminar if possible," Chu wrote in an email. "Listening in on classroom discussions can illuminate the intellectual vitality of a school and the student body."

"More than a home to book stacks and special collections, which alone reveal so much about the life of the mind of a university, libraries can be mini hubs," Chu explains. "Students gather around conference tables to collaborate on projects or study together, and the coffee spot is often filled with students catching up with friends. And sometimes, being ensconced in a well-loved leather armchair in a quiet nook simply embodies one of the quintessential moments of being a college student."

Student Health Facilities, Including Counseling Centers

Experts note that it is common for college students to experience mental health challenges. Access to therapy is essential, especially for students who have been diagnosed with a chronic mental illness like bipolar disorder.

The quality of the student health center is worth investigating, according to college experts. "It’s important to see the health center and understand the university’s approach to health care and what services are provided," Kerr Ramsay III, who has a doctorate in higher education leadership and serves as senior vice president for undergraduate admission at High Point University in North Carolina, wrote in an email.

Collaborative Workspaces and Hubs for Hands-On Learning

Ramsay recommends going to spots where students brainstorm with one another. " Ask to see spaces that support your desire to work in teams and complete projects together outside of class," he suggests.

Another type of location worth checking out is a space where students get to apply the lessons they learned in class, he says, noting that his school offers a production studio and a trading room with a live stock ticker.

Campus or Municipal Police Department

Prospective college students who are worried about security can stop by the campus police headquarters or the local police agency to ask about crime in the area and inquire about safety measures, according to experts.

Stadiums and Gyms

Chu notes that because college and university sports events bring so many people associated with a school to a single spot, visiting a stadium at one of those times is ideal, since "you can literally feel the school spirit pulsating through the stands."

Laurie Kopp Weingarten, president of One-Stop College Counseling in New Jersey, recommends visiting workout spaces, since staying in shape is a high priority for many potential college students.

Student Housing Options

"I would advise prospective students to visit the dormitories because these are important to campus life," Janet Ruth Heller, a former university faculty member who taught at multiple academic institutions, wrote in an email. "Are the rooms well equipped? How is the wi-fi? Does the room have air conditioning? Are there elevators for multi-story dormitories? Do students need to bring their own rugs, sheets, blankets, extra lights, etc.?"

Experts suggest touring off-campus apartments where the cost is less than the expense of a dorm room, or for situations where access to school-controlled housing isn't guaranteed for all four years of college.

College Offices That Provide Logistical Assistance

Shymika Stephenson-Davison, owner and lead consultant at the PreCollege Solutions consulting firm, says students who need financial aid should visit the financial aid office. Many colleges have support services that cater to both low-income and first-generation college students and that also assist students with disabilities, so students who could benefit from such assistance should be sure to stop by that office, Stephenson-Davison suggests.

James Lewis, president of the National Society of High School Scholars, encourages potential undergrads to visit a college's academic resource center, if it has one. In an email, he advised seeking answers to the following questions: “Do they have tutoring, and if so, what subjects? Is it face-to-face or virtual? By appointment only? Can you get one-on-one support for math, science, writing or any specific class you take?"

Outdoor Spaces

Alex Chip, founder of Top Score Education tutoring and test prep company, commented in an email that “having the escape and stress release of a beautiful garden or an invigorating hiking trail can offer a welcome respite from the pressures of the university experience.”

A college's outdoor amenities are particularly significant nowadays due to the coronavirus pandemic, says Patricia Roberts, chief operating officer of GiftofCollege.com, a company that helps people contribute to the college funds of their loved ones.

"Given the recent history with Covid and the need to pivot to outdoor spaces for socially-distant informal socializing or organized events, I strongly suggest prospective students ask about and examine dedicated outdoor spaces that can be utilized by students during all seasons," she wrote in an email. "This would give prospective students a sense of available options should indoor gatherings be subject to restriction again in the future."

Transportation Amenities

Allen Koh, founder and CEO of Cardinal Education consulting firm, notes that the availability of parking spots, trains and buses on campus is critical information to consider. "This will definitely help you choose in terms of how easy your commute will be from your home, apartment, or even within the city," he says.

School-Affiliated Publishers and Bookstores

"You may observe the level of importance the college places on knowledge production by looking at its press or publishing house," Koh says. "If there is one, try checking the university bookstore and look at the titles being released, especially in your own field. How advanced and productive they are in your chosen field will give you an idea of the kind of instruction you will receive from the school."

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Finding the right fit.

Start planning early.

Ask questions.

Get student perspectives.

Explore college through the lens of campus media.

Visit academic departments.

Check out other campuses nearby.

Learn about the local community.

Visit a dining hall or student center.

Explore the campus library.

Explore various virtual tour options.

Ask about campus safety.

Get financial aid information.

Ask about disability accommodations.

Meet with clubs and organizations.

Learn more about colleges.

College visit tips

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Morehouse College pushes the White House for 'direct engagement' ahead of Biden's speech

ATLANTA — Morehouse College faculty members remain apprehensive about the decision to have President Joe Biden deliver the school’s commencement speech on May 19 and have asked the White House to take some steps to address their concerns.

Regine Jackson, a professor of sociology and the dean of the Humanities, Social Sciences, Media and Arts Division, said the faculty members were hoping for some “direct engagement” with Biden ahead of his speech, pointing to a town hall Vice President Kamala Harris held during her visit to the school last fall. 

“There was an opportunity for an exchange, and we all recognize that commencement is not that opportunity, so [we’re] trying to find and carve out space and time for that,” Jackson said. 

Jackson was among the roughly 80 faculty members who joined a virtual meeting last week, arranged by Morehouse administration leaders, to give them an avenue to voice their concerns, which largely centered on worries that Biden’s presence could distract from the graduation ceremony and unease over his policies toward Israel and its war in the Gaza Strip.

A spokesperson for Morehouse said that the request for additional dialogue with Biden was expected — and that the school proactively has been talking with White House officials about a meeting ahead of the commencement address.

The White House declined to comment.

A top Democratic official who has been engaged in discussions with the Morehouse community is Cedric Richmond, a Morehouse alumnus who is a co-chair of Biden’s re-election campaign. 

“I’m friends with everybody over there. Of course I talk to them,” Richmond said, adding that he intends to attend commencement but does not plan to go to the school ahead of time. 

“The president speaking at a college is not about the president. It’s about the college and the students,” he said. “How many schools graduate 500 Black men at one time?”

Morehouse is the only college in the country dedicated to educating Black men. It is one of just two colleges where Biden will deliver commencement addresses this year; the other is the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York.

Morehouse Provost Kendrick Brown, one of the officials who organized the call to address faculty concerns, acknowledged that a Harris-style town hall is unlikely, given the president’s schedule, but he said they have requested some form of additional communication as tensions remain high on college campuses in Georgia and nationwide over the war in Gaza.

“We can’t control President Biden’s schedule. But we can certainly say that if it’s possible, it would be great if we could engage before the commencement. What form that might take and how that may show expression, of course, all of that is still a conversation,” Brown said.

Concerns over Biden’s visit increased among some faculty members as protests at college campuses have led to the arrest s of students and, in some cases, allegations of excessive force by police.

Last week, a Morehouse student was among 28 students arrested at a pro-Palestinian protest and encampment at nearby Emory University, further fueling concerns not just that similar protests would rock Morehouse’s campus during Biden’s address, but also that students would be met with force by law enforcement personnel.

“At Martin Luther King’s alma mater, we have a moral responsibility to speak up against injustices, and our students are being violently repressed and attacked for doing so. And I’m scared of what it’s going to mean for our students,” political science professor Andrew Douglas said.

Students, faculty members and leadership alike have said they expect some sort of protests around the president’s visit this month and are focused on preventing the type of escalation at other schools from occurring at Morehouse.

Douglas said he had spoken to several faculty members who said that “ under no conditions are they going to sit on a stage with Joe Biden.”

Jackson said: “The demonstrations, I think we should expect them. I think if we don’t prepare for them, it will be at our own peril.

“One of the things that we’ve seen over and over again with this generation is their ability to be, on the one hand, respectful and, on the other hand, not be silenced and to make their voices heard.” Jackson said. “I don’t expect anything less from our graduating class.”

Richmond was also optimistic about decorum. 

“It’s a solemn event on a Sunday in the morning,” he said, “and I hope that people recognize the solemnness of that with parents, family and friends watching.”

Nnamdi Egwuonwu is a 2024 NBC News campaign embed.

Jonathan Allen is a senior national politics reporter for NBC News, based in Washington.

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From Free Speech to Free Palestine: Six Decades of Student Protest

The protests against Israel’s war in Gaza are merely the latest in a tradition of student-led, left-leaning activism dating back at least to the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War protests of the 1960s.

Students occupied Columbia’s Hamilton Hall in April 1972. Credit... Getty Images

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By Richard Fausset

• May 4, 2024

An American college student looked out at a sea of protesters and spoke of a machine that had grown so “odious” that it had left people of good will little choice. There must be protest.

“You’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop,” he said. Soon the students would flood into a campus administration building.

That scene played out 60 years ago at the University of California, Berkeley. The words were directed at the university leadership, and referring to its restrictions on campus political activity. But the speech, from the student leader Mario Savio, and the sit-in that followed could have happened yesterday.

The protests against Israel’s war in Gaza that have erupted on college campuses around the United States are merely the latest in a tradition of student-led, left-leaning activism dating back at least to the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War protests of the 1960s.

Often, the protests have played out on college campuses, and sometimes in the same building as previous years: Hamilton Hall at Columbia University, was taken over by students in the protests of 1968 as well as this past week and at least four times in between. Sometimes the protests have seemed to be off-campus adaptations, like the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations of 2011 or the racial justice demonstrations of recent years.

Like today’s protests, most of the older movements were highly polarizing. Some observers at the time praised protesters for their courage and idealism, while others criticized them for being misguided, self-indulgent or guilty of flirting with — or embracing — irresponsible and even dangerous rhetoric and ideas.

A high propensity to offend can seem inextricably intertwined with the fresh thinking that college-age students often bring to the world’s most difficult questions. “When you’re talking about college students, you are talking about people who are barely out of childhood,” said Rick Perlstein, the historian and author, in an interview this week. “People who are barely out of childhood and basically on their own for the first time, and exploring ideas for the first time, sometimes say crazy things.”

Some of the student protests, like the Civil Rights and anti-apartheid movements, helped achieve tangible goals that have become broadly accepted over time. Others continue to stir debate about their wisdom and efficacy. The current movement is notable for the way it has divided not only Americans in general, but Americans who identify as liberal, over the thorny question of when criticism of Israel veers into antisemitism.

Like the older movements, the current one is likely to be the subject of decades of research into its origins, its aims and its aftereffects. In the short term, politicians, including the presumptive Republican and Democratic presidential nominees, are implicitly acknowledging its potential power to sway elections in the way the demonstrations of 1968 are often credited with helping to doom the Democratic presidential candidacy of Hubert H. Humphrey and elect Richard M. Nixon.

Former President Donald J. Trump has called the protests a “disgrace to our country.” On Thursday, after protesters and the police clashed dramatically at the University of California, Los Angeles, and other campuses, President Biden sought a middle ground. “There’s the right to protest,” he said, “but not the right to cause chaos.”

The Civil Rights Movement

The idea of the progressive college student as a force in public life is a relatively recent development.

“Universities from the medieval era probably up to the 1930s were supposed to be sanctuaries from politics and society,” said Kenneth Heineman, a historian at Angelo State University in Texas. Though student protesters made waves in the earlier part of the 20th century, the template for student protest coalesced in the 1960s, as Baby Boomers swelled the ranks of colleges and universities in a wealthy country that was beginning to confront its long history of racism, and would soon be engulfed by the Vietnam conflict — one in which 61 percent of the 58,000 American soldiers killed were under 21 years old.

One of the early sit-ins protests that sought to desegregate restaurants and other public places in the South was carried out by four students from historically Black North Carolina A&T State University, who took spots at lunch counters reserved for whites in Greensboro, N.C., and politely refused to leave when asked.

Many participants in the Freedom Rides of 1961 were also college students and were confronted with violent mobs who met them in the Deep South. A college group called the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, or S.N.C.C., participated in the Freedom Rides and engaged in voter registration efforts in Mississippi.

With these and other efforts, the American college student began to be seen as a catalyst for profound structural change. But the protests hardly brought universal praise. In a 1961 Gallup poll, 57 percent of respondents said that sit-ins and Freedom Rides would hurt, rather than help, the cause of integration.

“Student movements in the United States are never popular off campus,” said Robert Cohen, a historian at New York University. “And that’s a reflection of a kind of underlying cultural conservatism of the country. It’s like, ‘Shut up and study. You’re not respecting your elders, you’re supposed to be seen, not heard.’”

The Free Speech movement at the University of California, Berkeley

In 1964, students at the University of California, Berkeley protested free speech limitations that had been enacted in earlier years amid a fear of the radical left.

After a sit-in action in the school’s administration building, the protesters, who collectively became known as the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, saw the restrictions abolished. Soon American colleges had entered in a new era in which a paternalistic model of administration, which often governed not only student speech but dress and dating, began to fall away.

This new freedom helped midwife the decade’s counterculture movement, though by the early 1970s, it would fall apart under the weight of its own excesses, which Mr. Perlstein, a man of the left, once tartly described as “a blaze of numbskull adventurism and Maoist masquerade.”

By the mid-1960s, the United States had begun dramatically increasing its troop presence in Vietnam. Beginning in 1964, and continuing through 1973, the federal government would draft 2.2 million men into military service. And college campuses would spend years in upheaval.

The high-water mark of U.S. campus protests would come in 1970, with news of President Nixon’s expansion of the war effort into Cambodia. Students were also incensed by fatal shootings of students by authorities amid protests at Jackson State University, in Mississippi, and Kent State University in Ohio. Students at 900 schools took part in a coordinated strike, according to an analysis by the University of Washington.

The televised scenes of chaos at American schools, and the growing radicalization of some elements of the antiwar movement, created a significant backlash. One Gallup poll from May 1970 showed that 58 percent of respondents blamed the students for the Kent State shootings, in which the Ohio National Guard killed four students and injured nine. (The shootings came after protests in which some protesters threw rocks at the troops, and an R.O.T.C. building had burned down.) A Gallup poll from the previous year had found that 82 percent of Americans were in favor of expelling militant students from school.

But historians and others said that the large-scale protests on and off campus pressured the Nixon administration to hasten U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam, with the last American combat troops leaving the country in January 1973.

The Anti-Apartheid movement

From the end of the Vietnam era to the present day, college campuses have occasionally flared with left-wing dissent, protesting U.S. intervention in Central America, domestic policy issues and military actions in the Middle East.

In the 1970s and 1980s, student-led movements sprang up on numerous college campuses calling on schools to divest from companies that did business in South Africa, which at the time was under white apartheid rule. Students on many campuses erected shanties in solidarity with poor Black South Africans, and a number of schools divested, at least partially, from companies with investments in South Africa.

Though they were only one factor that led to the fall of apartheid in the early 1990s, the South Africa divestment movement directly inspired the current demands that schools divest from businesses connected to Israel.

These demands are part of the broader effort targeting Israel known as the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, which calls upon nations, businesses and schools to sever links with Israel unless it meets a number of demands, including ending its occupation of all land captured in 1967 and allowing Palestinian refugees and their descendants to return to properties from which they were displaced during the period that Israel was established.

Occupy Wall Street

Though not a student movement per se, Occupy Wall Street, the 2011 grass-roots movement against corporate greed and income inequality, introduced a new generation to the idea of widespread protest, and eventually spread to a number of college campuses.

The epicenter of the movement was in Manhattan’s financial district, in Zuccotti Park, which protesters occupied for a series of weeks. Their improvised tent city has been echoed in the pro-Palestinian protests, where pitched tents on campus have, aside from student bodies, been the most visible sign of the Gaza protests.

Black Lives Matter

Until this year’s pro-Palestinian protests, the most formative political experience in the lives of today’s college activists was arguably the series of antiracist street protests that rocked the United States beginning with a Florida vigilante’s killing of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed Black man, in 2012, and reached a peak after a Minneapolis police officer murdered George Floyd, in 2020.

Many activists, like Vonne Crandell, a Tulane student and activist, saw the Palestinian struggle and the effort to end racism in the United States as part of the same broader fight against colonial powers exploiting indigenous people and people of color.

Black activists in the United States have a long and complicated history when it comes to the Arab-Israeli conflict. Soon after the 1967 war between Israel and neighboring Arab states, leaders of the S.N.C.C., which had grown increasingly radicalized, stated that Jews were “imitating their Nazi oppressors” by using terror tactics on Arabs. Such statements led to denunciations from more moderate Civil Rights forces just as comparisons of Israelis to genocidal regimes are making more moderate liberals queasy today.

For Mr. Crandell — a Black man who was suspended from Tulane this week for his participation in the protests — there is no debate. “We are witnessing a genocide in real time,” he said in a phone interview on Tuesday.

Speaking of Black Americans and Palestinians, he added: “All of our struggles are together.”

Susan Beachy contributed research.

Richard Fausset , based in Atlanta, writes about the American South, focusing on politics, culture, race, poverty and criminal justice. More about Richard Fausset

Our Coverage of the U.S. Campus Protests

News and Analysis

G.W.U. : Hours before the mayor of Washington, D.C., was scheduled to testify on Capitol Hill about the city’s handling of a pro-Palestinian encampment at George Washington University, police moved to break up the encampment .

U.C.L.A. : A police consulting firm will review a violent confrontation  at the University of California, Los Angeles, in which a group of counterprotesters attacked demonstrators  at a pro-Palestinian encampment while security guards and police officers failed to intervene.

UChicago : Police officers removed the pro-Palestinian encampment  at the University of Chicago, a move that was sure to be closely watched because the school has long considered itself a model for free expression on campus .

Remembering the 1968 Protests:  As Chicago prepares to host the Democratic National Convention , it wants to shed memories of chaos from half a century ago even as the campus protests are growing.

Protests in Europe:  In countries across Europe, students have staged their own pro-Palestinian sit-ins and protests  on the lawns of their universities. And in several instances, the authorities are taking a similar approach to their U.S. counterparts: shutting them down.

Outside Agitators:  Officials in New York City have blamed “external actors” for escalating demonstrations at Columbia, but student protesters reject the claim .

A Spotlight on Student Journalists:  Columbia’s radio station and other student-led news outlets have provided some of the most detailed coverage  of the turmoil engulfing campuses.

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NCAA.com | May 5, 2024

Southern cal wins 2024 nc beach volleyball national championship.

(1) Southern California walked away with its fourth consecutive national championship after downing (2) UCLA, 3-0. The Trojans finished the 2024 season with a 37-5 overall record and have the most national championship wins in NC beach volleyball history . 

The 2024 NC beach volleyball championship kicked off on April 28 with the reveal of selections  leading up to the national championship on Sunday, May 5.

➡️ Click or tap here for the interactive bracket

Championships schedule.

All times in ET

May 5 — National Championship

• No. 1 USC 3 , No. 2 UCLA 0

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April 28 — Selection show

• 11 a.m. ET | Rewatch the selection show on NCAA.com

May 3 — Opening round and first round

• No. 16 North Florida 3, No. 17 Chattanooga 0
• No. 4 Florida State 3,  No. 13 Washington 1
• No. 5 Cal Poly 3,  No. 12 Arizona State 0 
• No. 1 USC 3, No. 16 North Florida 0
• No. 8 LMU (CA) 3,  No. 9 Hawaii 1
• No. 2 UCLA 3, No. 15 Texas A&M Corpus Christi 0
• No. 7 California 3, No. 10 Long Beach St. 1
• No. 3 Stanford 3, No. 14 Georgia State 0  
• No. 11 LSU 3 , No. 6 TCU 2  

May 4 — Second round and semifinals

• No. 1 USC 3 , No. 8 LMU (CA) 0)  |  Stats
• No. 5 Cal Poly 3 , No. 4 Florida State 1  | Stats
• No. 2 UCLA 3 , No. 7 California   0  | Stats
• No. 11 LSU 3 , No. 3 Stanford 2  |  Stats
• Semifinals: No. 1 USC 3 , No. 5 Cal Poly 0  | Stats
• Semifinals: No. 2 UCLA 3 , No. 11 LSU   1   |  Stats  

Championship history

Southern California defeated UCLA 3-2 in last year's national championship. The Trojans hold the most titles since the first NC beach volleyball championship in 2016 with five. 

2024 NC beach volleyball championship field announced

How NCAA beach volleyball works: Rules, format and complete history