While at my conference, I was able to take a tour of the University of San Diego, a private, Catholic university. The location is great. It's 20 minutes to downtown, 15 minutes to the airport, 10 minutes to the beach and 5 minutes to Old Town. The University provides a tram to Old Town and from there, public transportation is available to almost anywhere in the city. The University of San Diego defines itself as Roman Catholic, manifested as change-making. Students log 400,000 service hours every year, but service is not even a graduation requirement. There are living learning communities on campus and they are all service oriented. It's a newer college, founded in 1948. This year they are ranked number one in Princeton review for most beautiful campus! The traditional Spanish mission architecture is all over the campus and there is even a brand new business building with state-of-the-art technology on the inside and traditional Spanish architecture on the outside that matches beautifully with the rest of the campus. It holds the largest Bloomberg lab in the US. And they recently created a new office there just for business career placement. Regarding admissions, they no longer have early action and they are test free! They give merit scholarships to the top 40% of applicants and they even give merit awards to transfer applicants, which is rare. Deans from the various departments spoke to us during our tour which was wonderful. Engineering is a 4 and a half-year program which is ABET certified but grounded in the liberal arts. Students receive both a BA and a BS upon graduation. Also, 40% of the full-time engineering faculty are women. How cool is that?