What did Alexandra Cadena take into consideration when choosing Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut?  The native Ecuadorian tells us.  “I am from Quito Ecuador.  I little country in South America and when you are overseas it is very difficult you cannot just search online because you get millions of schools and you don’t know the country, so it is difficult and I didn’t want to come to a huge place where I would be considered just a number, just another student,” she says.

“I like Quinnipiac because I like the name because the first three letters are the same letters as the city from where I am and it talks a little bit about the culture of the area.  Some friends of the family also live close to the area and they told me about the school,” she adds.

“They told me what it would be like and it is a big school, but it is small enough that you can meet people, you can get to know your professors and once I learned about the school and I got some information about it and they try to give you as much information as you need so you will know what you are getting into.  This kinds of things made me realize that Quinnipiac was a good choice.”

Science and medicine has always interest Alexandra, so she says she definitely knew what she would pursue a degree in. “I am studying bio-medical sciences.  I choose this major because I want to study medicine and bio-medical sciences is not only to study biology, but it is also to study about, investigate about the human body, the diseases that affect it, how the body works and how it reacts,” she says.  “So I thought it would be good to come to the states, learn a lot about sciences and medicine and then I would eventually go back home and share with I have learned here to people over there.

One thing Alexandra says when it comes to the study of medicine and how it can help people, there are more resources for people here than what is available to her country.  “I can certainly say that here in the States we try not only to use what has been already discovered, we try to go beyond that.  We try to learn something new. Investigate something that is not understood yet and that is hard to do in Ecuador because the resources are not available,” she says.  “At home we just have to be happy with what we are given, but here in the states I see that there are possibilities to do more research to investigate to learn something new.”

Alexandra says she realizes that her dreams can come true if she works hard to achieve them.  She also says it is important to her that she is able to represent her country here in the United States.  “It is very very important first I can say at the personal level it helps me to grow up a lot to realize that this big dream of studying in the states is possible and no matter how are something really, really is you got to really really want to do it and it is possible to accomplish that,” she says.

“I think it is important for my country also because here by my performance I can show people something about Ecuadorian people.  I can share my culture with the people around me.  I can tell them something about my country and what it is like.  What people think like and I have to say it is very neat just to say I’m Ecuadorian, you know.  You have a class of fifty people and you realize that one of those persons is from Ecuador,” she says.  “It’s a nice feeling.  It is a way to represent my country here.” 

In the future, Alexandra would like to go to medical school once she graduates, however if she isn't able to get into school right away she wants to do clinical research for a hospital or a pharmaceutical company.