Olivia Kostas knew the moment she toured Mount Ida College that she wanted to go to the school and study dental hygiene. 

“I liked the appeal of the campus and I had spoken to the dental hygiene professors and people who had worked in the clinic and it felt really welcoming,” Kostas said. “It was definitely a place I could see myself going.” 

In her senior year, she applied to the school for her dream major. While Kostas said she was not 100 percent sure if it was her top choice at first, but when she received her acceptance letter in November of 2017, she had her mind set on going there. She shortly after found roommates and built her schedule. Kostas planned to go to her accepted students day in the spring with her mind set on attending Mount Ida. Fate, however, had different plans.

On April 6, 2018, Mount Ida College announced that the school would be closing down at the end of the current academic year, with the campus being purchased by the University of Massachusetts. This came after the struggling liberal arts college failed to agree to a merger with Lasell College and left 280 full and part-time workers without a job and more than 1,000 students in academic limbo. 

“I really couldn’t believe it because I had never heard of something like that happening before,” Kostas said. “I found out through the newspaper, I didn’t even get an email from the school … I was basically in denial.”

Mount Ida became the 12th college in Massachusetts to close in the past five years—six of which closed down completely while six other schools closed due to mergers with larger colleges. This comes after 24 percent of private nonprofit four-year colleges in Massachusetts saw a drop in enrollment by over 10 percent from the years 2011 to 2016. Four more schools in Massachusetts are pending closures as of January 2019—University of Phoenix, Atlantic Union College, and Newbury College will close completely while Andover Newton Theological Seminary will merge with Yale University.

Mount Ida’s closure left Kostas in a tough spot as she had already declined all of her other college offers. Kostas said she debated between going to another school for dental hygiene—hoping the schools would re-accept her due to the unique situation—or going for a different major altogether. She even contemplated taking a gap year or taking classes at a community college. 

“It was the wrapping up of senior year where everyone was going out and having fun and I was writing emails and on the phone with a bunch of places just trying to come to some resolution to get me enrolled in a school in the fall,” Kostas said. 

Following its closure, Mount Ida put on a college fair for students in Kostas’ situation that hosted various schools willing to extend their admissions deadline for the stranded students. After attending the fair, Kostas applied to the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she now studies public health, as the school doesn’t offer a dental hygiene major. Kostas said going into a major that wasn’t dental hygiene was hard for her.

“It was a career that I always go back to,” Kostas said. “It’s a great career if you want to be a mom. You can work full-time or part-time and there’s a lot of benefits and jobs. You don’t just have to work in private practice or be a teacher.”

Kostas always knew she wanted to be a dental hygienist. Her father works as a dentist and she said that from a young age she loved walking around his office and seeing all of the dental hygienists at work. Kostas said the dental hygienists at her father’s office inspired her to go into the field. When she began researching colleges in high school, Kostas looked for schools with a dental hygiene major, Mount Ida being one of them.

“Whenever they would clean my teeth they would talk about how much they loved their career,” Kostas said. “What was appealing to me was they were all moms and they were also able to work and make a pretty good income.”

Kostas said she looks up to her father and that her parents helped her tremendously while she looked for a new school following Mount Ida’s closure announcement. She originally chose Mount Ida as a way to stay close to her family—the school’s former Newton campus is only about a 30-minute drive from her hometown of Winchester. 

“I’m really close with my family,” Kostas said. “I wanted it to not be a big task for them to come and pick me up [from college] or for me to find a way home.”

Kostas said although she enjoys UMass Amherst, she wishes she could be at Mount Ida. She misses the potential of studying her dream major and living on a campus she described as peaceful.

“Still now I don’t really know what my next step is going to be regarding if I’m still going to try to pursue [dental hygiene] once I graduate,” Kostas said. “Sometimes I feel like if I was [at Mount Ida] right now I would know exactly what my future holds and right now I don’t know where I’m going to go with my degree.”

As for any students going through a similar process, Kostas said it could work out for them in the end.

“I would say it will work out and don’t be discouraged,” Kostas said. “You never know but the place you end could be a way better fit for you anyway.”