Eleven students transferred into the college this winter, according to the registrar. They have arrived here after , playing baseball, interning in politics, and working at Hobby Lobby. 

“When transfers come in, they come in right at the time of this new year, so this fits with the theme of renewal, New Year and new opportunity,” Associate Dean of Men Jeffery Rogers said. “The old has passed away in terms of the last institutions that they came from.”

Last year, 16 transfer students transferred into the college for the spring semester.

“This is a great opportunity for our students to show them what friendship looks like,” Rogers said. “It’s like scripture: ‘He doesn’t have friends unless he first shows himself friendly.’ And I hope they will see that from our student body, faculty, staff, everybody that we are a friendly campus.”

Freshman and transfer student David Britenfeld said he learned of Hillsdale through Joseph Cella ’91, but he initially decided not to apply.

“My only priority was playing baseball,” Britenfeld said. “So I ended up committing to Lansing Community College to play baseball. I realized very quickly that the culture wasn’t for me, and what I thought before wasn’t right for me. I now only want to go to Hillsdale.”

Britenfeld said transferred to Hillsdale in search of a better community.

“I think my best moment here so far have just been meeting so many awesome people,” Britenfeld said. “I meet about 100 people a day, and everybody’s just so happy.”

Britenfeld has retired from baseball and said he hopes to try out for the Hillsdale rugby team.

Sophomore transfer student Ethan Savka took a gap year between finishing high school and starting college.

“I worked for a couple of law offices over the gap year, and I did a few internships with very conservative or Hillsdale-adjacent organizations, like Convention of States Action and the Heritage Foundation’s online public policy program,” Savka said. “I was also involved with my local lawyer’s Federalist Society chapter, and the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression student network.”

Even during his gap year, Savka knew that he wanted to come to Hillsdale due to a radio broadcast, “Our American Stories,” he heard a decade prior.

“I first heard about Hillsdale around 10 or so years ago on a radio program hosted by Lee Habeeb,” Savka said. “He had a few Hillsdale graduates who worked for him, and they talked a lot about Hillsdale and the truth and the beauty, and they described the campus in a visual way that I hadn’t heard any college described before. I kept Hillsdale in the back of my mind going through middle school and high school.” 

Savka said that his impression of Hillsdale was so powerful that he decided to only apply to this college.

Another transfer student, freshman Elena Ryan, said she took a more circuitous route to Hillsdale.

“I applied to one college, but I didn’t know what I wanted to do in life, and I didn’t want to invest the money and energy into a degree that I wasn’t even sure I wanted,” Ryan said. “Instead, I went to Germany for three months, and I lived with a religious community.”

She said she realized that becoming a nun was not in God’s plans for her, so she returned to the United States and worked at Hobby Lobby in its framing department. She said she was content with that until her brother who was nine years old made an astute observation.

“I came home one day from Hobby Lobby and I was exhausted, so I kind of splayed myself on the couch, and my brother’s next to me,” Ryan said. “He said, ‘Hobby Lobby is just sucking the life out of you.’ It was so odd coming from him, because he’s a very thoughtful boy, but he’s never that deep.”

She decided to apply to colleges such as Benedictine University and Hillsdale College, and then prayed a novena, a nine-day prayer common among Catholics, to help guide her decision.

“And it was the ninth day, the last day of my prayer, that I got a call from Hillsdale staff saying I was admitted, and I was speechless in the truest sense of the words,” Ryan said.

At that moment, she decided to come to Hillsdale. Ryan said she appreciates the dedication shown by Hillsdale’s teachers.

“The teachers are more organized and also excited for classes. Even if I dreaded a class, I’d still be excited, because the teacher seems so happy and so excited to share their information,” Ryan said.