When asked which services she was going to attend, Belgium native Stephanie Maneles '09 said that she received funny looks when she told other students that she was going to "Jewish services." Unaware when she first arrived at Brandeis that there are a number of different Jewish movements, Maneles says she learned a lot about this country by attending this school. Maneles is one of the international students who comprise seven percent of the undergraduate population that includes students from 101 different countries. She came to Brandeis and America to study in part as a European Jew in the "land of the free." For international students like Maneles, Brandeis is more than just an academic institution; it's an introduction to the United States.

Far from home, having been to the United States before only occasionally to visit a brother studying at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Maneles said she chose Brandeis out of the five schools to which she applied because she was searching for "a Jewish environment" and "a home away from home."

Now, halfway through her first year here, Maneles mentioned a key difference between Belgium and the United States.

"People are a lot more open here," she said. "They were so interested in my background and where I came from." She said that she quickly acclimated to Brandeis life and that she is "very comfortable" here.

The enthusiasm Maneles has for the United States came through in her description of the country, as did an eagerness to move here one day.

"You can have dreams and actually the hope of achieving them," she said, noting that in Belgium, one "will have a dream, but never really hope to do anything with it."

For this reason, Maneles said she wishes to live her life here. When discussing her plan for her future in this country, she mentioned residency as less of a possibility and more of a "goal."

"I hope to find a good job and settle here after college," she said. "Although it may be difficult because of the visa process."

For the time being, she is focusing on her plans to major in sociology and is considering a minor in economics. One day, she said, she hopes to work as a journalist, or be involved in the media in some way. She said that her involvement with the Film Critics Club on campus has made her consider working on documentaries, as well.

Maneles' adoration of this country is not founded solely on the prospect of achieving her career goals. Living at Brandeis has shown her a side of the country that she said she feels hard-pressed to find back home. She said that virulent, potentially dangerous "anti-Semitism" in parts of Antwerp as well as other parts of Belgium has left her feeling less comfortable there than at Brandeis.

"Here, if I wore a shirt that said 'I'm Jewish' on it, no one would ever care," she said. "But if you wore a shirt that said 'I'm Jewish' on it in the streets of Antwerp, you'd probably get beaten up."

For some, Brandeis is not the first impression of America. Calcutta native Vinay Agarwal '06, a biological physics major, has had a longer relationship with the States, as he has been visiting family on the East and West Coasts since his youth.

Although all of his immediate family lives in India, the fourth-most-represented country at Brandeis after Turkey, Israel and Canada, Agarwal has many relatives in the United States and has nearly a dozen family members living either in California or New Jersey. Still, other than a two-month stint here when he was six years old, Agarwal had never spent significant time in the United States before attending Brandeis.

Like Maneles, he said he came here because of the freedom to choose his own courses, but also because of the well-rounded quality of American education, not just as an academic experience but as an avenue in life.

"I came for freedom to choose," he said. "[I came] to be more exposed as opposed to simply going into the Indian educational system which I had been through for 12 years . You get exposed to more people, come across different cultures, different work ethics, just the 'whole show' basically. That's what I wanted and that's why I wanted to be here."

Agarwal said that he came to Brandeis "by chance" after submitting an application on the advice of a tutor who had studied at Brown. He said that his coming to Brandeis was a great culture shock, indeed.

"Everyone was so excited about being here and doing new things and going on this big adventure and personally, I was scared," he said.

Among the biggest adjustments, he said, was being surrounded by a student body whose ethnic makeup was very different from his home. Agarwal said he had hardly met any white people in India and had never met a Jew. Still, he said it was not long until he started to feel at home.

"I saw all of these things and it was a totally new setting," he said. "But of course, you look around and there are a lot of warm people and everyone is always very helpful. Be it friends, people in academia or people in the job world, people tend to have great intentions about what they want to do for you here [in America]."

His said his four years here have only bolstered his respect for America, but that the American "can-do" attitude is occasionally for show and appearances.

"After four years here, I find that people are very nice in general," he said. "But now, I can see through the confidence of some, in terms of how that is just a temperament projected on to the surface. People tend to hide how they really feel here. I also find that the society is still a little too individualistic, but that happens in a society like this where one can become a little too engrossed in chasing the American Dream."

Overall, Agarwal said that his experience in the country has been a good one.

"I like the fact that Americans can tolerate so many different cultures and ethnicities and religions," he said "This land has given home to every type of person in the world and not many countries have managed to do that." He says that as a non-Jew, his extracurricular involvement with the national Jewish fraternity Sigma Alpha Mu is a testament to how "boundless" even seemingly exclusive groups can be.

To some American-born students, however, Brandeis does not represent an accurate microcosm of the country.

Life long Chicago resident Jacob Korman '08 gave perspective to the supposition that Brandeis is great in an "American" sense.

"We, as a mostly leftist campus, would like to think that our values represent the majority in this country, but that just isn't so," he said. "And I think that the way in which people treat each other here is way better than in most other places. This is the only university where I expect total strangers to actively help each other out."

Agarwal agreed, and said "When talking to other friends from outside the states attending school here, I find that Brandeis is as nice of a place as there is in America.