College applications

[Mr. Smith]

Top Schools, only requirement...GRE not required

Texas A&M (College Park, TX)
Oregon State- Cascades (Bend, OR)
Queens U. of Charlotte
Oakland U. (Michigan)
Belmont U. (Nashville, TN)
Mary Baylor-Hardin (Belton, TX)
Eastern Michigan U.


Working on Oregon State, finished Texas A&M...others should be soon.

[Lexii, harbinger of chaos and sexual anarchy]

We don't have college applications here

Is it open-enrollment or do you guys just take a test to see where you can get in?

open enrollment

Interesting.  So is money the only obstacle toward going to any Argentine universities?  And do y'all have the freedom to choose majors (or your preferred concentration, be it engineering, CS, etc.) like in the states?

Majors and minors are  a foreign concept to the region, you just enroll in any carrer you wish to

[RFayette]

We don't have college applications here

Is it open-enrollment or do you guys just take a test to see where you can get in?

open enrollment

Interesting.  So is money the only obstacle toward going to any Argentine universities?  And do y'all have the freedom to choose majors (or your preferred concentration, be it engineering, CS, etc.) like in the states?

Majors and minors are  a foreign concept to the region, you just enroll in any carrer you wish to

I see.  So do you guys have elective classes (i.e. outside of your career field/concentration) or are all of your classes already decided based on your career choice?  One interesting aspect of US universities is that only around 50-60% of your courses are related to your specialty (a little more for engineering majors, somewhat less for non-engineering majors), and the rest are "electives" or requirements to fulfill general education requirements (writing, social sciences, diversity classes, etc.).  Is it the same for Argentina, or is it more rigid?

[DC Al Fine]

Ugh that's annoying. I took the maximum courses in my field that the university allowed and it was still only ~60%

[RFayette]

Ugh that's annoying. I took the maximum courses in my field that the university allowed and it was still only ~60%

I suppose I might be exaggerating a little bit, as I'm counting a lot of foundational classes (like linear algebra, differential equations, and multivariable calculus, for me), which I am counting as part of the "field" (my major is a math/computer science hybrid, though I intend to also get a master's in CS). 

[RINO Tom]

Back in the day (2010), I applied to:

- Illinois (Grew up Illini fan, fun town and very nice campus, great academic reputation)
- Iowa (Went to high school in Iowa City and loved it, close friends and girlfriend were going there)
- Iowa State (Figured why not?)
- Kansas (Visited and fell in love with the campus, it was my "go it alone and start over" option, LOL)
- Bradley (Dad's MBA, in my hometown)
- Wartburg College (Thinking about baseball)

Got into all of them (was worried about Illinois), and being a White, German-American male from an affluent family and with very mediocre grades, I didn't exactly get much in scholarship money!

Ended up picking Iowa for a number of reasons, and (though I remain an Illini fan to this day) I'm incredibly happy with that decision.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Ugh that's annoying. I took the maximum courses in my field that the university allowed and it was still only ~60%

I suppose I might be exaggerating a little bit, as I'm counting a lot of foundational classes (like linear algebra, differential equations, and multivariable calculus, for me), which I am counting as part of the "field" (my major is a math/computer science hybrid, though I intend to also get a master's in CS). 

The general education part of college is such a ing waste of time. I learned very little about business and accounting in nearly two years of college. One thing I'm really paranoid of is being just 3 semesters away from graduation and getting into harder classes and suddenly finding out that I'm not  good at this, after blowing tons of money just to take two glorified years of high school.

Thank God I did my first two years at community college and not at some big state school I'd have to take out loans for. We really need to drop the first whole year of college. I feel pretty bad for students who took out huge loans only to find out they weren't college ready.

I'd say that transferring to a system of 5 years of high school in order to expose students to what would otherwise be introductory sociology/econ/etc. courses and/or trades wouldn't be a bad idea. Wasted 2 years finding out what other subjects I liked, and 3 accepting that my interests were largely unemployable.

[RFayette]

Ugh that's annoying. I took the maximum courses in my field that the university allowed and it was still only ~60%

I suppose I might be exaggerating a little bit, as I'm counting a lot of foundational classes (like linear algebra, differential equations, and multivariable calculus, for me), which I am counting as part of the "field" (my major is a math/computer science hybrid, though I intend to also get a master's in CS).  

The general education part of college is such a ing waste of time. I learned very little about business and accounting in nearly two years of college. One thing I'm really paranoid of is being just 3 semesters away from graduation and getting into harder classes and suddenly finding out that I'm not  good at this, after blowing tons of money just to take two glorified years of high school.

Thank God I did my first two years at community college and not at some big state school I'd have to take out loans for. We really need to drop the first whole year of college. I feel pretty bad for students who took out huge loans only to find out they weren't college ready.

I think it also depends on your school/major.  I'd hardly describe my first year (so far) as glorified years of high school....I've already gone through multivariable calculus, linear algebra, two fairly intense programming classes, and up next am going to take ordinary differential equations and C programming, among other classes.  It certainly doesn't feel like high school V2 to me!

/endrant (just had 3 final exams yesterday)

[Boston Bread]

I'm majoring in a Math/CS hybrid at the University of Waterloo (ON). Technically I'm a CS and Combinatorics and Optimization joint major, but I refrain from saying the whole thing since people aren't generally aware of this branch of math. Currently in second year.

Main reasons why you'd want to choose Waterloo:
1. Co-op
As someone who has no experience finding jobs, finding a co-op job has been surprisingly easy here. The best opportunities for co-op at UWaterloo are in tech, which fits well with my major. Average pay for CS students is around ~$20CDN per hour, but much higher if you land a good spot in silicon valley and/or in a prestigious company like Google.
2. Good for Math, CS, Engineering
This is what Waterloo is known for. I was aware of this because of the math competitions for high school students that are commonly taken throughout Canada that originated from here. In terms of education, the school has overall good STEM profs, a lot of resources, and a number of venues for trying to build a startup or challenging yourself academically.

Main reasons I chose my major:
1. I chose CS for a relatively straightforward career path. I first got in as a math student and picked up CS as a specialization for this reason. It also meshes well with co-op since CS/Software Eng students are the most in demand and get the most pay in co-ops here.
2. I chose Combinatorics and Optimization (CO) because it combines a pure math-like environment while being relatively useful. Graph theory and optimization (primarily linear/integer programming which is very linear algebra heavy) have many applications. I like pure math because it stimulates a lot of thinking... it's hard to explain but I get a more rewarding feeling doing proofs than doing something more mechanical like calculus. I thought of doing applied math in my first year, until I discovered other branches of math that I found more fulfilling.

[RFayette]

^Very nice.  Sounds very similar to my reasoning as well - a lot of jobs in the area, my school is well-known for CS, and I am pretty good with math/computers.  Just hoping it'll all work out.

[Lexii, harbinger of chaos and sexual anarchy]

We don't have college applications here

Is it open-enrollment or do you guys just take a test to see where you can get in?

open enrollment

Interesting.  So is money the only obstacle toward going to any Argentine universities?  And do y'all have the freedom to choose majors (or your preferred concentration, be it engineering, CS, etc.) like in the states?

Majors and minors are  a foreign concept to the region, you just enroll in any carrer you wish to

I see.  So do you guys have elective classes (i.e. outside of your career field/concentration) or are all of your classes already decided based on your career choice?  One interesting aspect of US universities is that only around 50-60% of your courses are related to your specialty (a little more for engineering majors, somewhat less for non-engineering majors), and the rest are "electives" or requirements to fulfill general education requirements (writing, social sciences, diversity classes, etc.).  Is it the same for Argentina, or is it more rigid?

It depends a lot on the university and the carrer
I'm studying law at the largest university in the country (UBA) and it's divided into 2 stages (I'm simplifying FTR)
-CPC,  19 mandatory subjects, common to any specialty
-CPO, the specialty (different branches of law) which has some subjects shared between all specialties,  some mandatory for you specialty and some elective courses

I know the system is simmilar for other carrers at UBA like psychology, and that in smaller carrers in private universities there are only mandatory subjects, nbit my knowledge is quite limited with regards to most carrers and colleges