Applying To Colleges

[ilikeverin]

maybe you'll be his TA

It's a possibility.

[ilikeverin]

Put down the UVA deposit

Woohoo, congratulations!

[ilikeverin]

I wasn't planning on applying to Brown until the past month when I've started to look at. My uncle went there and has a lot of contacts so I knew I'd have a better chance there than any of the other ivy leagues, but I'm still not sure. They are extremely liberal with majors and you have great flexibility in determining your concentration which is awesome.

If you're looking for flexibility, I can help; that was one of my key considerations in picking a school.  On your list, besides Brown (which sets the bar), UVA's Honors program is lovely on that count.  The University of Rochester was very good.  The Honors College here at Michigan State is great.

In general, take a harder look at state schools.  This isn't just personal bias against elitism, but one of the perks that's often associated with Honors programs at places like state schools is flexibility in choosing your major (some Honors programs just have you do an "Honors major" which you make whatever the heck you want) and in avoiding gen ed requirements.  While Simfan is slaving through 6 classes worth of core curriculum requirements, where he'll be reading "Great Books" that no one will ever care about ever again ( to Simfan ), you'll be able to make your education what you want it to be.

[ilikeverin]

But the Core Curriculum is awesome! In my field you have to get a graduate degree no matter what, and apparently there's some repetition, so why not broaden your mind if you have to fill credit requirements? Gives us all something in common to talk about, anyway.

Sure, if you'd like to "broaden your mind", and if you think that the best way to do so is read a bunch of old books, your university should let you.  If you don't want to, your university should let you.  If you want to broaden your mind by taking a bunch of random classes from all sorts of different departments, your university should let you.  Besides, how often do you think those mythical "conversations about core curriculum" conversations actually happen?

I wasn't planning on applying to Brown until the past month when I've started to look at. My uncle went there and has a lot of contacts so I knew I'd have a better chance there than any of the other ivy leagues, but I'm still not sure. They are extremely liberal with majors and you have great flexibility in determining your concentration which is awesome.

If you're looking for flexibility, I can help; that was one of my key considerations in picking a school.  On your list, besides Brown (which sets the bar), UVA's Honors program is lovely on that count.  The University of Rochester was very good.  The Honors College here at Michigan State is great.

In general, take a harder look at state schools.  This isn't just personal bias against elitism, but one of the perks that's often associated with Honors programs at places like state schools is flexibility in choosing your major (some Honors programs just have you do an "Honors major" which you make whatever the heck you want) and in avoiding gen ed requirements.  While Simfan is slaving through 6 classes worth of core curriculum requirements, where he'll be reading "Great Books" that no one will ever care about ever again ( to Simfan ), you'll be able to make your education what you want it to be.

Thank you! Michigan has come up a few times during my research. I slightly fear going in more in depth simply because I always just end up expanding my list instead of limiting it though I guess it won't matter now and I'll have the summer. I looked at Rochester for that reason, but I don't think I could do it. If I don't even enjoy the weather at Ithaca, there's no way I can last Rochester . It's been in the 70s and 80s here and today for the first time I took off my jacket in class because our school has decided to stop using the air-conditioning to save money (of course they had it on DURING winter) and the class was shocked. So I am generally a very gold person already haha.

Ahem, I said Michigan State*, which is a vastly superior school to Michigan, obviously (I actually know very little about the University of Michigan, as I promised my dad I wouldn't do that to him.  Obligatory blustering aside, they're both good schools, though Michigan is certainly traditionally better-regarded and is likely in a nicer location.  Our Honors College is a national model for Honors programs, though, no embellishment.) Honestly, don't worry about making your list too long.  So long as you commit to going through it and pruning in a reasonable amount of time, you're fine.  My grad school list was at some points over 100 items long (because I included just about every psych and linguistics program with a minimum ranking), but it was easy to prune out a lot of them with a cursory inspection; note, though, that it was at its longest early last year, and only got down into the single digits last fall.

You should also look at Maryland to party it up with Xahar and me.

Man up re: Rochester.  I loved the place, and continue to, even though I've rejected it twice.  I suppose you're talking to a Minnesotan, though, who cannot perceive anyone else's winter as particularly threatening.

[ilikeverin]

Great idea, btw!  It definitely helped to talk to professors; they're usually better at giving you the "non-Admissions-certified" version of the school.

You should also ask what opportunities exist for undergrads to do research (or other academically-relevant work) on campus.  If you're feeling adventurous, you should ask for specific examples of times when they' themselves have worked with undergraduates outside the classroom.

[ilikeverin]

Yes, give names.  And have them pick the cheaper one.  (However, they should know that having two bachelor's degrees doesn't count for much.)

[ilikeverin]

I applied and got into Rice, but didn't go. A few of my friends go there though. The quality of life is probably one of the best of all undergrad schools, from what I've read/been told. Seems like they have a tradition to celebrate nearly every day.

I recently learned that it is ridiculously small -- only about 3500 undergrads. That's even smaller than Dartmouth...

Smaller is better! Or at least that's what I thought when I was visiting schools (Columbia scared the sh*t out of me)

I thought so, too.  Then I went to the institution with the ninth-largest undergraduate enrollment in the country, and I couldn't be happier.  Then again, I applied to anywhere from Michigan State (enrollment: 47,954) to Swarthmore College (enrollment: 1,545), so needless to say, size was not a priority for me.  I've got to say, though, attending a large institution has definitely meant this place can offer a lot of resources that a smaller school can't...

(also lol only 7,934 undergrads being scary)

[ilikeverin]

My financial aid was lost at IU - long, complicated story...

Anyways, I'm stuck going to Indiana State for a year or two, where I'm renting a house with a couple friends. Then ill transfer back to IU.

Woe is me...

That's horrible.  *hughughug*

[ilikeverin]

Tufts was also nice minus a giant hill I would not want to climb in the winter. The professors were awesome though and I really felt not only welcomed, but wanted. Had the best and longest conversations yet by far with two professors and an administrator, probably a combination of I'm getting a lot better at these interview/discussions/whatevers and that Tufts professors do really care.

...and what I've been saying over and over again: the Ivies don't care about you, the schools that aren't Ivies do!  (And the state schools, which you have neglected to visit yet, care about you even more )

Sorry to hear you had a bad experience at Brown, though.  I loved Brown.

[ilikeverin]

I'm transferring colleges (well, dropping out and starting another course, technically :facepalm:) , and if I were American I'd not only find that near impossible due to the ridiculous bureaucracy,

Hmm?  Yes and no.  You would find switching between programs ("changing majors") comically easy in the American system compared to yours if you didn't change schools.  Such a thing is routine here, and it's rare to find a student who hasn't done anything to their major at all over their years of undergrad.  Transferring is doable.  One of my best friends from high school transferred from UPenn to the University of Wisconsin without too much trouble, though of course since he's an engineer he has to stay an extra year at UW-Madison.

[ilikeverin]

I'll throw it out there for some peoples' happiness, I got a mailing from University of Maryland saying I should apply.

As you should!

C'mon, take a look, it can't hurt!  Xahar and I will likely be able to pitch it much more effectively once we actually get there this fall.  You should probably talk to him more than me- as a grad student, I'll be in a magical other world (full of brains and phonemes and fun stuff like that), but Xahar will actually, like, be living in the dorms, and stuff.

[ilikeverin]

Instead of cutting Michigan you should add a "State" to the end!

[ilikeverin]

So, this week, I'll be in Southern California, interviewing at Occidental, Pomona, Claremont McKenna, and USC. If all goes according to plan, that is. My trip to the East Coast, unfortunately, has been postponed until the fall...

My list, as of now, is as follows:

Claremont McKenna
George Washington
Georgetown
Johns Hopkins
Occidental
Pomona
Princeton
Reed
Stanford
Swarthmore
University of Chicago
University of Southern California

Like every Washington school but Maryland?  Xahar and I cry all the tears.

I loved Swarthmore!  (And I liked Pomona enough to apply there.)  Ridiculously debt-inducing, though.

[ilikeverin]

the degree I graduate with is going to kinda set the course of my life. 

That is absolutely false.

[ilikeverin]

Why don't any of you guys have LACs on your lists? Just curious, because to me, they seem really appealing, especially ones like Occidental, Swarthmore, and the Claremonts, because they are within reach of the major cities.

Personally, I just never felt right with any LACs. I considered Sarah Lawrence and Wesleyan, but, I guess it was just a secondary thing for me. I need to limit the amount of colleges I apply to anyways, just so I don't have to pay over 800 bucks just paying admissions fees.

I guess the usual remoteness and the size bothers me more than it should. And also, Yale is a liberal arts college.

Fair enough. I just like the idea of a small college; I'd be a bit fearful of being lost in a crowd of 30,000 people (though I am applying to USC, which has a lot of students).

Why?  It's not like you're required to know all of your peers.  You'll find a group.  As far as a big state school experience goes, it's even better if you can get into Honors Colleges - then you'll be able to find the best of the crowd around you rather than having to have people filter through.  Or you can do things like residential colleges (see, e.g., Michigan State's James Madison College).

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Why?  That's going to be dependent on what classes you take, what your major is, and how motivated you are.  You're not going to be able to get to know your professor regardless of what school you're at if you're in an Intro to Psych class.  Likewise, senior seminars are small everywhere.  If you're going to feel intimidated by professors at a big state school, you're going to be intimidated at a LAC, too (and the reverse is true if you're not going to be).

As far as "intellectual growth" goes, I have no doubt I grew more intellectually at Michigan State than I would've at Swarthmore or Pomona — maybe not Amherst, but that's because I hope I would've fallen in with the linguistics department at UMass.  The most intellectually-growth-stimulating positions are going to be from research (which happens much more at big research institutions than LACs) and internships (where location and connections matter much more than what type of school you're at).

[ilikeverin]

I will admit Verin, your ideas are slowly winning me over. You should be an admissions counselor.

I think if I wasn't hoping to go into academia I would have considered some sort of job as an admissions counselor or career counselor.

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Personally, I just never felt right with any LACs. I considered Sarah Lawrence and Wesleyan, but, I guess it was just a secondary thing for me. I need to limit the amount of colleges I apply to anyways, just so I don't have to pay over 800 bucks just paying admissions fees.

I guess the usual remoteness and the size bothers me more than it should. And also, Yale is a liberal arts college.
[/quote]

Fair enough. I just like the idea of a small college; I'd be a bit fearful of being lost in a crowd of 30,000 people (though I am applying to USC, which has a lot of students).
[/quote]

Why?  It's not like you're required to know all of your peers.  You'll find a group.  As far as a big state school experience goes, it's even better if you can get into Honors Colleges - then you'll be able to find the best of the crowd around you rather than having to have people filter through.  Or you can do things like residential colleges (see, e.g., Michigan State's James Madison College).

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Why?  That's going to be dependent on what classes you take, what your major is, and how motivated you are.  You're not going to be able to get to know your professor regardless of what school you're at if you're in an Intro to Psych class.  Likewise, senior seminars are small everywhere.  If you're going to feel intimidated by professors at a big state school, you're going to be intimidated at a LAC, too (and the reverse is true if you're not going to be).

As far as "intellectual growth" goes, I have no doubt I grew more intellectually at Michigan State than I would've at Swarthmore or Pomona — maybe not Amherst, but that's because I hope I would've fallen in with the linguistics department at UMass.  The most intellectually-growth-stimulating positions are going to be from research (which happens much more at big research institutions than LACs) and internships (where location and connections matter much more than what type of school you're at).
[/quote]

Well, maybe I just buy the line that I would feel less like a number at a smaller school, and that classroom sizes would be smaller on average, meaning that I could have more interaction with professors. Of course, I haven't gone through college like you have, so perhaps I'm very wrong.
[/quote]

Well, I think you might be right, to some extent, that it's easier to be "just a number" at a big school.  But, the thing is, I think it's easier to be anything at a big school, because the number of students that exist means you have more opportunities to create your own little niche for yourself.  You do have to make sure you're keeping yourself above water a little more at a big school, I think—the fact that there are so many people means that you'll see very little overlap between, say, people in your classes, so you won't get to know many people unless you try.  But the flip side of that, of course, is that you're not stuck with the same people forever if you end up not liking them.

The thing about class sizes, though, isn't very important.  (I remember being on the other side and thinking it mattered a lot!)  Your interactions with professors are generally not going to come through class itself; if you talk to professors, you're going to be stopping by the front of the room after lecture, going in for their office hours, or emailing them.  You can do any of those no matter how big the class is.

One thing I think might be likelier to happen in a big school than a small one, though, is that you'd have classes taught by grad students rather than faculty.  If that matters to you, then that could be a point in favor of SLACs.  That said, though, I don't think it matters too much.  You get basically no pedagogical training as a professor, so more years of experience doesn't necessarily mean better

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Nah, I don't think so.  This will depend a lot on your field and on each individual school.  I certainly don't think that there was any such "reservation" at Michigan State, given the size of our undergraduate research forum (Bonus points if you can find me!) and the fact that there are plenty of ways to get funding as an undergraduate.  I actually started my undergraduate career with research funding (and worked with a Poli Sci professor).  Note that, based on what little I know of other schools, I think MSU is somewhat exceptional about how obsessed with undergraduate research it is, so you should be asking institutional support for research at all these schools.

In the hard sciences, that might be more true... they tend to have a more rigorous lab structure, so cutting out PhD students would mean undergrads "have to" be leading up research.  But I suspect that cutting out PhD students often means that research isn't being done at all.  Take a look at this list of research expenditures at universities prepared by the NSF.  The top ranked LAC I see on there as far as research funding goes is the College of William and Mary at #171.  Furthermore, labs in the social sciences tend to be a bit more loosey-goosey, so there's no such hierarchy; I had no problem waltzing into a few language-related ones and getting some good experience.  And don't understimate PhD students, either; they can often use undergraduates to run experiments for them.  (that'll usually net you a letter of reference signed by the PhD student's supervisor, written by the PhD student, of course )

[ilikeverin]

Cut UC-Boulder (it will go on as a good school without you)

No, don't cut UC-Boulder.  It's an excellent school and you can actually get money from them.

[ilikeverin]

Cut UC-Boulder (it will go on as a good school without you)

No, don't cut UC-Boulder.  It's an excellent school and you can actually get money from them.

^^^ This. You need to keep your options open, and while you may want to go East, it will offer you a cheap, solid education. Granted, it's no Harvard, but it's no community college either.

You can also go East and get a cheap, solid education.  The University of Maryland springs to mind

[ilikeverin]

Cut UC-Boulder (it will go on as a good school without you)

No, don't cut UC-Boulder.  It's an excellent school and you can actually get money from them.

^^^ This. You need to keep your options open, and while you may want to go East, it will offer you a cheap, solid education. Granted, it's no Harvard, but it's no community college either.

It is cheap, and there's a chance I can get a full ride without the Boettecher scholarship there. I'd be able to start as a sophomore . But I extremely dislike CU, I know I'm not actually choosing the college I'll go to right now...but ugh, Colorado schools trap you into this state.

Then why not apply to schools out of state?  Look, many state schools offer money to out-of-state students.  (Virginia is an exception: they have a full-ride merit-based scholarship and not many of those and that's it.) Take a look at Michigan's scholarships.  Heck, check out Michigan State's scholarships.  If you meet the criteria for the Professorial Assistantship (and, if your walk matches your talk, your ACT was at least 33 or your "old-SAT" was at least 1500), you get in-state tuition.  (that's, oh, $37,400/yr cheaper than Yale.  so, over 4 years, you'll save $149,600 of your/your parents' money.  Michigan State is generous with its AP credit, so you might be able to do it in three years, too...)

A cursory glance around undergraduate institutions elsewhere reveals that scholarships for out-of-state students aren't an uncommon phenomenon, though I don't see anything like MSU's in-state-equivalency scholarship... but Ohio State has one (and competitive full rides), Indiana has two (and competitive full rides), Vermont has three...

And if you mention the fact that your parents are horrible people horrible people horrible people people who value prestige again, I swear to God I'll call them up and repeat "$149,600" over and over and over again until they get the message! (that was you, wasn't it?)

[ilikeverin]

You build better state schools on the east coast...and California.

Says who?

[ilikeverin]

You build better state schools on the east coast...and California.

Says who?

California Schools, Michigan, UNC, UNC Chapel Hill, U Penn, Wisconsin Madison- are some of the best schools in the nation. What western, non-pacific, school is equally accredited?

U Penn isn't a state school, despite its name.

Furthermore, Michigan and UW-Madison are definitely not East Coast.  It also depends on what you mean by "western, non-Pacific"; off the top of my head Minnesota, Iowa, Iowa State, Arizona, Arizona State, UC-Boulder, Kansas, and UT-Austin are all fine schools.

[ilikeverin]

While this topic is up here, I'll take the time to fret about my own current applications to Classics grad school. Has anyone on here applied to a PhD program before that might be able to hint at what worked and what didn't? It's such a guessing game with what these places want sometimes...

Frame your personal statement around an experience, preferably sometime you've shown leadership.

Your letters of reference are of the utmost importance—make sure your professors are talking about what you want them to talk about.

And apply to the University of Maryland

[ilikeverin]

University of Maryland (Maryland School of Public Policy)

SPOILER ALERT: THE BEST SCHOOL

[ilikeverin]

Skip the Ivy League if you're Asian or a White Gentile who's not a legacy or involved in sports. I wish I'd known that last year, or I wouldn't have given HYP money to look at my application.

Eh, I got in to Brown as a White Gentile who didn't have any connections to the school, wasn't a legacy, wasn't involved in sports, and whose parents didn't have money to throw around in order to get admissions

Still, that's a pretty damning indictment of the whole college admissions process, and is impressively done.  Of course, I'd also argue that Ivy League schools aren't worth it even if you get past the admissions stage.

[ilikeverin]

Rejected from Duke So I have no hope for tomorrow except maybe for Cornell. Oh well, I still can go to Colorado for free

Someday I will understand why I repeatedly considered turning down a full-ride scholarship to go to an Ivy, or to go to a pretty-okay private school.

...today is not that day.