OT: Connecticut College

[husky429]

Reading through this thread is somewhat depressing. I was having a conversation with someone the other day about what college admissions and higher education will look like in 20 years. I firmly believe it will be drastically different than now. The current process and cost is not sustainable. I had no idea that many schools dropped standardized testing requirements, did not know that kids were applying to schools completely out of the realm of possibility, etc.

$60-$80k per year for private schools? It’ll be well over $100k in a few years. That’s unreal. At what point does someone say to themselves is there a better investment? What does someone have to make at entry-level, mid-career and at the height of their professional career to justify those costs? What is the likelihood they will reach those numbers? I understand if your going to be an engineer, doctor or lawyer but let’s be real with ourselves not every lawyer or engineer is pulling down outrageous salaries - it depends on a lot of other factors.

We need to have a serious conversation with ourselves of higher education and career paths. There is currently a college for everyone yet we know that college is not for everyone. We know that college graduates are struggling to find jobs and student loan debt is a huge issue. We also have a several shortage of certain types of professions, many that don’t require a 4 year degree. That shortage then leads to higher costs for everyone. We need to advocate for trade schools, but IMO we need to let businesses know that many jobs they hire for require on job training and experience and not a degree.

Downvote away but in general higher education has become nothing more than a money grab.

I would never recommend that someone go into 300,000$ of debt or more for a college degree. SLACs are going to be hammered because of it in the next 20 years. Especially the ones not as highly ranked at the NESCAC schools unless they can start offering more aid.

UConn at 35,000 a year is an absolute steal in comparison, and plenty of kids are going to get aid on top of that. My fiance went to UNC for her undergrad and paid 16k a year with some aid, including room/board/fees. Went to the law school for 20k a year too. She graduated with a law degree from a (vomits) highly ranked school for half the cost of a 4 year degree at NESCAC schools.

I don't think that small class sizes is worth paying 2.5x the cost unless money isn't a concern.

 

[SubbaBub]

The merit aid is substantial - essentially makes Union and Conn about half the cost of Nova or Georgetown. Holy Cross and Syracuse are somewhere in the middle.

So basically, $30K for Binghamton/Buffalo instate, $40K for Conn/Union, $50K Syracuse, $60K Holy Cross and $80K Georgetown/Nova.

The college admissions process right now is horrible. It’s a meat grinder for these kids.

IMO, Buffalo gives you the most bang for the buck by a good margin. Binghamton is a hellhole. Nova is the best school on this list unless she is looking for a career in law or political science, then Gtown.

No objective reason to consider the compromise schools in the middle, none provide a better education/employment opportunities than UB at the price and none of them touch the two BE schools in terms of prestige/networking.

 

[Exodus]

The kid is in the last stages of decoding where she will go to college…

She’s basically going to choose from a pair of current Big East schools, (thankfully, she’s tossed Providence), a former Big East school and Connecticut College/Holy Cross/union as small school picks.

I didn’t go to Conn College when she visited, so have no insight into the place. I am a little concerned that a kid who goes to a high school with 4,500 kids is going to be out of place at a college of 1800 kids.

Anyone familiar with the place?

I graduated from Conn College in 96. Played basketball for Glenn Miller there for 3 years and soccer under Bill Lessig for 4. Was one of the best decisions that I have ever made in my life. Could have gone to a larger D1 school to play soccer, but obviously not basketball. For athletics, I got the best of both worlds and I received a first class education. The campus has a large school feel because it’s fairly spread out and the grounds are meticulous. The facilities and faculty are are top notch, and continue to improve every year as the endowment continues to grow. Yes- the student population is fairly small, but there are benefits to that as well. Small class size, your own room after freshman year and personalized career and post graduation guidance. I could go on- but again, it was perfect for me.

 

[Exodus]

Purely anecdotal, but everyone I’ve ever met who went there is a huge stiff lacking any semblance of a personality.

Thanks.

 

[runner11]

Reading through this thread is somewhat depressing. I was having a conversation with someone the other day about what college admissions and higher education will look like in 20 years. I firmly believe it will be drastically different than now. The current process and cost is not sustainable. I had no idea that many schools dropped standardized testing requirements, did not know that kids were applying to schools completely out of the realm of possibility, etc.

$60-$80k per year for private schools? It’ll be well over $100k in a few years. That’s unreal. At what point does someone say to themselves is there a better investment? What does someone have to make at entry-level, mid-career and at the height of their professional career to justify those costs? What is the likelihood they will reach those numbers? I understand if your going to be an engineer, doctor or lawyer but let’s be real with ourselves not every lawyer or engineer is pulling down outrageous salaries - it depends on a lot of other factors.

We need to have a serious conversation with ourselves of higher education and career paths. There is currently a college for everyone yet we know that college is not for everyone. We know that college graduates are struggling to find jobs and student loan debt is a huge issue. We also have a A shortage of certain types of professions, many that don’t require a 4 year degree. That shortage then leads to higher costs for everyone. We need to advocate for trade schools, but IMO we need to let businesses know that many jobs they hire for require on job training and experience and not a degree.

Downvote away but in general higher education has become nothing more than a money grab.

The future is people buried in student debt trying to scrape by in service economy jobs.

My take is if you can get into a Georgetown tier or above, do it, or if there is a specific program geared towards your future career, great. Otherwise go public.

 

[HuskyHawk]

Some will go back, some won’t.

The biggest issue this year is that kids really had no way of knowing where they belonged. We know a brilliant kid who is going to Binghamton because everyone else turned her down - top 15 in a class of 500, high ACT, great extra curricular. She didn’t get into her top schools and her safeties waitlisted her to protect their yield. Dreamed of being a doctor and now has to launch that bid from the cheap seats.

Worked insanely hard for four years and the payoff was a school she could have gone to without spending one late night studying. Good friend of our daughter’s dream school was BU. BU was beneath her but this year, they deferred her, wait listed her and then offered her a spot with $0 aid. Their crime was being in the class of 2026 and being in a demographic that the schools did not mind beating up on.

If I am going to offer kids advice…..do not have a dream school. Treat the private schools as the effectively for-profit outfits that they are. When a school talks about their holistic approach to reviewing applications, they are lying. (Villanova was huge on that….knowing what I know about the randomness of a Nova acceptance from kids in our high school, I assure you that it is all crap. They had no real standard. Friend of my daughter got in with zero actual extracurriculars, higher rated friend got waitlisted with good extras. Tufts was the same.)

Pay attention to how the schools treat you when you visit. There are no guarantees, but the schools that went out of their way on visits tended to be the ones who seem to do a more thorough review of an application. Also, give the state U the benefit of the doubt.

The experience you describe in the thread was the same as ours applying last year. Most of the deferrals were the class before that. It was test optional everywhere last year too, and applications ran some 3X-4X normal at most popular schools. I think that made it a complete crapshoot. BU gave my daughter deferred admission for this upcoming year, but she liked Northeastern better anyway. Fordham gave her solid merit, but Fordham was straight up closed. Gated shut. The visit was that they allowed you to walk the grounds for 30 minutes. I do not think they saw the applications other schools did. Had to assume it would be mostly remote.

Also agree on the same HS thing, getting into BC out of a Catholic School in MA is ridiculous, the stats of the kids from her school were far higher than the average, because they all apply. I noticed the different treatment too, UVM was exceptional. Loyala of Chicago was as well. Some schools really wanted her. Others like UConn and BU were frankly overwhelmed with visits and had to manage under pandemic rules. It couldn't be easy.

You daughter has several good options. Are you going to do follow up visits to narrow the list before May?

 

[aburks41]

I am the team doc for Conn College and so this is purely based on my experience with the student athletes.

Overall I think it is a great academic school and many the strengths and weakness have already been covered. I wanted to mention a few things not yet stated from my experience.

I was incredibly surprised by the diversity of the student body. I figured most would be New England kids but there are students from all over the country. In addition, students from many countries abroad which again was a little bit of a surprise but I think helps provide a great cultured experience.

Everyone plays a sport. It might be crew or track, but they encourage you to stay active which I love.

Many kids after their freshmen year live in Groton/Long Point. Beautiful area to live in though as some posters mentioned you arguably miss out on the summer months.

I continue to be impressed by the quality of the kids. I’m sure many schools can boast this, but every student is incredibly polite, well mannered, and articulate. They all seem to have a reasonable plan for their future, many with internships all set up. They speak with a quiet confidence that I do not always see in college kids.

I live in Groton Long Point during the summer months, there's a house down my street that is always rented by Conn college kids. I've talked to them before and they love it. It's also a few minutes away from Mystic which has all the fun bars and restaurants.

 

[husky429]

The future is people buried in student debt trying to scrape by in service economy jobs.

My take is if you can get into a Georgetown tier or above, do it, or if there is a specific program geared towards your future career, great. Otherwise go public.

That isn't the future--it's already happening. Anyone who didn't have mommy and daddy to pay for college and listened to their guidance counselor about how great SLACs are is screwed unless they're able to get into a fully funded grad school of some kind (and they're still screwed 5 years later, lol).

 

[BigTenFan]

Most of the top STEM focused schools seem to require it. Carnegie Mellon basically requires it, as does Purdue. Both schools require an essay explaining why a student didn’t provide a test score for any student applying Test Optional. The heavy STEM programs just need kids that are smart enough. There is no bs-ing your way through MIT's or Carnegie Mellon's freshman calculus classes. And if those schools want to take kids from disadvantaged backgrounds, they need to identify and provide remedial assistance out of the gate or they will lose those kids. They need the test.

I expect most state schools to ultimately folllow the lead of MIT for STEM majors. A case could be made that writing samples are more important for an English major than a good SAT score, but there is no substitute to a strong test score for an Engineering or Math major.

I think Test Optional policies do a few things for the schools, all of which are bad:

1) Convince kids that have no chance to apply to super selective schools "test optional". This serves to drive down acceptance rates at competitive schools and make them seem even more exclusive, which helps them in rankings.

2) drive the average SAT scores up which helps them in the rankings. This has gotten so bad and so obvious that US News is actually adjusting how SAT's impact rankings for schools that have a lot of TO admissions.

3) select more students from privileged backgrounds because the prep and wealthy suburban high schools have bigger grade inflation than middle class and disadvantaged high schools have. There is research on the grade inflation at preps and wealthy suburbs over the last 20 years.

4) enables the schools to hide legacies and rich kids who are screwups because those kids won't hurt the admit stats if they apply TO.

I can actually respect test-blind admissions policies like the University of California, even if I disagree with them. Schools are welcome to use any policies they want for admissions as long as those policies are consistent. Test Optional is total bs. Either the test matters or it doesn't. How does making it "optional" make any sense at all?

I agree with everything you wrote. I look at many of the STEM schools as high tech trade schools...but more expensive. Most kids going to these schools are focused on getting a tech job even before they graduate.
It's just a different environment than many Liberal Arts colleges- not better or worse

The other big thing changing the admission process is the common application.
Kids are applying to 20 schools with no intention of attending many of them
That causes the acceptance percentage to go way down and keep out some highly qualified students. Schools that were getting 10000 applications 10 years ago are now getting 40000.
At the end of the day... The motivated kids will succeed no matter what their choice is

 

[nelsonmuntz]

I agree with everything you wrote. I look at many of the STEM schools as high tech trade schools...but more expensive. Most kids going to these schools are focused on getting a tech job even before they graduate.
It's just a different environment than many Liberal Arts colleges- not better or worse

The other big thing changing the admission process is the common application.
Kids are applying to 20 schools with no intention of attending many of them
That causes the acceptance percentage to go way down and keep out some highly qualified students. Schools that were getting 10000 applications 10 years ago are now getting 40000.
At the end of the day... The motivated kids will succeed no matter what their choice is

I am not so sure about your last sentence. One of the issues with student debt is kids borrowing mountains of money to get worthless degrees. I don't know if I would recommend a kid borrow $300k to get an engineering or CS degree from MIT or Carnegie Mellon undergrad, but it is at least worth a discussion. I would strongly recommend AGAINST a kid borrowing that much money to get a literature degree from an NESCAC school. A kid can read literature on their own time, they don't need to pay someone $75k a year to teach it to them.

It is interesting how powerful the traditional liberal arts schools are in framing the debate on the value of higher education. Calling STEM or business schools "trade" or "vocational" programs harkens back to a different era where the kids (mostly sons) of the wealthy and upper middle class met kids from similar families before heading out to jobs secured by family connections. That world started to end in the late 70's, and it is mostly dead today. Yet the liberal arts schools keep using that language to justify their entire business model, which by any objective measure is failing.

The publics aren't much better off. As someone else pointed out, the class sizes in the humanities at public schools is similar to that at the expensive privates, because kids do not want to take those classes any more. The problem is that the humanities departments are staffed as if it is 1995, with a lot of aging, tenured faculty that do not have many students to teach, while 100+ kids are packed into an engineering lecture hall.

 

[upstater]

Some will go back, some won’t.

The biggest issue this year is that kids really had no way of knowing where they belonged. We know a brilliant kid who is going to Binghamton because everyone else turned her down - top 15 in a class of 500, high ACT, great extra curricular. She didn’t get into her top schools and her safeties waitlisted her to protect their yield. Dreamed of being a doctor and now has to launch that bid from the cheap seats.

Worked insanely hard for four years and the payoff was a school she could have gone to without spending one late night studying. Good friend of our daughter’s dream school was BU. BU was beneath her but this year, they deferred her, wait listed her and then offered her a spot with $0 aid. Their crime was being in the class of 2026 and being in a demographic that the schools did not mind beating up on.

If I am going to offer kids advice…..do not have a dream school. Treat the private schools as the effectively for-profit outfits that they are. When a school talks about their holistic approach to reviewing applications, they are lying. (Villanova was huge on that….knowing what I know about the randomness of a Nova acceptance from kids in our high school, I assure you that it is all crap. They had no real standard. Friend of my daughter got in with zero actual extracurriculars, higher rated friend got waitlisted with good extras. Tufts was the same.)

Pay attention to how the schools treat you when you visit. There are no guarantees, but the schools that went out of their way on visits tended to be the ones who seem to do a more thorough review of an application. Also, give the state U the benefit of the doubt.

If they were holistic prior to the pandemic, they were probably really holistic. But there are only a few such schools.

BU is one school that admitted 40% of kids as non-test takers.

 

[8893]

@Fishy , should your daughter decide to attend Connecticut College, be sure to frequent the Dutch Tavern, a classic joint.

It's your kind of place. Great for a good, basic meal; watching any soccer, baseball, basketball or football game; a classic pinball machine; a proper pint of Guinness; and an absolute lack of pretension, so strong that you will be ignored if you show any yourself.

 

[upstater]

Very small campus, but with Schenectady winters that’s actually a good thing. And MIT is leading the charge reinstating an SAT requiremen.

MIT and the SAT

Q &A with Dean of Admissions

MIT can afford to do it. Many schools won't. Northeastern is at 7% acceptance rate. Think they're ever going back? Not until USNews drops acceptance rates as a criteria.

 

[upstater]

I'm probably not supposed to be pro-testing because I'm a school teacher... but I really think it's ridiculous that they don't require them. I think the same for grad programs that drop the GRE.

The big argument I always hear is that the tests are biased. 1) I've never seen a kid do badly on the SAT that was clearly smart, 2) I HAVE seen kids with really tough backgrounds that didn't do very well in school punch above their weight class in the admissions process and change their life. The risk is the rich kids getting tutors to do better on the test and such. I agree but I think the risk isn't as great as with rec letters, extracurriculars and grades.

IMO recommendation letters and extracurriculars are a hell of a lot more biased than the tests are. I've taught hundreds of really smart kids who juat didn't have the time to do extracurriculars. Or kids that aren't going to get great recommendations because they're shy and have eccentric hobbies or something. Grades are also inflated to hell at rich white kid schools.

Grades don't mean anything anymore. Anyone can get credit for extracurriculars if you spend an hour after school once a semester. Sign me up for the only objective measure of student performance we have left.

I agree with most of this except for your point about the GRE.

They are largely useless for us. A kid applying to grad school shows much more proficiency in their research and project. GREs don't tell us much at that point. A 23 or 24 year old is already professionalizing if they want to go on.

 

[upstater]

I address it above, but I want to re-emphasize that the right major is more important than the right school. Put another way, a Computer Science or Engineering major from Central Connecticut is going to get a good job upon graduation. I am not as confident about a literature major from an IVY or NESCAC school.

A middle-aged poster saying they know someone from an NESCAC school that did really well is not a great benchmark for today's world. We grew up in a completely different era. I am sure we all knew plenty of screw ups from our days at UConn whose degrees may have said "English" or "History", but they really majored in partying and smoking weed, and still went on to be very successful. That is harder now in a society that is so tech heavy and doesn't have the big corporate training programs like there were when we were graduating from college.

Banks don't need to hire Ivy League humanities majors and drop them into a training program any more because schools like UConn churn out so many excellent Finance and Accounting majors that show up the first day of work ready to be productive. Even majors like Marketing have become much more specialized and technical, and a Marketing major from any decent school has a HUGE advantage for those entry level jobs over the liberal arts school graduate.

There are 50% more STEM grads every year than there were 20 years ago, and that number is growing rapidly. A lot of jobs that would hire smart kids with any degree 30 years ago now require STEM majors because they can. There are a lot of STEM majors.

Computer Science is the most in-demand major at colleges right now. The Computer Science programs at Illinois and Washington are more competitive to get into than most NESCAC schools. Even UMass has a highly competitive Comp Sci program. These CS kids are going to be graduating into a world where every large and mid size company is transitioning into a technology company. They will have their pick of job offers.

I know many people who showed up at Wall Street in the 70's through 90's and weaseled their way onto a trading floor. Corporate finance was more exclusive, but back then the trading floors had plenty of kids that made millions on street smarts and their ability to ingratiate themselves to their bosses. Those days are long gone. Goldman and Morgan Stanley need math majors to design algorithms, not some clever Lit major who is good at taking the temperature of the market. The algorithms will do that for them.

My advice is to get a STEM or business degree from any school. Come out of college with a definable skill, or build a time machine to go back to an era where definable skills weren't necessary for college grads.

There are plenty of studies that show the exact opposite of this.

Business degrees are the refuge of the big partiers.

There have been studies that show through exit surveys and final assessments that the least was gained in business majors.

One caveat for the studies is that the results may be a corollary for the type of kid that takes business courses. Social, partygoing, etc.

We're always told in the Humanities that the classes are too hard (admissions, administrators tell us this) so students are driven away.

I do take your point about STEM.

But the rest of the college looks at Communications and Business in a different way.

 

[upstater]

Reading through this thread is somewhat depressing. I was having a conversation with someone the other day about what college admissions and higher education will look like in 20 years. I firmly believe it will be drastically different than now. The current process and cost is not sustainable. I had no idea that many schools dropped standardized testing requirements, did not know that kids were applying to schools completely out of the realm of possibility, etc.

$60-$80k per year for private schools? It’ll be well over $100k in a few years. That’s unreal. At what point does someone say to themselves is there a better investment? What does someone have to make at entry-level, mid-career and at the height of their professional career to justify those costs? What is the likelihood they will reach those numbers? I understand if your going to be an engineer, doctor or lawyer but let’s be real with ourselves not every lawyer or engineer is pulling down outrageous salaries - it depends on a lot of other factors.

We need to have a serious conversation with ourselves of higher education and career paths. There is currently a college for everyone yet we know that college is not for everyone. We know that college graduates are struggling to find jobs and student loan debt is a huge issue. We also have a several shortage of certain types of professions, many that don’t require a 4 year degree. That shortage then leads to higher costs for everyone. We need to advocate for trade schools, but IMO we need to let businesses know that many jobs they hire for require on job training and experience and not a degree.

Downvote away but in general higher education has become nothing more than a money grab.

Let's put this in some perspective:

1. Private schools are only 14% of the national landscape. 84% of American undergrads at 4 year institutions attend public schools. The national average tuition is $7,500 (not counting fees which are approximately $2.5k).

2. Private schools spend approximately $25k a year per student, a little ore than the $20k a year that the publics spend. In New York, by the way, we spend $20k a year per kindergartner.

3. Private schools redistribute the money from rich kids to middle class and poor kids. This is why private schools like test-optional (they can admit richer kids this way, full payers), and also the D3 private schools that don't give athletic scholarships can get kids in through the back door in the summer. Athletes apply through a special admissions pool. The whole Felicity Huffman thing was crude but not so different from the reality at many private schools.

4. A lot of people will likely make a lot more money at trade school--judging by the amount of money I'm charged by contractors!!! That being said, our national rate for college graduates is abysmal compared to our cohort around the world. We're at around 30% college grads nationally while the countries we compete against are near 65-70%. So, yes, individually, there's a good case to be made for your kid taking up a trade. Many will do much better than college grads. But as a nation, we need a lot more college grads, because if we don't start producing more of them, we'll import them from other countries.

5. More federal subsidies for public colleges and universities would not be a big cost. I was calculating a few months ago that it would be in the $50b range for the Fed. government to fund half of tuition for every student. That's only double what we pay for the National Park system. It would allow us to open more seats at universities which would take the insane pressure off of high school. And we'd have many fewer dropouts as well, we'd solve the national student loan crisis.

 

[upstater]

If I knew of a way to short sell the entire industry, I would short sell higher education today. It is where traditional media was 25 years ago, on the edge of a cliff and tipping over. How much longer can schools sell an aura of exclusivity to get families to shell out $300k+ for worthless degrees?

This reminds me though of something my brother said to me about Connecticut. I was sitting in traffic in Westport and thinking about him telling me, "People are leaving Connecticut in droves, the taxes are too high." I'm sitting there thinking, "They aren't leaving fast enough!!!!"

 

[HuskyHawk]

There are plenty of studies that show the exact opposite of this.

Business degrees are the refuge of the big partiers.

There have been studies that show through exit surveys and final assessments that the least was gained in business majors.

One caveat for the studies is that the results may be a corollary for the type of kid that takes business courses. Social, partygoing, etc.

We're always told in the Humanities that the classes are too hard (admissions, administrators tell us this) so students are driven away.

I do take your point about STEM.

But the rest of the college looks at Communications and Business in a different way.

That's a weird take on business majors. Accounting and finance are BS majors at most schools, not BA, pretty math heavy and highly practical. Marketing ties in with practical uses of Psych, and human behavior. IT systems is of course, also pretty technical in nature. Management is kind of meh, but the rest is solid. My experience in law school was that business was easily the best prep for law school, perhaps with Econ (as they also generally had understanding of business). English and poli sci majors sometimes struggled, because law school is about 60% business related. Now social, partygoing...perhaps, but those are absolute assets in the employment world. Those people build networks and know how to sell things including themselves.

 

[J187Money]

Reading through this thread is somewhat depressing. I was having a conversation with someone the other day about what college admissions and higher education will look like in 20 years. I firmly believe it will be drastically different than now. The current process and cost is not sustainable. I had no idea that many schools dropped standardized testing requirements, did not know that kids were applying to schools completely out of the realm of possibility, etc.

$60-$80k per year for private schools? It’ll be well over $100k in a few years. That’s unreal. At what point does someone say to themselves is there a better investment? What does someone have to make at entry-level, mid-career and at the height of their professional career to justify those costs? What is the likelihood they will reach those numbers? I understand if your going to be an engineer, doctor or lawyer but let’s be real with ourselves not every lawyer or engineer is pulling down outrageous salaries - it depends on a lot of other factors.

We need to have a serious conversation with ourselves of higher education and career paths. There is currently a college for everyone yet we know that college is not for everyone. We know that college graduates are struggling to find jobs and student loan debt is a huge issue. We also have a several shortage of certain types of professions, many that don’t require a 4 year degree. That shortage then leads to higher costs for everyone. We need to advocate for trade schools, but IMO we need to let businesses know that many jobs they hire for require on job training and experience and not a degree.

Downvote away but in general higher education has become nothing more than a money grab.

My oldest got into UCONN - then he decided that he wanted to run in college. So ended up at Regis outside of Boston (D3) but they gave him $25K in scholarships/year so it was maybe $5K/year more than UCONN so I was ok with it. He got out in 3 years and is finishing grad school now at Evansville - passed his boards, and just got a job this weekend as a trainer for the Michigan State football program (and now I need to root for Sparty? ugh).

My youngest stuggles a lot with mental health and the pandemic was terrible for him, so he didn't go to school and he works full time right now (at 19) and is going to figure it out over time.

If you had asked me 10 years ago I would have demanded that both went to school. But you need to know who your kids are. Spending $80K/year when your kid might flame out is a complete waste of money. My youngest got into SCAD down in Savannah and just wasn't comfortable with going. I wasn't going to spend the money to "see" if it was going to work out. There are many paths - and you need to be flexible as your kids grow up. Try and make sure you aren't forcing your dreams on them.

 

[husky429]

I agree with most of this except for your point about the GRE.

They are largely useless for us. A kid applying to grad school shows much more proficiency in their research and project. GREs don't tell us much at that point. A 23 or 24 year old is already professionalizing if they want to go on.

I agree to an extent--it probably depends on the program. And I can see why GRE is less useful than things like the MCAT/LSAT etc. It's basically a catch-all test for the fields that aren't big enough to have created their own.

My experience with grad school is admittedly limited. I have a Master's and am getting something called a sixth-year (basically a 30-credit post-master's thing that isn't a doctorate). I never applied anywhere but UConn. My fiance had a law degree and then went to PhD school at UConn but transferred to Yale recently when her advisor moved. They made it pretty clear that she was accepted because 5/7 of her siblings are felons and she works in prison and labor justice stuff. I have no idea what her GRE scores were.

It just seems kind of biased to me to assume that everyone is able to have a competitive research experience before applying to grad schools. That's not feasible for a lot of kids. It's a privelege to be able to build a competitive resume to an extent. I mean, shoot, there are literally homeless grad students sleeping in the faculty parking lots in Storrs every night.

My mind is certainly not made up on the issue though. It's complicated as hell.

 

[upstater]

The publics aren't much better off. As someone else pointed out, the class sizes in the humanities at public schools is similar to that at the expensive privates, because kids do not want to take those classes any more. The problem is that the humanities departments are staffed as if it is 1995, with a lot of aging, tenured faculty that do not have many students to teach, while 100+ kids are packed into an engineering lecture hall.

I can tell you this is last bit is definitely definitely definitely not true.

We're tracking hiring all over the nation and we're at a 1/3rd of where we were 20 years ago.

Tenured faculty have dropped from 75% of the workforce nationally to under 25%.

You're not only paying a lot MORE for Higher Education, you are getting a lot less.

My department went from 50+ when I started to under 20. 500 majors to 200. It tracks exactly. And there's a reason for that, because we're only reimbursed for the actual students in the courses. We do a lot more service work now (composition classes, but those are largely staffed by adjuncts making $3k).

 

[upstater]

That's a weird take on business majors. Accounting and finance are BS majors at most schools, not BA, pretty math heavy and highly practical. Marketing ties in with practical uses of Psych, and human behavior. IT systems is of course, also pretty technical in nature. Management is kind of meh, but the rest is solid. My experience in law school was that business was easily the best prep for law school, perhaps with Econ (as they also generally had understanding of business). English and poli sci majors sometimes struggled, because law school is about 60% business related. Now social, partygoing...perhaps, but those are absolute assets in the employment world. Those people build networks and know how to sell things including themselves.

It's not a take. It's from looking at studies. Here are a few articles:

The Default Major: Skating Through B-School (Published 2011)

Where’s the rigor? Undergraduate business has an image problem.

www.nytimes.com

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2017/01/28/business-is-the-most-popular-college-major-but-that-doesnt-mean-its-a-good-choice/

Note that we see studies all the time that counter the prevailing sentiment against the Humanities; they show pay and salary levels above business majors mid career. But it's really hard to tell who goes on to grad school, who enters professions etc. I don't trust any of the studies, and from talking to English my majors, I know they don't even want to take on 6 figure tech or finance writing jobs (which exist), so they're not going that direction anyway.

 

[UConnKev]

I work in law enforcement in New London area. Groton/New London have seen quite a spike recently with crime and homeless population has swelled significantly which leads to some petty crime.

 

[upstater]

I agree to an extent--it probably depends on the program. And I can see why GRE is less useful than things like the MCAT/LSAT etc. It's basically a catch-all test for the fields that aren't big enough to have created their own.

My experience with grad school is admittedly limited. I have a Master's and am getting something called a sixth-year (basically a 30-credit post-master's thing that isn't a doctorate). I never applied anywhere but UConn. My fiance had a law degree and then went to PhD school at UConn but transferred to Yale recently when her advisor moved. They made it pretty clear that she was accepted because 5/7 of her siblings are felons and she works in prison and labor justice stuff. I have no idea what her GRE scores were.

It just seems kind of biased to me to assume that everyone is able to have a competitive research experience before applying to grad schools. That's not feasible for a lot of kids. It's a privelege to be able to build a competitive resume to an extent. I mean, shoot, there are literally homeless grad students sleeping in the faculty parking lots in Storrs every night.

My mind is certainly not made up on the issue though. It's complicated as hell.

I understand what you're saying. A lot of undergrads don't mature enough to have a feasible project.

I will say though that I've seen kids from, for instance, Appalachian State admitted with a full blown research project over a kid from Tufts whose project letter was blurry. I can't say GRE scores were ever discussed. I suppose a really low score would have us wondering.

On the other hand, near perfect score (straight 800s) applicants are sometimes admitted because they are competitive in receiving full scholarships from the President's office, rather than the department they are applying to.

 

[husky429]

It's not a take. It's from looking at studies. Here are a few articles:

The Default Major: Skating Through B-School (Published 2011)

Where’s the rigor? Undergraduate business has an image problem.

www.nytimes.com

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2017/01/28/business-is-the-most-popular-college-major-but-that-doesnt-mean-its-a-good-choice/

Note that we see studies all the time that counter the prevailing sentiment against the Humanities; they show pay and salary levels above business majors mid career. But it's really hard to tell who goes on to grad school, who enters professions etc. I don't trust any of the studies, and from talking to English my majors, I know they don't even want to take on 6 figure tech or finance writing jobs (which exist), so they're not going that direction anyway.

Totally anecdotal, but I've always heard accounting is the way to go over business administration or finance.

And FWIW, I know tons of former English majors who went to law school, business school, etc. and are doing very well for themselves. I am definitely a proponent of the humanities if a person is realistic about their ability to cover the costs of college. I think hard sciences probably pay off more than humanities in the long run. But I'm not sure majors like psychology, business, etc. are worth it for many kids.

I understand what you're saying. A lot of undergrads don't mature enough to have a feasible project.

I will say though that I've seen kids from, for instance, Appalachian State admitted with a full blown research project over a kid from Tufts whose project letter was blurry. I can't say GRE scores were ever discussed. I suppose a really low score would have us wondering.

On the other hand, near perfect score (straight 800s) applicants are sometimes admitted because they are competitive in receiving full scholarships from the President's office, rather than the department they are applying to.

You insight here is really interesting from the inside. Thanks for sharing all this.

My fiance went to Appalachian State before transferring to UNC after a year.... whole family is from south of Asheville near the Georgia border. Everything I've heard about this school is that it's actually fantastic value. Tuition is like 5,000 a year. Kind of like CCSU--you can make a really great career for yourself out of the school, especially if you're staying in the area.

That's the thing with all of this. You can make a hell of a grad school admissions resume or make solid connections in industry basically anywhere you go if you apply yourself. I know a rich guy who went to Harvard that flunked out of PhD school and drives uber now. Plays guitar in crappy bars at night. And I'm marrying a girl who grew up in a trailer, has no mother, her entire family is felons, then went to Appalachian state, and will have a JD from UNC and a PhD from Yale in a few months. Obviously the odds are stacked against kids in a certain position... but never say never.