College Experience?

Posted by BlingBling
So if I go to college for a Graduate Degree, I can study just my major and not take alot of "Basic" classes like Math, Science, etc.?
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That's right. You only take ADVANCED classes in your subject area. In my case, I take classes relevant to Inorganic/Organometallic Chemistry, NO Bull$#!T classes. Those kinds of classes are long gone. But graduate school moves about 2 to 4 times faster than undergraduate school. You can cover several chapters in one class period, or you can go into unspeakable detail just about one area of a subject or chapter. Graduate school, especially Ph.D. programs, teach you how to think independently. There is no degree higher than a Ph.D. Once you get one, you've reached the end of the line in attaining an advanced degree in education. A Ph.D. is even higher than an M.D. degree.
 
Originally posted by Jadey
One question: how do Americans afford university? Tuition is INSANE compared to Canada. If you all get student loans - how do you ever pay them off?
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I went to Lafayette College which was great, but tuition was over $30,000 a year when I graduated (this past May). Fortunately, Lafayette was great when it came to scholarships, so very few people ever had to pay that much. In fact, the only people who actually did were the kind of people who could afford it anyway.

As for how long it takes, that definitely depends on where you're going. If you were a full-time student at Lafayette and taking longer than four years, it generally meant you were double-majoring and would stay for a semester or two more. I'm at OSU for graduate school, and it's not unusual for undergraduates here to take six years. Actually over five is the majority.

And yeah, in graduate school, you mostly just concentrate on your field. You can take other classes of course, but here it seems to be a little rare.
 
Go Buckeyes!!

phil - i will add my thoughts to this thread eventually, i just want to clarrify something here.

BB - understand that to go for a graduate degree you must complete an undergraduate degree first. There is no getting around a well balanced education to reach that point. You may not see it now, but this 'general education' will serve you well in life. keep in mind that in college you get your choice of the types of classes you take to fulfill these requirements. for instance, i completed my math requirement by taking Logic. which was the single most useful class i have ever taken. For history, you can practically choose who's history and during what epic you want to study. none of this US History type of thing. the range of science classes is equally as broad. I think it was simx who talked about this earlier.
the only way to just study a particular discipline is to attend a trade school. You seem much too smart to settle for that route.;)
 
One of the common misconceptions is that in graduate school you need to continue with what you did for your BA:rolleyes: I thought like this till 3 weeks ago :p

I met a professor which did his BA in CS, and then in graduate school did an MbA and then a PhD in economics. If you have absolutelly NO experience in the subject matter in the masters program they require you to take *some* of the courses at the udnergrad level before you take teh gradute courses, but not all undergrad courses :)


I am thinking of doing an Italian lit masters at some point (maybe even before my CS masters lol :p) -- My university doesnt have a MA in CS per se, it has a PhD program which you can "leave" after xxx amount of credits with an MA. I am thinking of going to MA route cause if I fail teh exams after the "MA level" then all my work was for nothing, so I will probably get my MA, graduate and see if I can go back and "resume" having "saved" my previous work lol ;-)


as for tuition, I am a lucky B@st@rd :p --- I work full time for the university I go to so as a perk I get to go for free hehehe ;-). Tuition is a problem though, it does cost too much. Basically what I would recommend is going to a cheaper one for you BA, a good name but cheaper, and then go to a really good one and one that has even more of a name recognition for your MA or PhD for the simple reason that employers dont generally look at where you got your undergrad education.



Admiral
 
Admiral AK made a good point about graduate school. You don't always need to get a masters or Ph.D. in a particular field with a Bachelors degree from the same field. This is not always true for some majors/subjects. I would not recommend an art major apply for a Ph.D. in Physics or vice versa. People generally tend to gravitate towards careers that mesh well with their abilities/personalities. Ed can verify this, I'm sure. For example, one the chemistry professors in our department sounds like a salesman, infact, his undergraduate education is in Psychology, but he got his Ph.D. in Chemistry. Now the school I attend (Chemistry Department) will take people from different backgrounds other than chemistry if that major has some similar course requirements, like calculus, i.e., "thinking-oriented" classes. But the Polymer program (an entirely separate department) at my school is one of the best in the nation, and it only takes people with the best chemistry backgrounds.

Admiral AK's point is very true for people wanting to enter law school, and to some degree medical school. Law schools only require a Bachelors degree from an accredited university/college, and decent LSAT scores to enter the program. Medical school is an entirely different beast - I won't go there - it would take to long to explain.
 
I'm halfway through my third year at Rochester Institute of Technology.

RIT is a lot of what you make it to be. You can come here and go through the motions, or you can bust your ass a little and get some more out of it. The best way to go is to do a little of both.

General advice...consider going to a community college to take care of liberal arts... BUT ONLY IF YOU HAVE THE MOTIVATION TO KEEP GOING. Doing this lets you keep options open in terms of major and school, but you need to have a plan and check out everything from the beginning- especially how transferring credits works, the course requirements for the programs (majors) you're considering, etc. You have to be a real soldier to do all this...

The other thing- find out about the procedure for signing into a course. At rit- you can take up to 18 hours every quarter... so remember that you're paying for those credits anyways... all I have to do to get into ANY course is track down the professor and ask him to let me in (sometimes this flies, other times it doesn't). Just because a course isn't required doesn't mean you can't just take it... you don't need to double major or any of that crap.

You can get a lot out of most of the programs at RIT... although I'd not reccomend going here for ANY liberal arts programs... (economics, criminal justice, etc. etc. maybe philosophy though... that dept. is strong) there are just stronger schools for that. RIT also has excellent facilities available... as will other colleges. Make use of them while you can.
 
Thanks for the input, guys. I am currently applying to Universities here in Australia for my Bachelors, and appreciate the comments. I am glad I am not in the US, as I wouldn't be able to afford one week at a Uni there!
Here our student loans are based on an interest free tax-debt that you pay off according to your income. I would have to be earning a certain amount of money before I have to make any payments, and even then they are reasonable.
The impression I get is that for a Bachelors you do, in any semester, 4 units related to your major - or core subject, and 1 unit from an unrelated elective. EG: for a BA of I.T., you would do 4 I.T. subjects and 1 other, perhaps business or graphic design.
I'll let you know how it goes.
 
originally posted by my bud BlingBling
I go to Undergraduate for 2 years and then Graduate for 4 years? That's 6 years! Oh No!
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wellno, not quite. an undergraduate degree (an B.A. or B.S. - Bachelor of Arts or Bachelor of Science) takes a minimum of 4 years as a rule. Many people divide it up into junior college (1-2 years) and then finish at a University. In a round about way, that is how i did it. As Red Phoenix mentioned earlier, it is not unusual to take 5-6 year getting finished with this part. It took me about 8 yr in 2 seperate stints.
now graduate school can be anywhere from a year to another 7 or 8. it depends on the area of study and the particular requirements of individual schools. I think it is a little early for you guys to be worrying too much about grad schools. But one rule of thumb about the whole process - the better grades you get at one level, the more likely you are to get into a better school at the next level. To get into a decent college it helps to have at least a B average in high school. to get into a decent grad school it helps to have a B+ averge or better. again, depending on the school. You must also do well on your standardized tests like the SAT. for grad school it is generally the GRE.

Chemistry_geek made some good points that are worth noting as well. But i think in general that grad schools are more accepting of diverse undergrad degrees when the person has gotten some life experience in between the 2 phases of their education.
 
I was thinking about my PhD about a year ago and then I realized that it was too soon for me to be thnking about that now lol. Let me just focus on surviving this semester ;-)

If you think about it before you enter a university its a pain because you think it will take you forever. This is my 4th year (one more to go for my BA) and it seems like yesterday that I entered into my university life... wow!


so who can see me as an italian PhD... Professore AK hehehe ;-)


Admiral
 
Here's a few tips I've picked up from the past 3 years of college:

Move out early, get into the dorms if you can.
Apply to as many colleges as you can, even if you don't necessarily intend on going to them.
Do not overload your schedule your freshman year.
Do not schedule your classes too early, 9 am at the earliest.

Those are my tips for the pros. A good college for CS majors is Stanford, but that's on the opposite corner of the U.S. as you.
 
My college experience evokes mix emotions. I started my freshman semester at New York Institute of Technology in the middle of the Reagan years. The Reagan machine was pushing institutions to crank out more Engineers at the time and I fell prey to the influences of my high school counselors to do so. This seemed like a natural selection for a major as I was interested in electronics, had a natural inclination to engineer things as a young boy, was accepted by my parents and society as a noble profession and was thought to bring better than fair monetary rewards. I should note I was very active as a musician during high school but was influenced not to pursue such a career by counselors because of it's inherent instability. Of coarse my parents agreed as did I, reluctantly.

Back to freshman year. Before the actual start of classes I was asked to take a math placement test in order to properly place myself at the correct level. Well it was more than a year since I've seen an complex algebra problem due to taking statistics in my senior year in high school. You could imagine I scored rather poorly. To make matters worse, none of my high school math credits transfered over as was staunchly stated by my HS counselors that they would be. I was devastated as I knew this was a large part of an EE major and I was always very adept at math in general throughout my prior schooling. I felt I had to make a quick decision at this point to choose another major. The choice was Communications Arts. In retrospect this must have been a decision based on my suppressed desire to be involved in the entertainment business. Onward with my re-registration of classes for CA.

The NYIT campus I went to was in Westbury, Long Island in New York. There was a very large percentage of exchange students that attended (50ish%). I felt this factor, the lack of organized sports, the lack of expression in the arts and the lack of a strong student body added to the air of isolation. Not conducive to a positive college experience at all. None the less I happily went through the next 4 semesters sampling all that CA had to offer; Television, Film, Radio and Advertising in hopes of narrowing down my decision for a vocation after graduation. During this time I decided I wanted to 'be' an Audio Engineer and work with artists making music. My college counselors were of no help here. A little research as to how one attains these positions lead me to the realization that a college degree was not mandatory to enter this work force. Actually, I saw it as a detriment because by the time I would finish and have a degree, I could be seen as somewhat old to start in this profession. This profession is one of the few left that still adhere to the practice of apprenticing. Armed with this information, I decided to drop out of NYIT (a very difficult decision) and attended a Department of Education accredited school for Audio Engineering called Audio Recording Institute of Technology (one of the only accredited schools at that time). I finished those courses and landed a job after a year of knocking on Recording Studio doors. I should mention education for the entertainment business is very different today. Schools like Boston's Berkeley now offer majors in music production and have professional quality equipment in which to teach students. This did not exist in my day.

What I remember most of my college experience was the freedom of how much effort one can place on a particular field of study one is interested in. It's really up to the individual how much she/he wants to learn. There is also something to be said of higher education through self learning. I believe in this strongly. I am always in a state of learning even after I have established myself in my career. Without progressive learning one becomes placid and eventually unhappy.
 
Wow! What an overwhelming response! Thanks everyone for sharing this, its really nice to see what people have gone through.

If there's anything else....keep it coming!
 
Matrix,

I went to graduate school at RIT, and I agree with pretty much everything .dev.lqd had to say. I think it's a great place if your self motivated. They have good facilities and there are some great professors, but more importantly a good community of smart students. I won't go into the social aspects of RIT since I'm from Rochester and I didn't live a real college life while I was there. I will say that I got the kind of job I wanted when I left (I was in Computer Graphics.) I did not receive much help from my department when it came time to find a job, however.

For undergraduate school I went to Binghamton University. I was pretty cynical about the place while I was there, but in hindsite it was pretty good. I went there because it was cheap and I didn't know what I wanted to do. They have pretty solid Engineering, CS and Accounting schools (from what I gathered.) I was an Art student there and surprisingly they had some great professors. It's not really known for art. The art schools computer facilities were lacking to say the least. Now, socially, the city of Binghamton is a bit depressed and there's not much to do. There's quite a bit of drinking. It's a pretty laid back town and has a pretty interesting music scene. Many of the Students are from NYC. It's also a very diverse place. Anyone, no matter how strange, will have a good group of friends.
 
Originally posted by Ed Spruiell
Go Buckeyes!!

phil - i will add my thoughts to this thread eventually, i just want to clarrify something here.

BB - understand that to go for a graduate degree you must complete an undergraduate degree first. There is no getting around a well balanced education to reach that point. ....
....
the only way to just study a particular discipline is to attend a trade school. You seem much too smart to settle for that route.;)
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Ed, you seem to missing something here.... it is quite possible to get a degree in design, art or soemthing like that at a Art school and go for a master's degree in it somewhere else. (I.E. Getting a design degree at MIAD or Art academy and going to Yale for Information design)... Also, while getting a degree at a "trade" school may be seen to be a cop out to the acadmeic.... you often times can get a much superior trainging in your desired area than is typically available at a 4 year university.


Sorry to rant, but I always got good grades in "smart" type classes, was an artist, and your argurment against specialized schools doesn't hold water IMHO. Many "smart" people are better suited to go to a specialized school where they dont need to risk failure due to lack of focus or boredom.
 
rinse - 1st, i will admit to not being aware that it was possible to continue on in higher education after attending a specialized school. and i knew as soon as i posted it i would offend somebody by my remark.

so let me clarrify - i was particularly thinking of places like DeVry and their sort. they are dead end programs. I have serious doubts that any devry grads are going on to any respected graduate program. But of course there are many excellent art and graphics schools that do a great job of preparing one for a career in those fields that i was overlooking in my statement. Your point about staying focused is a good one as well. I might have been better off to start my own advanced training in such a way. you will understand more of what i mean when i get around to posting my college experience - the official guide to how not to do it;)

I would still argue, from the point in life i have reached, that a good broad education is a very valuable thing to get at some point. I will also agree with klink that one doesn't have to attend a school to get that. But there is added value in studying in an environment where ideas and disagreements can be thrown around for discussion. this kind of education may or may not add to one's career possibilities. But it will certainly enrich one's life in many other ways.:)
 
What are some good schools for what I like to do and what I will do in the future...

I like dealing with computers, graphics, video, and especially the internet.

i do web sites now, which includes everything from the graphics to the implementation and pretty much everything inbetween. i love my job. it's excellent!

i am also extremely interested in video and it's production. i love all aspects of it. my friends think i'm crazy when I have to have a shot and element perfect... (like when I was in a 6th grade movie... see it at http://svcs.k12.in.us/svms/avid.htm . I am playing Dick Clark and the guy hosting the Y2K Show. yes, it was stupid beyond belief, but it got 4th place in state competition)

i love making graphics... they've got to be perfect... advertising and marketing are things that I'd like to do... I'm very creative...

i love making websites... again, i like being involved with everything that has to be done with it.

any schools that relate to all of that? lol...

how many years (estimated)

thanks everyone... you've made everything easier than my guidance counselor

BTW... my school allows us to go to Ohio University Eastern during our Junior and Senior year if they feel it would be a good experience. I could earn college credits there and use them at a college in the future.

BTW (part 2)... there is something our county has, a special thing with a technical college, where you go half the day to regular classes like math and english and history and then the other half you go to a specialized class like Information Technology, Web Design, Cisco Certified Networking, Graphic Design, etc.

Do you suggest any of those alternatives too?
 
Thought I'd throw in my two cents on the subject of being in school. From a HS perspective, I can imagine that the prospect of many more years of school is quite daunting. But never fear! After a while one tends to become firmly entrenched in school, and the idea of actually being out of school becomes quite a novel idea. It's the green light at the end of the dock that year by year recedes before us.

That said, I want this to be encouraging. School's not that bad. Avoid the real world!!!

Sorry, but I have no advice on what schools to look at (unless you're looking for neuroscience advice. . . .)
 
Originally posted by Ed Spruiell
wellno, not quite. an undergraduate degree (an B.A. or B.S. - Bachelor of Arts or Bachelor of Science) takes a minimum of 4 years as a rule. Many people divide it up into junior college (1-2 years) and then finish at a University. In a round about way, that is how i did it. As Red Phoenix mentioned earlier, it is not unusual to take 5-6 year getting finished with this part. It took me about 8 yr in 2 seperate stints.
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Not in my experience...I did my all of my undergrad work in 2 years and even managed to get a minor (BS in Bio and minor in chem.)...it's not easy, but it is doable...I'm currently in med school right now, so if anyone has any questions or wants any tips to go this route of study just drop me a line here through PM...

As for paying off my student loans...I will be quite old when that gets done...I had full scholarships for undergrad, but here in med school scholarships are few and far between, and we are talking 27,000+ per year...yikes...good thing doctors are well paid, although when I finally start practicing I'll in essence have two mortgage payments...
 
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