College Application Inflation — Marketing Meets Admissions 256
gollum123 sends this quote from the Chronicle of Higher Education:
"The numbers keep rising, the superlatives keep glowing. Each year, selective colleges promote their application totals, along with the virtues of their applicants. For this fall's freshman class, the statistics reached remarkable levels. Stanford received a record 32,022 applications from students it called 'simply amazing,' and accepted 7 percent of them. Brown saw an unprecedented 30,135 applicants, who left the admissions staff 'deeply impressed and at times awed.' Nine percent were admitted. Such announcements tell a story in which colleges get better — and students get more amazing — every year. In reality, the narrative is far more complex, and the implications far less sunny for students as well as colleges caught up in the cruel cycle of selectivity. To some degree, the increases are inevitable: the college-bound population has grown, and so, too, has the number of applications students file, thanks in part to online technology. But wherever it is raining applications, colleges have helped seed the clouds — by recruiting widely and aggressively for ever more applicants. Many colleges have made applying as simple as updating a Facebook page. Some deans and guidance counselors complain that it's too easy. They question the ethics of intense recruitment by colleges that reject the overwhelming majority of applicants. Today's application inflation is a cause and symptom of the uncertainty in admissions."
Will high school grades determine kids' destinies? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Will high school grades determine kids' destini (Score:4, Insightful)
I've always heard that unless you go to one of the top schools in the nation for your degree, it doesn't really matter where you go. So while Harvard, Princeton, Yale, MIT, Stanford, and a handful of others are excellent, there's no point spending the money on a Vanderbilt, USC, or SMU when you can go to a state school or University of Phoenix. I suppose there are regional exceptions (if you plan on staying in North Texas, SMU can be worth the money) or certain professions (USC is a much better choice for budding Speilbergs than just about any other college in the country), but outside of those two specifics it just doesn't matter a whole lot.
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Re:Will high school grades determine kids' destini (Score:4, Insightful)
To a certain extent; I'd extend the top school list down more, though. Like Vanderbilt is first-rate, has a strong alum network and great academic reputation nationwide (no, I didn't go there). USC probably not worth the money, even if you want to be the next Spielberg. SMU is way too expensive unless you're staying in Dallas and need to rely on the alumni network. I would not lump University of Phoenix together with even obscure state schools. I would always take the state school over UoP.
To add to the parent's point, there are tiers. There is the top tier populated with the Harvards and MITs. There is the second tier populated with good schools (both public and private). Going to one of these will look good on a resume but shouldn't make any recruiter drool. The third tier is populated with the safety schools of students who went to the first and second; you can still get a good education but it's not going to jump out on a resume. Fourth tier would have trade schools like University of Phoenix.
Disclaimer: I literally put these definitions together on the spot. Feel free to critique them but understand they are underdeveloped definitions.
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So while Harvard, Princeton, Yale, MIT, Stanford, and a handful of others are excellent, there's no point spending the money on a Vanderbilt, USC, or SMU when you can go to a state school or University of Phoenix.
I work in higher ed. I'd advise my own kids that if they don't end up at a really top school that a state school will do just fine. However, I'd certainly avoid them to avoid schools like the University of Phoenix. They're expensive, unremarkable, and poorly regarded.
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I was going to say the same thing about the University of Phoenix. If I see a resume with that as the vendor of the degree (usually an MBA), it gets round filed immediately.
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Actually, of the dozens of applicants I have had with MBA's from UoP, they all were arrogant, overconfident, and exhibited poor decision making skills when tested. They may have been good at one time, but in the past decade when I have been hiring people, the UoP MBA students they have turned out have been marginal.
When I first started looking for people, I eagerly thought that an MBA, even from UoP would be a decent entry point. Some business skills are useful in a Product Management position, even at a
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That depends on your specific situation I'd say. Better schools do provide a better education or at least don't assume you're a grade A moron. The professors and administrators also seem to either be better (ie: not a FOB Russian who can't speak English and assumes he's God just like in the good ol' soviet school system) or at least care more.
Most companies essentially require internships on resumes for technical positions and a good school would likely give you better ones. If you plan to do research inste
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In general, yes. Some other schools have more pull, especially if you're applying for a job within a few states. For instance, I'm in grad school for Economics and there are several very big multi-national corporations in my home city, and as such due to the research the professors / grad students do for the businesses in the area, you have more pull in getting a job with one of those companies.
For instance, when I was in high school applying for college and advisor told me that if I was planning on stayi
Re:Will high school grades determine kids' destini (Score:4, Insightful)
I think there's maybe an exception for known bottom of the bucket schools too. I mean, University of Phoenix is no 'any real college'.
Re:Will high school grades determine kids' destini (Score:4, Insightful)
On the other hand, one could argue that the education you get is largely unrelated to the school you attend. I would instantly pick an A student from UC Berkeley (or even someone from a cow college in flyover country) who was actively involved in outside projects over a C student at MIT who wasn't involved in outside projects. At an undergrad level, you can get the basic skills anywhere, and beyond that basic level, what you get out of your college education is directly proportional to what you put in. In the grand scheme of things, I'm not convinced that there's a dime's worth of difference on the average between a Berkeley grad who puts in the effort and an MIT grad who does the same. Most of what you really will need to know on the job, you'll be picking up in your first few weeks anyway, and (good) employers know this.
The only real advantage I can see for MIT and other schools that have strong specialization in a particular area over smaller, less specialized schools is that students have more opportunities to work in various areas of specialization that would not be feasible at other schools. This matters if you are hiring somebody in that area of specialization, but only for maybe a few years after graduation. After that, the field has changed too much for what they learned to be relevant anyway. The ability of a graduate to learn is far, far more relevant to that person's success than which specific pieces of information the person has learned upon graduation. Also, a fair amount of what you need to know for a given job is going to be specific to that job anyway, so it is critically important to be able to hit the ground running and learn as you go. That matters much more than what you know going in.
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I hardly think you'd consider an engineering degree from MIT equivalent to an engineering degree from UC Berkley - not knocking their program there, just saying that MIT's is better.
Actually, I would consider an engineering degree from MIT equivalent to an engineering degree from UC "Berkley". Or for that matter, any other engineering school ranked as one of the very best in the U.S. Certainly, MIT may have a stronger brand, and that counts for something. But on what factual basis would you say MIT's program is better than Berkeley's? Or Stanford's, or Cal Tech's, or ...?
After attending multiple top engineering schools, you realize the curriculum is roughly the same, the quality of
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Or that they have a good sense of humor.
Like that one school I saw a flyer for:
"Attend Harvey Mudd! Then you tell people where you went to school can say it quickly and make people think you were saying, 'Harvard Med!'"
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That isn't saying much, Harvard is not exactly known for having a great engineering department. Anyone who wants to be an engineer and has the cash to go to really expensive private school in Boston is going to choose MIT.
Re:Will high school grades determine kids' destini (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:Will high school grades determine kids' destini (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Will high school grades determine kids' destini (Score:4, Informative)
This is nothing new or unique to this generation, it's called the "inexperience of youth", it's been going on for millenia and old farts like you and me have been complaining about it since the dead sea was just not felling very well.
"The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers." - Socrates
Re:Will high school grades determine kids' destini (Score:5, Interesting)
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For example, does this mean that what kids do in high school will increasingly set their destinies for life?
It certainly should. here's no question that most high school kids do not take education as seriously as they should. For many, high school is really just a social gathering.
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And that should be considered a serious problem, because even high school students who do take their high school education seriously are adversely affected by how not seriously everyone around them takes it. And that factor is affected generally by how rich and/or white your neighborhood is.
In addition to that, high school students who take their education seriously are affected adversely by teachers who don't. There are many high school teachers who have an unjustifiably low opinion of their students. They're convinced that high school students are mindless dummies who are capable of no intelligent activity beyond regurgitating information - and acting on this theory, they eliminate any element of actual teaching/learning from their course material in favor of a "here is information, you mu
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FTFY.
Re:Will high school grades determine kids' destini (Score:4, Informative)
That is how it is in law school. A lot of law firms put a lot of weight on GPA and what school one graduated from. A tier 1 college (as per US News and World Report) will get one hired essentially anywhere. If someone came from a lower tier, they would need to have a resume with entries to compensate for not having Yale, Harvard, Stanford, Cornell, or UT by their academic section.
This doesn't say that a lower tier is a bad thing -- there is no such thing as an unemployed attorney unless they get disbarred, but the plum positions starting from graduating are essentially about what tier you came from, all things being equal.
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Not that there's anything wrong with this approach. The tier 1 schools are tier 1 for a reason, and, all else being equal, one should assume that new attorneys from those schools are going to be better at their profession than someone from a lower-ranked school. Five years into their careers, this might no longer hold, but it's impossible to know that right after graduating.
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Re:Will high school grades determine kids' destini (Score:4, Interesting)
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Having your destiny set by how much money your parents make.
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How much money your parents make determines, in large part, what high school you go to,
What high school you go to determines what sorts of opportunities you have readily available, especially regarding college prep.
The quality of your college prep work in high school determines how likely you are to be accepted at a top tier university.
The perceived quality of the university you attend determines the job opportunities you will get
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That, and it takes a long, long time to climb up out of the bottom of society. Count on at least three dedicated generations to go from the working class to the upper middle class. There is an enormous amount of human capital embodied in upper-middle-class society, and getting yourself
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Ahhhahahah hohoh hehehe, stop it your killing me.
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Yeah right, you got poor grades on the test because you were too intelligent to do your homework and too advanced to be bothered learning the basics. Sure lots of people teach themselves but when they do very few of them rea
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Not all schools are created equal. Some are more equal than the others.
By the way, this is not what I would call selection.
MGU in my days had between 1% and under 0.1% pass rate. Even the rather 2nd rate by Eastern European standards Sofia State University to which I went had higher selectivity for some majors than the "scary" 5% listed here. IIRC Biotech had a sub-1% pass rate, same for law.
IMO there is nothing wrong here. That is what scores and exams are for. You perform well you get in a good school. Yo
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Actually, doing something really unique in high school and having average grades is a far safer course for getting into a selective school. In the good grades crowd, you're competing with 31,500 of the 32,000. If you've done something unique, you're only competing with the last 500. And the 7K slots are usually allocated 6500 for grades, 500 for unique.
FTFS (Score:2)
They question the ethics of intense recruitment by colleges that reject the overwhelming majority of applicants.
Come to us, we want you, we need you, we love you! Oh wait...just kidding.
This reminds me of advertising for pharmaceutical drugs. "THIS WILL HELP YOU!!! TAKE IT NAO!!!" Then who does the patient get pissed at when their doctor tells them that drug won't help due to a specific condition? If my time spent in the industry is any indication, it isn't usually the pharmaceutical company...
Unsolicited parental input (Score:3, Insightful)
Too Many Applications are Stressful and Useless (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is why I applied to exactly ONE college, where I knew I would get in wanted to go. Half the people I know apply to Stanford and crap just so their parents can brag about it, and brag even more if they get accepted. They have no intention of actually going there.
But frankly, the elephant in the room is that the students they DO accept get stuck with loans they can't pay off--proving their education was wildly overpriced. Being from a Big-Name School these days just isn't worth the extra $50,000. It's insane.
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I also applied for one school, my home University of Granada, in Spain. But that's just because the admissions system is completely transparent and I knew without room for exceptions: They average your high school GPA with the grade in a common regional exam, and then they rank applicants. Starting with the highest grades, they assign them to different schools and majors within. With my grade, I knew I would enter any major of choice, even if every applicant before me also chose that one school and major.
So
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If I hadn't gotten in I would have been extremely surprised that a public college would turn down someone with a near-perfect GPA, an entire semester of AP credits (good for college credit), and relevant extracurricular activity. And concluded that I didn't want to go there after all and gone to the community college for year. Sure, it wasn't totally transparent, but it was pretty obvious.
I know some people don't like stressing about one number, grades, and you can see it to an extreme in Asian countries
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Okay, now I'm rambling, but that reminded me of a chapter in a book I read about Canada's hockey player recruiting strategy. Basically, everybody has to compete against other kids born in the same year as them, and as early as age 10 the best players of each year get selected for better training camps. The problem is the kids born in January and February are essentially a year older than the kids born in November and December, and the almost-eleven-year-olds beat the crap out of the just-turned-ten-year-olds, and they get selected. So if you're born in the second half of the year, you can't play hockey in Canada.
That's very interesting, and I bet it could be verifiable by looking at the public profiles of professional hockey players in Canada. Anyone with free time to do this?
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Re:Too Many Applications are Stressful and Useless (Score:4, Insightful)
Which is why I applied to exactly ONE college, where I knew I would get in wanted to go. Half the people I know apply to Stanford and crap just so their parents can brag about it, and brag even more if they get accepted. They have no intention of actually going there.
But frankly, the elephant in the room is that the students they DO accept get stuck with loans they can't pay off--proving their education was wildly overpriced. Being from a Big-Name School these days just isn't worth the extra $50,000. It's insane.
The biggest name schools aren't so expensive. The Ivies, and I assume Stanford, won't leave you with more than ~$20k of debt, and places like Yale and Princeton replaced loans with grants a few years back, leaving you with 0 debt. If you made the mistake of having a college fund, though, the amount they expect you to pay will magically increase by exactly the size of that fund.
Re:Too Many Applications are Stressful and Useless (Score:5, Informative)
The biggest name schools aren't so expensive. The Ivies, and I assume Stanford, won't leave you with more than ~$20k of debt, and places like Yale and Princeton replaced loans with grants a few years back, leaving you with 0 debt. If you made the mistake of having a college fund, though, the amount they expect you to pay will magically increase by exactly the size of that fund.
True. At Stanford, children from families making less than $100k pay Zero tuition. Children from families that make less than $250k receive academic aid so that they end up paying less than if they had gone to a state school unassisted. I believe Harvard is going to start doing something similar.
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2010/february8/tuition-financial-aid-020910.html [stanford.edu]
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Um, no. It proves they took on more debt than they could handle.
That's an opinion - not a fact. There is a difference you know.
Vocational Schools (Score:5, Insightful)
So maybe this increase in college applications is indicative of the trend that, when a society obsesses over a college degree in all walks of life, then that is one thing that most coming-of-age adults value.
today's employers don't know how bad costs are for (Score:2)
today's employers don't know how bad costs are for college and some of the big name colleges are more well known for that sports teams then the school part.
But the tech / Vocational Schools are more to topic for the real world with less filler and more upto date courses but employers don't like then why?.
The Ivy League is the worst (Score:4, Funny)
The Ivy League is the worst. Getting into MIT is hard, but so is going to MIT. (Despite this, if you get into MIT, you have a 90% chance of graduating.) Getting into the Ivy League schools is hard, but then you can make contacts and coast on academics. George Bush Jr. went to Yale and Harvard, after all.
(I went to Stanford, in CS, in the 1980s. The education was at best mediocre.)
Re:The Ivy League is the worst (Score:5, Informative)
The other side of that coin is that the vast majority of private colleges and out-of-state public colleges are simply not worth full price. There are limited exceptions, but mostly you shouldn't bother unless you can get a scholarship (and if your intellect is formidable enough to exceed the capabilities of your state's flagship university, it's good enough to get you a scholarship at a good one).
Toward that end, I have one piece of advice for any 9th or 10th graders reading this: practice and study for the PSAT. Your high school may not place much emphasis on it, especially if you live in a rural area; they may not even tell you when it will be offered. MAKE SURE YOU TAKE IT IN 11TH GRADE. A sufficiently high score (and if you're in a low-achieving state, that score won't be all that high) will make you a National Merit Semifinalist, which is enough to get you a full ride at quite a lot of universities and at least half tuition at many others. It will also open up other scholarship opportunities. And apply for every scholarship you hear of; $1000 here and there adds up.
Re:The Ivy League is the worst (Score:4, Interesting)
Toward that end, I have one piece of advice for any 9th or 10th graders reading this: practice and study for the PSAT. Your high school may not place much emphasis on it, especially if you live in a rural area; they may not even tell you when it will be offered. MAKE SURE YOU TAKE IT IN 11TH GRADE. A sufficiently high score (and if you're in a low-achieving state, that score won't be all that high) will make you a National Merit Semifinalist, which is enough to get you a full ride at quite a lot of universities and at least half tuition at many others. It will also open up other scholarship opportunities. And apply for every scholarship you hear of; $1000 here and there adds up.
This is a huge piece of great advice for HS students! I took the PSAT my sophomore year of HS and did better than anyone else in my school (juniors included). My adviser told me that, with my score, I could get a full-ride to any school I wanted. When PSAT time rolled around for my junior year I came down with appendicitis and missed the test. Later on, when I started looking for scholarships, I was rejected out of hand for 95% of them because sophomore scores can't net you the National Merit Semifinalist title (only junior scores can). That single stroke of shitty luck cost me a lot of $$$. Take the parent's advice to heart young ones.
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As in, that made it easier, or as in, you can't write because you're a "No Child Left Behind" Scholar and it left a massive hole in your education?
Re:The Ivy League is the worst (Score:5, Informative)
Dude, I went to Princeton. At least in the engineering school, you do not "coast" on academics. It's a 70hr/wk workload. I graduated with honors - with a C+ average.
You sweat blood to get a BSE degree at Princeton.
Ditto for pol sci or international studies; the Woodrow Wilson school is incredibly hard.
Maybe as an art major or something, but the majority of programs is *hard*.
OK, I can't spead for Harvard or Yale, no doubt they're a cake walk.
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I was a preceptor at Princeton in SEAS. While the classes are hard, they come nowhere close to the 5x classes at Caltech (where I did my undergrad). Princeton students like to complain about their workload but still find time to spend 3-4 nights a week getting sloshed on Prospect.
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The Ivy League is the worst. Getting into MIT is hard, but so is going to MIT. (Despite this, if you get into MIT, you have a 90% chance of graduating.) Getting into the Ivy League schools is hard, but then you can make contacts and coast on academics. George Bush Jr. went to Yale and Harvard, after all.
(I went to Stanford, in CS, in the 1980s. The education was at best mediocre.)
That ceased to be true at Yale in 1969, just after W left, when the school began admitting women as undergraduates. Since then, academics of admission and attendance are quite competitive. The idea that you can "make contact and coast" may fly in movies, but not in the current real world.
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(I went to Stanford, in CS, in the 1980s. The education was at best mediocre.)
I did my undergrad at CMU and got a masters at Stanford, both in CS. I felt that CMU had the better program, by far, but I was living close to Stanford after graduation. I didn't think it was mediocre in the mid 90s, but grading was easier. They'd fail you at CMU, but not really at Stanford unless you really tried to fail. But, I do value having gone to two different schools.
I've interviewed students from many schools, and Berkeley is the only "top tier" school for CS that I just wouldn't hire from.
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ha (Score:2)
Reflection of the economy? (Score:3, Insightful)
Am I the only one who think it's more likely a reflection of today's bad economy?
I imagine with how difficult it is to get a job right now, even a student just graduating high school is aware that he'll have a hard time getting a decent job without a college or vocational degree.
Sure it's easier to apply online...but I don't think it's really harder for someone to send the application by mail, just slower
View from the ivory tower (Score:4, Insightful)
Being a Ph.D. candidate in mathematics at one of the big name Ivy League schools, I am yet to see all these "amazing" students. Yes, practically every student get the basics (something that doesn't happen at less selective schools), but give them a problem that requires creativity and you'll see that a handful of students in the class are able to solve it. They might work hard and they are motivated, but it's not like every student is terribly smart.
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Motivation to work hard is far more valuable to a future e
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Intelligence and creativity are two somewhat separate things. Especially in mathematics where you either need to have the right gift or learn the tricks of it (likely both I suppose).
Plus, everything else equal a hard working above-average person will do a lot better in life than a lazy genius.
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Lets look:
List 1: Get the basics, hard working, motivated
List 2: Creatively brilliant
Except in very few cases, I know which I'd rather employ. I think you just demonstrated the value of big name Ivy League schools.
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If you really believe that the people around you are not smart, then I think (as someone who has a PhD from one of the big name Ivy League schools =P) that you have perhaps an inflated opinion of your own skills... a common problem at said schools.
What's the problem? (Score:3, Insightful)
Just because all the applications are amazing doesn't mean they have to accept all of them. Maybe they don't have the resources to support that many amazing students. There's no incongruity here.
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Just because all the applications are amazing doesn't mean they have to accept all of them. Maybe they don't have the resources to support that many amazing students. There's no incongruity here.
The notable bit is that the colleges are putting out weird press releases stating that the pool has expanded and the applicants were amazing, when the real change that comes along with the pool expanding is the average applicant quality decreasing. However, the larger pool essentially has no effect: the same couple thousands kids will be admitted. The expanded pool, to a large extent, is just expanding the list of rejected students. The biggest change occurred about a decade ago, when widespread online a
Not to mention the fact that (Score:5, Insightful)
What's easier than making money from overpriced tuition? Convincing underqualified people to apply, taking their application fee, and instantly throwing out their application in a GPA/SAT filter.
New tiering of college degrees? (Score:2)
I wonder how long this can keep up. In my experience, as soon as you graduate and get your first job, almost every future employment prospect is based on how well you perform in the "real world." Getting that first job is tougher if you are a state school graduate (like me,) but if you majored in something marketable, you do eventually get hired. My first 2 jobs were awful, but I was able to gain enough experience to eventually get the job I have today. No one has ever asked me where I went to school or wha
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If you are going to study in physics, and you can get into a high end score that has a Nobel Laurette, then I would say go to that school and find a way to meet the person. You may not get into the class, but a smart motivated person will find a way.
The underlying false premise with college is that it guarantees you an immediate job.
In the real world... (Score:2)
There are a few exceptions for schools that are particularly well known for a given discipline, but mostly a degree is a degree is
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false.
I graduate from Harvard business school is going to have a lot more opportunities then someone who got a business degree at the community college.
The same thing with engineers who go to Carnegie Melon vs a community college.
If you just want a desk job, then it doesn't matter.
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false.
I graduate from Harvard business school is going to have a lot more opportunities then someone who got a business degree at the community college.
You started by saying "false" and then almost quoted what I DID say. You are aware that Harvard is an "ivy league" school, right?
Where you go matters -- for grad school (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Where you go matters -- for grad school (Score:4, Insightful)
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What you say is true if you're getting a Master's Degree. If you're getting a PhD (or anything similar), then your advisor is more important. Doesn't matter where the degree comes from, just how good your advisor and research records are. Publications, industry contacts, conference talks are what people look for then.
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If you are denying (Score:2)
93% of applicants, should you be expanding?
Granted, you won't want a percentage of those applicant under any conditions.
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7% of a growing number is a growing number. And when there's another number growing (the number of $$ you can charge per student) then investing in growth is correct business strategy.
But this has nothing to do with education, so it really shouldn't matter to the student. Just do the math. If you're unaware of your ranking in Harvard's pool, assume it's just a gamble that you'll get in, and spread your other applications around to less-selective schools, including at least one where you are guaranteed to
Recommended viewing (Score:3, Informative)
"The business of higher education is booming. It's a $400 billion industry fueled by taxpayer money. But what are students getting out of the deal? Critics say a worthless degree and a mountain of debt. Investors insist they're innovators, widening access to education." Watch the video. [pbs.org]
Has anyone had a chance to read this book? The Student Loan Scam: The Most Oppressive Debt in U.S. History-and How We Can Fight Back
Start a new college (Score:3, Interesting)
1. Start elitist university..
2. Recruit lots of applications for students.
3. Reject 90% of them.
4. PROFIT.
.
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One flaw in your plan:
All the non-"elitist" universities tried to do exactly that. But the "elitist" universities out-competed them for competent staff and other marketable superiorities.
You'll be starting out at the bottom of the list. Just rejecting 90% of your applicant's won't help you climb it.
(And yes, I get the joke, but not everyone else will, because some of them didn't go to good schools...)
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That's a task akin to asking your local Little League team take on the (recent World Series winning) San Francisco Giants.
Seriously, those schools got where they are based on decades/centuries of work. No new school is going to be able to recruit the professors, have the billions to invest in the infrastructure, attract the top tier students...
Is the article completly wrong? (Score:3, Insightful)
Think about what a college really is (Score:2)
A college is a name and a reputation. That's it.
With that name comes the assumption that they have a rigorous process for hiring a certain quality of educator. That they have a Dean who makes sure the professors he hires tomorrow turn out students that are at least as well educated as the professors that teach there today.
A college degree is the reputation of that school backing your assertion that you are educated. Again, that's it.
Things like the number of applicants, the percentage of applications acc
why this? (Score:3, Interesting)
Of all the problems with the University system in the US, why bring this up?
UCLA gets the most applicants? UCLA is the largest state college in the most populous state in the country. Hardly shocking that it gets a lot of applicants.
How about we talk about the problems with recruiting kids into dead-end majors, the lack of practical training, the idea that even an exhaustive college education isn't sufficient (post-doc anyone?), the student-as-labor model of research or absurdly high administrator salaries?
Re:Not to mention, what's the reward? (Score:4, Interesting)
As my friends were in college, I was working as a car mechanic, making around 50k a year. Did that for about three years.
Once some of my friends got out of college, many of them couldn't find a job. For the past 5 years, I've been building my career by working as a programmer and, soon (if things go as they look like they will) as a business analyst for call center database development.
And some of my college-educated friends STILL can't find a job. I'm not saying a college education is worthless, but it is something to consider nowadays.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Your friends lack motivation.
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It's a fun, challenging position that requires a lot of effort and pays decently well. Best of all, it's a great stepping stone in my career.
Where's the problem?
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Where's the problem?
probably the assumption by the gp that call center == evil telemarketers
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Possible.
In this case, it's a pharmaceutical call center that runs patient assistance programs, insurance verifications, and denied claims appeals.
Basically, we're the good guys :-)
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We've run all the call centers out of the United States and into places like India and Mexico :)
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Lorena Bobbit School of Culinary Severance?
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*cough*
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