I know a guy who went from HS dropout, to CC, to Univ. of British Columbia, to Harvard Law, but he’s a pretty weird dude.
That’s very believable though. Law School is just a numbers game. Just crush LSAT and ~4.0 GPA at a decent uni will get you in to HLS.
You spelled poors wrong.
Well, that is most families.
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The CC to UC thing is basically implemented into CA law via the education masterplan. They may do something similar in NY, but every state system would differ on that point. Ivys, I think, want you to be a Yale Man or Princeton Man the entire time, especially the first two “impressionable” years.
You think an intro class like that is going to be better at a mega school? You’re probably learning it from a 1st or 2nd year grad student who speaks English as a 2nd language and cheated on the TOEFL.
Parents paying for 4 year college seems to mostly about having the extremely fun independent living and partying experience that the parents had and they want their kids to have that too. It’s not because you’re getting a better education, especially in the first year or two. At large state schools you’re taking a ton of GenEds in massive auditoriums where you can just get notes from other people, it’s a joke
Let’s face it: if you don’t have a 5.0 GPA, the poshest condo, a Mercedes gullwing, $5M liquid before your 21st birthday, 99.99th percentile test scores, the biggest dick, and weren’t the fake captain of your high school crew team, you’re fucking nobody and don’t deserve to get into any name schools.
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There’s just a broad a range. My 120 person intro logic class was taught by a great McArthur Award winning professor. My intro to sociology class was like 300 people and taught by a great prof. The “small sections” were with grad students and were hit or miss. You can see which classes are good at a UC via various sources (even pre-internet a must-buy every year was the student course eval book). Into to chem and bio were good classes, and I took some non-intro courses my first couple of years.
Also, say you want to do comp sci. The first two years will be designed to prep you for what they expect at upper level. I would be very nervous about entering upper division physics or engineering classes at a UC from a CC.
That was like 30 years ago.
Yes, and this specific professor didn’t do logic as part of her research work. She just taught the class because she had it dialed in, with a folder for each lecture, etc. Not much new in logic as of late.
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I do think that with education, provided there’s a decent standard of rigor and the right books assigned, it’s basically up to the student. You can get a great education like Abe Lincoln reading law books under a tree. If you read, attend, think about the subject, and work.
My brother dropped out of HS, worked for 5 years, went to a JC, transferred to a cal state, graduated in comp sci at like 29, programmed for an on-base military contractor for a couple of years, then got a masters in comp sci at a cal state, then took a programming job at Raytheon like 10 years ago, and now he’s a fairly senior programmer in charge of real stuff. He started programming when he was like 10 though, had rough teen years from “real” ADD, and he’s “gotten ahead” to the extent he has by being a guy people can dump hard problems on and he’ll solve them.
My point is things are way different now. Aunt Becky paid 500 large to get her influencer faildaughters into [checks notes] the University of Southern California. Have you seen what graduate school entrance exams and admissions look like (not LSAT) now compared to 15 years ago? It’s dire. There are a relatively fixed number of coveted things (prestigious American universities), and everyone wants those things, except “everyone” now includes booming China and India. I’d have to recheck the numbers, but I think China alone has more takes on GMAT and maybe GRE than any country by a significant margin.
You also need to bake in the kind of people you will absolutely never see in an undergraduate classroom who account for a lot of the university ranking factor driving prestige. One of the best people I had in grad school was this guy who was a prolific researcher and giant in his field. Wasn’t aware of him ever teaching an undergrad course the entire time I was there.
Yeah, I think it’s difficult to make a general statement here. The only CC class I’ve taken was a summer school class at a satellite site of a CC doing geometry in like 9th grade. The class was basic and the teacher was meh. My stepdad taught chemistry at a CC, and after completing a chem minor I probably knew more chem (or chem theory) than he did (he graduated in the 50s). He was probably a decent teacher for the chem for firemen and cops classes he taught.
There are great teachers and bad teachers for all kinds of classes, but as long as the book is good that’s where I think real learning takes place.
I took upper division math and physics and lower division engineering and computer science at UC and followed along my daughter’s C++ classes at CC. The competition was less and grades easier, but the material was on the same level imo and it was designed that way because they offered the credit for the corresponding UC classes. I did mention to my kids to expect to have to work harder at UC, but my eldest was prepared and did very well last year. (History major, but took a couple science classes as she was entertaining the idea of med school)
I also took some cc classes in summer and during some time off, including a physics class. That was a long time ago and that class was definitely at a lower level, but people there were more into actually learning (including me) and I think I learned more because I had time to go for understanding without having to worry about tests or homework which were pretty easy. It was a pretty motivated group in the class because many people were looking to transfer.
A couple times at UC I had shitty books that were only used because the professor wrote them.
From what I’ve seen being on both sides of it, I’d default to no difference and would need to see a lot of evidence for a university effect. Here’s an anecdote along these lines that’s infuriating. For quite a few years at a state flagship, our statistical methods course for non-engineering undergrads was exactly the same course taught at the nearest CC (because it was designed by the same person). Eventually, the department grifter was allowed to redesign the course. This resulted in some faculty / staff outright refusing to teach it, but also several former students informing us that the grad schools they applied to would not count it for credit, so they had to pick up the CC version in the summer after graduating. And those schools were absolutely correct not to accept it.
In fact, I think the odds are it will be worse at a big ivy as those people are heavily research focused.
I would bet intro eduction is better at cc and not until later courses and Grad school does it pay to go Ivey.
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Is he also a freak?